PHILIPPINE LITERATURE
ANCIENT FILIPINO TALES
LEGEND
Title: Legend of Pineapple
Characters: Pina and her mother
Values: Stubborn and Not Listening to her mother
Legend of Pineapple
Once upon a time, there
was a woman who lived with her daughter Pina in a tiny hut in the
village. They were poor, and the mother worked day and night to make both
ends meet. No matter how hard she worked, though, she never got any help from
her daughter. Pina was a lazy, spoiled kid who liked to play in the
backyard all day. Whenever her mother asked for help around the house or tried
to send her on an errand, she would always find an excuse by saying she can’t
find the object that was needed to complete that task. If her mother asked her
to sweep the house, for example, she would say she cannot find the broom, even
if it was right there in front of her. Needless to say, her mother always ended
up doing the work herself.
One
day, her mother became very ill. She called out to Pina, who as usual was
playing in the backyard.
“Pina!
Pina! Come over here, anak.
I am very sick. Can you cook some porridge for me please? I am too weak to get
up.”
Pina
ignored her mother and continued to play.
“Pina,
come over here this very instant, or else!” Pina’s mother mustered
all her strength just to say this, but it worked. Pina grudgingly stopped
playing and went inside the house. She poked her head inside her mother’s room.
“What
do you want, Nanay (mother)? You really expect me to
cook for you? That’s too hard,” protested Pina, pouting and stomping her feet.
“Pina,
it is very simple. Just put some rice in a pot and add water. Once the
water boils, let it simmer for awhile. Stir it occasionally with a ladle.
Everything you need should be right there in the kitchen.”
Pina reluctantly left and went to the kitchen. Her mother could hear
her banging the drawers and cabinets. Then her mother heard her open the back
door and sneak out into the backyard. Her mother waited and waited. Finally,
she called out to Pina again.
“Pina,
did you cook like I told you to?”
“No,”
was the defiant response.
“And
why not?” was her mom’s exasperated response.
“Because I could not find the ladle,” was her flippant reply.
“Oh, you lazy child! You
probably did not even bother to look for it! What am I going to do with you?
Here I am, sick, and I cannot even count on you!”
Her
mother wept bitterly. In her anger, she shouted, “I wish you would grow a
thousand eyes all over your head! Then you can find what you’re looking for.
Maybe then you won’t have any more excuses.”
As soon
as she said this, there was complete silence. Her mother thought, “She is
trying to be quiet so I will forget about asking her again.” She sighed.
She
waited a little bit to see if Pina would come back. Realizing the
wait was futile, she wearily got up to do the cooking herself. When she looked
out into the backyard, Pina was nowhere to be found. She sighed again and said
to herself, “That lazy kid probably went to a friend’s house so she did
not have to do any more errands for me.”
Exhausted from the exertion, she soon went back to her room for a
much-needed rest. Weak as she was, she just tried to do everything by herself,
having given up on any help from Pina. Hours passed by, and then days. Still no
sign of her wayward daughter. With a heavy heart, she thought that Pina had ran
away for sure.
When
she finally recovered from her illness, the first thing she did was look for
Pina. No one had seen or heard from her. It was like she disappeared into thin
air. Months passed and still no sign of her. The mother felt bad for
her angry outburst, and she feared that she might probably never see
her daughter again.
One day, she was sweeping the backyard where Pina used
to play. For months now, she had noticed this strange plant growing on the
very spot where she last saw Pina. By this time, the leaves of the plant had
fully opened. Inside, she saw this strange yellow fruit that resembled a
child’s head with a thousand eyes. A thousand eyes…
She
suddenly remembered the spiteful words she used that fateful day. With
horror, she realized that in the same way her mother’s love had
spoiled her daughter, so did her
anger unwittingly curse her. Somehow, her
daughter had been turned into this plant.
To
honor the memory of her beloved daughter, she named the fruit Pina. She took such
loving care of it like it was her own daughter. The fruit flourished so
well that it bore more and more fruits, and became popular among the
village and the entire country. Its name later evolved to pinya, or pineapple
in English. That’s how the pineapple came to be, according to folklore, named
after a spoiled child who was cursed with a thousand eyes.
FABLES
Title: The Fox and the Grapes
Character:
Fox
The Fox and the Grapes
One
afternoon a fox was walking through the forest and spotted a bunch of grapes
hanging from over a lofty branch.
“Just
the thing to quench my thirst,” he thought. Taking a few steps back, the fox
jumped and just missed the hanging grapes. Again the fox took a few paces back
and tried to reach them but still failed.
Finally,
giving up, the fox turned up his nose and said, “They’re probably sour anyway,”
and proceeded to walk away.
MYTHS
Title: The Myth of Eros (The God of Love)
Characters: Eros, Zeus, Psyche, Aphrodite
The Myth of Eros, the God of Love
The Greeks told many wonderful stories about Eros, the love-god, some of which
are very hard to understand. Long before Zeus, or Cronus, or Uranus, was the
king of the gods, indeed, before these gods were born, and before there were
any plants or animals, Eros was a god as powerful as he was in the later days
when the Greeks wrote their stories about him.
They said that in the beginning the whole world was all one mass of stone, and
there was no earth or sky or sea. Then Eros, or Love, was the only living
thing; and just as the mother-hen warms her eggs till the little chicks peep
out, so the Greeks said Love brooded over the world until living things
appeared, and the world began to take shape.
Although he was so very, very old, the Greeks thought that Eros always remained
a youth, never growing up as the other gods did. And they represented him in
their pictures as a beautiful lad, with a golden bow and a quiver full of
arrows. Some of his arrows were sharp and of the whitest silver. Whoever was
wounded with one of these at once began to love the person that Eros wished him
to love. Others were blunt and made of lead; and if a person was struck with
one of these, he did just the opposite, and disliked whomsoever Eros wished.
One of the stories which the Greeks liked to tell about Eros was of his love
for a young girl, and the way in which she became immortal through it. This
girl’s name was Psyche, which means "the should;" and she was so
beautiful that as soon as Eros saw her he fell deeply in love with her.
She was only a mortal, however, while he was a god; so when they were married
he could not take her to Mount Olympus with him, nor even let her know who he
was. For many months they lived together very happily in a beautiful palace of
marble and gold, though Psyche was never allowed to see her husband by daylight
nor to light a lamp by night.
Indeed, Psyche was so happy that her sisters began to be jealous of her good
fortune, and said that her husband must be some dreadful monster, who was
afraid to let her look upon his face. Psyche did not believe this, of course;
but, in order to prove that they were mistaken, she did something that took
away her happiness for a long time.
After Eros had fallen asleep one night, she lighted a lamp, and brought it to
the bedside When she saw that her husband was the god Eros, she was so startled
that a drop of hot oil fell from her lamp upon his face, and he awoke. Then he
saw that she had disobeyed him; and, after giving her one sad look, he was
gone.
Poor Psyche was heart-broken, for she knew that he would not come back again.
She wandered about for a long time, going from temple to temple, trying to find
some way to make up for her fault and regain her husband. At last she came to
the temple of Aphrodite, where she was given a number of hard and dangerous
things to do.
First she was shown a great heap of beans, barley, wheat, and other grains, all
mixed together, and told that she must sort out the different kinds before the
sun set At once thousands of ants came to help her, so that before evening the
task was done. The next day she was sent to a distant grove to get a lock of
wool from a flock of fierce, golden-colored sheep that fed there. When she came
to the river by the grove, a reed whispered to her that when the sun went down
the sheep lost their fierceness, and then she would find bits of the wool
caught in the bushes all around; and so she finished this task successfully.
Last of all, she was sent down into the dark under-world to get some of
Persephone’s beauty for Aphrodite. This, too, she was able to do, by following
the wise directions which the winds whispered to her, and with the help that
Eros gave to her unseen.
Having finished all her tasks, Psyche was forgiven her fault, and was then made
immortal by the gods so that she might never die; and ever after that she lived
happily with Eros in the beautiful home of the gods on Mount Olympus.
