Last Tuesday, I have started looking for online materials that could help expand my search on Mindanao Children's literature, and I have come across several books with the help of my trustworthy friend, Mr. Google.
Mr. G had helped me look for several bookson the subject of Philippine folk tales:
Philippine Folk Literature: An Anthology by Damiana L. Eugenio
Philippine Folk Tales (luckily I was able to get a copy of this book from www.forgottenbook.org)
Filipino Popular Tales (Large Print Edition) - Dean S. Fansler
These Google books were accessible enough, although some pages cannot be readily accessed. The problem I have noticed with these copies is that when I clicked on the Find a Library button, they could only link me back to foreign libraries. This made me think that the materials are only available outside the Philippines. If that is indeed the case, that would really be something. How ironic to see so much Philippine-based books that are only available internationally!
One interesting thing I keep on seeing on the stories contained in these books are the tales about the heavenly bodies - the moon, sun and the stars in particular. I have seen so many regional versions of the story focusing on these three main characters.
I remember as a kid the story of how why the moon and the sun never meets. It goes something like this:
Once there lived the happy heavenly family. The father, the sun, is a strong and good provider. His wife, the moon, was a loving and caring mother, and their numerous little kids, the stars were a noisy and energetic lot. The sun would go out in the morning to look for food, while the moon would be in charge of the house and of taking care of their star offsprings the whole day. One such day, the sun came back tired from work. Thinking that his loving wife would be there with his warm dinner, he opened the door and happily greeted his wife. To his amazement however, he saw that the house was in disarray and the children were crying from hunger and turning the whole house apart. When the sun asked them where their mother was, they said that she (hmm... I had really forgotten this part so I will therefore innovate..) has gone out with her friends. This made the sun mad, so he resolved to wait for his very responsible wife and to give her a piece of his mind.
The confrontation did not go so well (as it often does) and the sun ended up hitting his wife. Disgusted and extremely furious, the moon packed her bags, woke up the all their children and fleed from her husband, taking all her little babies with her.
You could just imagine the astonishment of the sun when the next day came and he found himself alone. Immediately, he felt sorry for what he had done and in vain he tried to look for the moon. Unfortunately, she could never forget how his loving husband had treated her that night, and so she would always go from place to place, never resting, ad never letting her husband catch them. That is how the day and the night came to be in existence.
When you think of it, this legend does not explain why the eclipse takes place. Is it a sign that the moon is about to forgive her husband? Is the sun speeding up his chase? Why wouldn't the stars rebel against their mother? Don't they ever wish to see their father again?
Perhaps I need to find out more how each version goes so that I could for a relationship amongst each region's version, and if my questions would be answered...
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