Oral Lore from Pre-Colonial Times

(— 1564)
From Notes on Philippine Literature: A History and Anthology by Bienvenido Lumbera

 from the down of our civilization to the establishment of settlements

 1st period of Philippine literature – longest
 1521 – Magellan, ‘Las Islas Filipinas’
 “Philippinization” of Spanish Catholicism
 William Henry Scott – “discrepancy between what is actually known about the prehispanic PH and
what has been written about it”
 Filipinos lived in villages along sea coasts, river banks, major sources of food and most convenient
transportation routes; nomads
 wearing bark and woven cloth, etc.
 chewing betel nut for 3,000 years
 natives, ethnic minorities, tribal Filipinos
 epics, tales, songs, riddles, proverbs
 subject matter – people’s common experience
 food-gathering
 creatures and objects of nature
 work in the home, field, forest, sea
 did not emphasize authorship; belongs to the community
 language of daily life
 Conventions of various oral literary forms/aids to the performers:
 formulaic repetitions
 stereotyping of characters
 regular rythmic
 musical devices
 native syllabary – 3 vowels (a, i-e, u-o), 14 consonants
 syllabary fell into disuse among Christianized Filipinos = valuable information lost
 perishable materials – destroyed by missionaries against pagan culture
 animistic – worship of objects
 uniqueness of indigenous culture survived colonization
 resistance to colonial rule
 virtue of isolation from centers of colonial power
 riddles and proverbs – simplest forms of oral literature
 Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala  – Pedro de Sanlucar and Juan de Noceda – provides samples of
early oral lore; collection
 monoriming heptasyllabic lines – single rimes, seven syllables per line
 ambahan – contemporary Hanunoo – Mangyans, chanted
 tanaga – stanza form with four lines; hispanized descendant of ambahan
 lyric poetry – fabled genealogies and vainglorious deeds of their gods
 religious lives of people are based on tradition
 prose narratives
 origin myths, hero tales, fables and legends
 to explain natural phenomena, past events and contemporary beliefs in order to make the
environment less fearsome by making it more comprehensible and to make idle hours less
tedious; to entertain and to explain
 drama as literary form has NOT yet begun
 mimetic dances imitating natural cycles and work activities
  folk epics –  literary and classical – most significant pieces of literature
 E. Arsenio Manuel
 surveyed ethnoepics, described 13 epics (pagan), 2 (christian), 4 (muslim)
 common features
 narratives of sustained length
 based on oral tradition
 revolving around supernatural events/heroic deeds
 with a certain seriousness of purpose, embodying or validating the beliefs, customs, ideals or
life values of the people
 in the form of verse
 chanted or sung
 Lam-ang (Biag ni Lam-ang)
 Christian Ilokos
 Ines Kannoyan
 eaten by monster fish – rarang
 brought back to life by his rooster and dog
 Tuwaang
 Pagan Epic
 Manuvus of Central Mindanao
 “The Maiden of Buhong Sky”
 Hinilawod
 Pagan Epic
 Sulod of Panay
 Longest epic
 part 1 – Labaw Denggan
 part 2 – Humadapnon
 Bantugan 
 Maranaw Epic
Conclusion: Filipinos had a culture that linked them with the Malays of South East Asia, a culture with traces
of Indian, Arabic and possibly, Chinese influences. Their epics, songs, short poems, tales, dances and rituals
gave them a native Asian perspective which served as a filtering device for the western culture that the
colonizers brought over from Europe.