Filipino Popular Tales Part 28

Now, this hermit had in his care all species of animals. He summoned them all into his courtyard, and asked each about the Land of the Pilgrims; but none could give any information. When he had asked them all in vain, the hermit told Juan to go to another hermit living some distance away.

Accordingly Juan left to find this hermit. At first, like the other, this hermit was angry on seeing Juan; but when he saw the piece of cloth, his anger was turned into pity and sorrow. Juan told him what he was looking for, and the hermit sounded a loud trumpet. In a moment there was an instantaneous rus.h.i.+ng of birds of every description. He asked every one about the Land of the Pilgrims, but not one knew of the place. But just as Juan was about to leave, suddenly there came an eagle swooping down into the courtyard. When asked if it knew of the Land of the Pilgrims, it nodded its head. The hermit then ordered it to bear Juan to the Land of the Pilgrims. It willingly obeyed, and flew across seas and over mountains with Juan on its back. After Juan had been carried to the wished-for land, the eagle returned to its master.

Here Juan lived with a poor couple, who cared for him as if he were their own child, and he served them in turn. He asked them about the land they were living in. They told him that it was governed by a tyrannical king who had a beautiful daughter. They said that many princes who courted her had been put to death because they had failed to fulfil the tasks required of them. When Juan heard of this beautiful princess, he said to himself, "This is the lot that awaits me. She is to be my wife." So, in spite of the dangers he ran the risk of, he resolved to woo her.

One day, when her tutors were away, he made a kite, to which he fastened a letter addressed to the princess, and flew it. While she was strolling about in her garden, the kite suddenly swooped down before her. She was surprised, and wondered. "What impudent knave," she said, "ventures to let fall his kite in my garden?" She stepped towards the kite, looked at it, and saw the letter written in bold hand. She read it. After a few moments' hesitation, she replaced it with a letter of her own in which she told him to come under the window of her tower.

When he came there, the princess spoke to him in this manner: "Juan, if you really love me, you must undergo hards.h.i.+ps. Show yourself to my father to-morrow, and agree to do all that he commands you to do. Then come back to me." Juan willingly promised to undertake any difficulties for her sake.

The next morning Juan waited at the stairway of the king's palace. The king said to him, "Who are you, and what do you come here for?"

"O king! I am Juan, and I have come here to marry your daughter."

"Very well, Juan, you can have your wish if you perform the task I set you. Take these grains of wheat and plant them in that hill, and to-morrow morning bring me, out of these same grains, newly baked bread for my breakfast. Then you shall be married immediately to my daughter. But if you fail to accomplish this task, you shall be beheaded."

Juan bowed his head low, and left. Sorrowful he appeared before the princess.

"What's the matter, Juan?" she said.

"O my dear princess! your father has imposed on me a task impossible to perform. He gave me these grains of wheat to be planted in that hill, and to-morrow he expects a newly baked loaf of bread from them."

"Don't worry, Juan. Go home now, and to-morrow show yourself to my father. The bread will be ready when he awakes."

The next morning Juan repaired to the palace, and was glad to find the bread already on the table. When the king woke up, he was astonished to see that Juan had performed the task.

"Now, Juan," said the king, "one more task for you. Under my window I have two big jars,--one full of mongo, [61] the other of very fine sand. I will mix them, and you have to a.s.sort them so that each kind is in its proper jar again." Juan promised to fulfil this task. He pa.s.sed by the window of the princess, and told her what the king had said. "Go home and come back here to-morrow," she said to him. "The king will find the mongo and sand in their proper jars."

The next morning Juan went back to the palace. The king, just arisen from bed, looked out of the window, and was astounded to see the mongo and sand perfectly a.s.sorted. "Well, Juan," said the king, "you have successfully performed the tasks I required of you. But I have one thing more to ask of you. Yesterday afternoon, while my wife and I were walking along the seash.o.r.e, my gold ring fell into the water. I want you to find it, and bring it to me to-morrow morning."

"Your desire shall be fulfilled, O king!" replied Juan.

He told the princess of the king's wish. "Come here tomorrow just before dawn," she said, "and bring a big basin and a bolo. We will go together to find the ring."

Just before dawn the next day he went to her tower, where she was waiting for him in the disguise of a village maid. They went to the seash.o.r.e where the ring was supposed to have been lost. There the princess Maria--that was her name--said to him, "Now take your basin and bolo and cut me to pieces. Pour out the chopped ma.s.s into the water in which my father's ring was dropped, but take care not to let a single piece of the flesh fall to the ground!"

On hearing these words, Juan stood dumfounded, and began to weep. Then in an imploring tone he said, "O my beloved! I would rather have you chop my body than chop yours."

"If you love me," she said, "do as I tell you."

Then Juan reluctantly seized the bolo, and with closed eyes cut her body to pieces and poured the ma.s.s into the water where the ring was supposed to be. In five minutes there rose from the water the princess with the ring on her finger. But Juan fell asleep; and before he awoke, the ring fell into the water again.

"Oh, how little you love me!" she exclaimed. "The ring fell because you did not catch it quickly from my finger. Cut up my body as before, and pour the ma.s.s of flesh into the water again." Accordingly Juan cut her to pieces a second time, and again poured the ma.s.s into the water. Then in a short time Maria rose from the water with the ring on her finger; but Juan fell asleep again, and again the ring fell back into the water.

Now Maria was angry: so she cut a gash on his finger, and told him to cut her body to pieces and pour the ma.s.s out as before. At last the ring was found again. This time Juan was awake, and he quickly caught the ring as she rose from the water.

That morning Juan went before the king and presented the ring to him. When the monarch saw it, he was greatly astonished, and said to himself, "How does he accomplish all the tasks I have given him? Surely he must be a man of supernatural powers." Raising his head, he said to Juan, "Juan, you are indeed the man who deserves the hand of my daughter; but I want you to do me one more service. This will be the last. Fetch me my horse, for I want to go out hunting to-day." Now, this horse could run just as fast as the wind. It was a very wild horse, too, and no one could catch it except the king himself and the princess.

Juan promised, however, and repaired to Maria's tower. When she learned her father's wish, she went with Juan and helped him catch the horse. After they had caught it, she caught hers too. Then they returned to the palace. Juan and Maria now agreed to run away. So after Juan had tied the king's horse near the stairway, they mounted Maria's horse and rode off rapidly.

When the king could not find his daughter, he got on his horse and started in pursuit of Juan and Maria, who were now some miles ahead. But the king's horse ran so fast, that in a few minutes he had almost overtaken the fugitives. Maria, seeing her father behind them, dropped her comb, and in the wink of an eye a thick grove of bamboos blocked the king's way. By his order, a road was made through the bamboo in a very short time. Then he continued his chase; but just as he was about to overtake them a second time, Maria flung down her ring, and there rose up seven high hills behind them. The king was thus delayed again; but his horse shot over these hills as fast as the wind, so that in a few minutes he was once more in sight of the fugitives. This time Maria turned around and spat. Immediately a wide sea appeared behind them. The king gave up his pursuit, and only uttered these words: "O ungrateful daughter!" Then he turned back to his palace.

The young lovers continued their journey until they came to a small village. Here they decided to be married, so they at once went to the village priest. He married them that very day. Juan and Maria now determined to live in that place the rest of their lives, so they bought a house and a piece of land. As time went by, Juan thought of his parents.

One day he asked permission from his wife to visit his father and mother. "You may go," she said; "but remember not to let a single drop of your father's or mother's tears fall on your cheeks, for you will forget me if you do." Promising to remember her words, Juan set out.

When his parents saw him, they were so glad that they embraced him and almost bathed him with tears of joy. Juan forgot Maria. It happened that on the day Juan reached home, Felipe, his brother, was married to Maria, the subterranean lady, and a feast was being held in the family circle. The moment Maria recognized Juan, whom she loved most, she annulled her marriage with Felipe, and wanted to marry Juan. Accordingly the village was called to settle the question, and Maria and Juan were married that same day. The merrymaking and dancing continued.

In the mean time there came, to the surprise of every one, a beautiful princess riding in a golden carriage drawn by fine horses. She was invited to the dance. While the people were enjoying themselves dancing and singing, they were suddenly drawn together around this princess to see what she was doing. She was sitting in the middle of the hall. Before her she had a dog chained. Then she began to ask the dog these questions:--

"Did you not serve a certain king for his daughter?"

"No!" answered the dog.

"Did he not give you grains of wheat to be planted in a hill, and the morning following you were to give him newly baked bread made from the wheat?"

"No!"

"Did he not mix together two jars of mongo and sand, then order you to a.s.sort them so that the mongo was in one jar and the sand in the other?"

"No!"

"Do you not remember when you and a princess went together to the seash.o.r.e to find the ring of her father, and when you cut her body to pieces and poured the chopped ma.s.s into the water?"

When Juan, who was watching, heard this last question, he rushed from the ring of people that surrounded her and knelt before her, saying, "O my most precious wife! I implore your forgiveness!" Then the new-comer, who was none other than Maria, Juan's true wife, embraced him, and their former love was restored. So the feast went on. To the great joy of Felipe, Maria, the subterranean lady, was given back to him; and the two couples lived happily the rest of their lives.

Notes.

This story, which is a mixture of well-known motifs and incidents, really falls into two parts, though an attempt is made at the end to bind them together. The first part, ending with the treachery of the brothers after the hero has made his underground journey and rescued the two beautiful maidens from their giant captors, has resemblances to parts of the "Bear's Son" cycle. The second half of the story is a well-developed member of the "Forgotten Betrothed" cycle, preserving, in fact, all the characteristic incidents, and also prefacing to this whole section details that form a transition between it and part 1. I am unable to point out any European parallels to the story as a whole, but a.n.a.logues of both parts are very numerous. As the latter half const.i.tutes the major portion of our story, we shall consider it first.

The fundamental and characteristic incidents of the "Forgotten Betrothed" cycle (sometimes called the "True Bride" cycle) are as follows:--

A The performance by the hero of difficult tasks through the help of the loved one, who is usually the daughter of a magician.

B The magic flight of the couple, either with transformations of themselves or with the casting behind them of obstacles to r.e.t.a.r.d the pursuer.

C The forgetting of the bride by the hero because he breaks a taboo (the cause of the forgetting is usually a parental kiss, which the hero should have avoided).

D The re-awakened memory of the hero during his marriage ceremony or wedding feast with a new bride, either through the conversation of the true bride with an animal or through the true bride's kiss. In some forms of the story, the hero's memory is restored on the third of three nights sold to the heroine by the venial second bride. [62]

E The marriage of the hero and heroine.

Andrew Lang (Custom and Myth, 2d ed., 87-102) traces incidents A and B as far back as the myth of Jason, the earliest literary reference to which is in the Iliad (vii, 467; XXIII, 747). But this story does not contain the last three incidents: clearly they have come from some other source, and have been joined to the first two,--a natural process in the development of a folk-tale. The episode of the magic flight is very widely distributed: Lang mentions Zulu, Gaelic, Norse, Malagasy, Russian, Italian, and j.a.panese versions. Of the magic flight combined with the performance of difficult tasks set by the girl's father, the stories are no less widely scattered: Greece, Madagascar, Scotland, Russia, Italy, North America (Algonquins), Finland, Samoa (p. 94). The only reasonable explanation of these resemblances, according to Lang, is the theory of transmission; and if Mr. Lang, the champion of the "anthropological theory," must needs explain in this rather business-like way a comparatively simple tale, what but the transmission theory can explain far more complicated stories of five or six distinct incidents in the same sequence?

The "Forgotten Betrothed" cycle was clearly invented but once; when or where, we shall not attempt to say. But that its excellent combination of rapid, marvellous, and pathetic situations has made it a tale of almost universal appeal, is attested to by the scores of variants that have been collected within the last half-century and more. In his notes to Campbell's Gaelic story, "The Battle of the Birds," No. 2, Kohler cites Norwegian, Swedish, Italian, German, and Hungarian versions (Orient und Occident, 2 : 107). Ralston (pp. 132-133), Cosquin (2 : No. 32 and notes), Crane (No. XV and notes, pp. 343-344), Bolte (in his additions to Kohler, 1 : 170-174), and Bolte-Polivka (to Nos. 51, 56, 113) have added very full bibliographies. It is unnecessary here to list all the variants of this story that have been collected, but we will examine some of the a.n.a.logues to our tale from the point of view of the separate incidents.

After the hero of our present story has been deserted by his treacherous brothers, and has found himself once more in the under-world, he is told by a mysterious voice to go to the Land of the Pilgrims, where he will find his fate. He meets an old man, who directs him to a hermit. The hermit, in turn, directs the youth to another hermit, who learns from an eagle where the Land of the Pilgrims is, and directs the bird to carry the youth thither. While the story does not state that the Land of the Pilgrims is on the "upper-world," we must suppose that it is, and that the eagle is the means whereby the hero escapes from the underground kingdom. In a large number of members of the "Bear's Son" cycle, to which, as has been said, the first part of our story belongs, this is the usual means of escape. The incident is also found in a large number of tales not connected otherwise with this group (see Cosquin, 2 : 141-144). It is sometimes combined with the quest for the water of life, with which in turn is connected the situation of the hero's being referred from one guide to another (giants, sages, hermits, etc.), as in our story (cf. Grimm, No. 97, and notes; also Bolte-Polivka to No. 97, especially 2 : 400; Thorpe, 158; Tawney, 1 : 206; Persian Tales, 2 : 171). This whole section appears to have been introduced as a transition between parts 1 and 2.

The second part of our story opens with the "bride-wager" incident (see Von Hahn, 1 : 54, "Oenomaosformel"), though I can point to no parallel of Juan's method of making love to the princess; that is, by means of a letter conveyed by a kite.