Filipino Culture and Arts, Folklore, Popular Culture

Once there lived three friends, a monkey, a dog, and a carabao. They were getting tired of city life, so they decided to go to the country to hunt. They took along with them rice, meat, and some kitchen utensils.

Lumad, a Cebuano term for "indigenous" or "native," is the generic term for non-Muslim non-Christian indigenous peoples (IP) of Mindanao. Anthropologists say they were the first settlers of Mindanao and were of Austronesian ancestry after the last Ice Age, arriving in flimsy boats (balanghay). It took thousands of years for them to arrive and settle in Mindanao, and were ethnically and linguistically diverse, like a rainbow.

A long time ago, when the Bicols had not yet been welded into one tribe, there lived a couple in the mountains of Albay who had one son, named Juan.

In the entresuelo of a house on calle Fonda in the walled city of Manila, there lived in the year 1745 a stonemason, or albalil, named Pedro Gil. He had been brought to Manila years before by the Franciscans, to help direct and aid in the building of their churches and conventos, and a meager remuneration kept him constantly in distressed circumstances. Like most Spaniards, he had married young. His spouse was a woman of buxom health, he therefore possessed the poor-man's wealth - a horde of ravenous children.

During the early part of the American regime, when killing and head-hunting among the people of the Mountain Province was still the order of the day, there lived near Banaue, Ifugao, a man called Nabukyag who was greatly feared because of his extraordinary strength.

This collection is the work of famous Filipino artists, Fernando Amorsolo, Pablo Amorsolo, Fabian dela Rosa, and I. L. Miranda. All of the 12 paintings and pastel drawings were made for the covers of Philippine Magazine from June 1928 to May 1929. Attractive as they are, they must not be taken as representing the best work of these painters.

Perhaps very few people other than Ilocanos (1) know that the first Filipino literary man to achieve more than national renown was Pedro Bukaneg, father of Ilocano literature and prince of Ilocano poets, who has been variously referred to by writers as a Moses, a Socrates, a Milton of the Philippines. This poet and philosopher was born towards the end of the sixteenth century. He is not nationally known now, his fame being confined to the Ilocos region, but during his lifetime and for many years after his death, his fame spread beyond the nation's boundaries, reaching even as far as Madrid and Rome. (2)