Filipino Popular Tales Part 45

I know of no Oriental a.n.a.logues to the story as a whole, though the trick of getting a number of corpses buried for one appears in several stories from Cochin-China, Siam, and the Malay Archipelago:--

(1) Landes, No. 180, which I summarize here from Cosquin (2 : 337):

In the course of some adventures more or less grotesque, four monks are killed at one time near an inn. The old woman who keeps this hostelry, fearful of being implicated in a murder, wishes to get rid of the corpses. She hides three of the bodies, and has one buried by a monk who is pa.s.sing by. She pretends that the dead man is her nephew. The monk, returning to the inn after his task, is stupefied to see the corpse back there again. The old woman tells him not to be astonished, for her nephew loved her so much that he could not bear to leave her; he would have to be buried deeper. The monk carries this corpse away, and on his return has the same experience with the third and fourth corpses. After the last time, he meets, while crossing a bridge, another, live monk resembling those he has interred. "Halloo!" he says, "I have been burying you all day, and now you come back to be buried again!" With that he pushes the fifth monk into the river.

(2) Skeat, I : 36-37, "Father Follow-My-Nose and the Four Priests:"

Father Follow-My-Nose would walk straight, would climb over a house rather than turn aside. One day he had climbed up one side of a Jerai-tree and was preparing to descend, when four yellow-robed priests, lest he should fall, held a cloak for him. But he jumped without warning, and the four cracked their heads together and died. Old Father Follow-My-Nose travelled on till he came to the hut of a crone. The crone went back and got the bodies of the four priests. An opium-eater pa.s.sed by; and the crone said, "Mr. Opium-Eater, if you'll bury me this yellow-robe here, I'll give you a dollar." The opium-eater agreed, and took the body away to bury it; but when he came back for his money, there was a second body waiting for him. "The fellow must have come to life again," he said; but he took the body and buried it too. After he had buried the fourth in like manner, it was broad daylight, and he was afraid to go collect his money.

(3) A story communicated to me by a Chinese student, Mr. Jut L. Fan of Canton, who says that he saw the tale acted at a popular theatre in Canton in 1913. The story I give is but the synopsis of the play:

In Canton, the capital of Kwong Tung, a mile's walk from the marketplace, stood a prehistoric abbey, away from the busy streets, and deep in the silent woods. In this old monastery an aged abbot ruled over five hundred young monks; but they were far from being like their venerable master. Men and women, rich and poor, for fear of the dread consequences if they should incur the displeasure of the G.o.ds, went in great numbers to wors.h.i.+p in the ancient buildings, kneeling in long rows before the sacred figures and incense.

These gatherings made it possible for the young monks and the young girls to become intimately acquainted,--so intimate, that sometimes shame and disgrace followed. One young girl who had been seduced, on an appropriate occasion and after great consideration, persuaded seven of the disciples who had been engaged in her ruin to enter her house. Then she invited them into her private chamber. As if by chance, there came a sharp rap on the locked door; so she hid her unusual visitors in a big wardrobe. What this young lady next did might seem unnatural; but, with the help of her servants, she poured boiling oil into the wardrobe, and killed the miscreants.

She next hired a porter to convey one body to the river near by and bury it. This porter was not informed as to the number of corpses he would have to bury; but every time he came back for his pay, there was another body for him. So one after another he dropped the bodies of the young monks into the swift-flowing stream, wondering all the while by what magic the lifeless body managed to return to the original spot.

Just after he had disposed of the seventh, up came the old abbot himself, with dignified mien. "Ah! I see now how you return," said the drudger, and he laid hold of the priest and ended his natural days. The old abbot thus suffered the fate of his seven unworthy disciples.

TALE 34

RESPECT OLD AGE.

Narrated by Jose Ignacio, a Tagalog from Malabon, Rizal.

Once there lived a poor man who had to support his family, the members of which were a hot-headed wife who predominated over the will of her husband; a small boy of ten; and an old man of eighty, the boy's grandfather. This old man could no longer work, because of his feebleness. He was the cause of many quarrels between the husband and wife, but was loved by their son.

One rainy morning the husband was forced by his wife to send his father away. He called his son, and ordered him to carry a basket full of food and also a blanket. He told the boy that they were to leave the old man in a hut on their farm some distance away. The boy wept, and protested against this harsh treatment of his grandfather, but in vain. He then cut the blanket into two parts. When he was asked to explain his action, he said to his father, "When you grow old, I will leave you in a hut, and give you this half of the blanket." The man was astonished, hurriedly recalled his order concerning his father, and thereafter took good care of him.

The Golden Rule.

Narrated by Cipriano Serafica, a Pangasinan from Mangaldan, Pangasinan.

A long time ago there lived in a town a couple who had a son. The father of the husband lived with his son and daughter-in-law happily for many years. But when he grew very old, he became very feeble. Every time he ate at the table, he always broke a plate, because his hands trembled so. The old man's awkwardness soon made his son angry, and one day he made a wooden plate for his father to eat out of. The poor old man had to eat all his food from this wooden plate.

When the grandson noticed what his father had done, he took some tools and went down under the house. There he took a piece of board and began to carve it. When his father saw him and said to him, "What are you doing, son?" the boy replied to him, "Father, I am making wooden plates for you and my mother when you are old."

As the son uttered these words, tears gushed from the father's eyes. From that time on, the old man was always allowed to eat at the table with the rest of the family, nor was he made to eat from a wooden plate.

MORAL: Do unto others as you want them to do unto you.

Notes.

A Pampango variant of these stories, ent.i.tled "The Old Man, his Son, and his Grandson," and narrated by Eutiquiano Garcia of Mexico, Pampanga, has been printed by H. E. Fansler (p. 100). Mr. Garcia says that he heard the story told by his father at a gathering of a number of old story-tellers at his home during the Christmas vacation in 1908. The tale has every appearance of having long been naturalized in the Islands, if not of being native. It is brief, and may be reprinted here:--

In olden times, when men lived to be two or three hundred years old, there dwelt a very poor family near a big forest. The household had but three members,--a grandfather, a father, and a son. The grandfather was an old man of one hundred and twenty-five years. He was so old, that the help of his housemates was needed to feed him. Many a time, and especially after meals, he related to his son and his grandson his brave deeds while serving in the king's army, the responsible positions he filled after leaving a soldier's life; and he told entertaining stories of hundreds of years gone by. The father was not satisfied with the arrangement, however, and planned to get rid of the old man.

One day he said to his son, "At present I am receiving a peso daily, but half of it is spent to feed your worthless grandfather. We do not get any real benefit from him. To-morrow let us bind him and take him to the woods, and leave him there to die."

"Yes, father," said the boy.

When the morning came, they bound the old man and took him to the forest. On their way back home the boy said to his father, "Wait! I will go back and get the rope."--"What for?" asked his father, raising his voice. "To have it ready when your turn comes," replied the boy, believing that to cast every old man into the forest was the usual custom. "Ah! if that is likely to be the case with me, back we go and get your grandfather again."

This exemplum is known in many countries and in many forms. For the bibliography, see Clouston, "Popular Tales and Fictions,"

2 : 372-378; T. F. Crane, "Exempla of Jacques de Vitry" (FLS, 1890 : No. 288 and p. 260); Bolte-Polivka (on Grimm, No. 78), 2 : 135-140. The most complete of these studies is the last, in which are cited German, Latin, Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Greek, Croatian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Polish, Russian, Lettish, Turkish, and Indian versions. Full as Bolte-Polivka's list is, however, an old important Buddhistic variant has been overlooked by them,--the "Takkala-jataka,"

No. 446. This Indian form of the story, it seems to me, has some close resemblances to our Pampango variant; and I give it here briefly, summarizing from Mr. Rouse's excellent English translation:--

In a certain village of Kasi there lived a man who supported his old father. The father regretted seeing his son toil so hard for him, and against the son's will sent for a woman to be his daughter-in-law. Soon the son began to be pleased with his new wife, who took good care of his father. As time went on, however, she became tired of the old man, and planned to set his son against him. She accused her father-in-law of being not only very untidy, but also fierce and violent, and forever picking quarrels with her, and at last, by constant dinning her complaints in his ear, persuaded her husband to agree to take the old man into a cemetery, kill him, and bury him in a pit. Her small son, a wise lad of seven, overheard the plot, and decided to prevent his father from committing murder. The next day he insisted on accompanying his father and grandfather. When they reached the cemetery, and the father began to dig the pit, the small boy asked what it was for. The father replied,--

"Thy grandsire, son, is very weak and old, Opprest by pain and ailments manifold; Him will I bury in a pit to-day; In such a life I could not wish him stay."

The boy caught the spade from his father's hands, and at no great distance began to dig another pit. His father asked why he dug that pit; and he answered,--

"I too, when thou art aged, father mine, Will treat my father as thou treatest thine; Following the custom of the family, Deep in a pit I too will bury thee."

By repeating a few more stanzas the son convinced his father that he was about to commit a great crime. The father, penitent, seated himself in the cart with his son and the old man, and they returned home. There the husband gave the wicked wife a sound drubbing, bundled her heels over head out of the house, and bade her never darken his doors again. [The rest of the story, which has no connection with ours, tells how the little son by a trick made his mother repent and become a good woman, and brought about a reconciliation between her and his father.]

The chief difference between our Pampango variant and the "Jataka,"

it will be seen, is in the prominent role played by the wife in the latter. She is lacking altogether in the Filipino story. The resemblances are strong, on the other hand. The father plans to kill the grandfather,--a turn seldom found in the Occidental versions,--and, accompanied by his son, he goes out to the forest (in the Indian, cemetery) to despatch the old man. The small boy's thinking (or pretending to think) it a family custom to put old men out of the way is found in both stories. Our Pampango variant appears to me to represent a form even older than the "Jataka," but at the same time a form that is historically connected with that Indian tale.

Of our two main stories,--"Respect Old Age" and "The Golden Rule,"--the second is very likely derived from Europe. Compare it, for instance, with Grimm, No. 78. The "machinery" of the wooden plates establishes the relations.h.i.+p, I believe. This form of the story, however, is not unlike an Oriental Marchen cited by Clouston (op. cit., 2 : 377). It is from a Canarese collection of tales called the "Katha Manjari,"

and runs thus:--

A rich man used to feed his father with congi from an old broken dish. His son saw this, and hid the dish. Afterwards the rich man, having asked his father where it was, beat him [because he could not tell]. The boy exclaimed, "Don't beat grandfather! I hid the dish, because, when I become a man, I may be unable to buy another one for you." When the rich man heard this, he was ashamed, and afterwards treated his father kindly.

The Pangasinanes may have got this story of "The Golden Rule" through the Church, from some priest's sermon.

Our first example, "Respect Old Age," is the only one of the three which turns on the "housse partie" idea. This is the form found in the thirteenth-century French fabliau "La Housse Partie;" and a variant of it is given by Ortensio Lando, an Italian novelist of the sixteenth century (Dunlop, 2 : 206). The only Spanish example I know of is found in the fourteenth-century "El Libro de los Enxemplos"

(printed in Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles, vol. 51 [Madrid, 1884]), No. CCLXXII. It runs in the original as follows:--

Patri qualis fueris, tibi filius talis erit.

Cual fueres a tu padre que trabajo por ti, El fijo que engendrares tal sera a ti.

Cuentan que un viejo dio a un fijo que lo sirvio mucho bien todos sus bienes; mas despues que gelos hobo dado, echolo de la camara onde dormia e tomola para el e para su mujer, e fizo facer a su padre el lecho tras la puerta. e de que vino el invierno el viejo habia frio, ca el fijo le habia tornado la buena ropa con que se cobria, e rogo a un su nieto, fijo de su fijo, que rogase a su padre que le diese alguna ropa para se cobrir; e el mozo apenas pudo alcanzar de su padre dos varas de sayal para su abuelo, e quedabanle al fijo otros dos. e el mozo llorando rogo al padre que le diese las otros dos, e tanto lloro, que gelas hobo de dar, e demandole que para que las queria, e respondiole: "Quierolas guardar fasta que tu seas tal commo es agora tu padre, e estonce non te dare mas, asi commo tu non quieres dar a tu padre."

Finally may be given another Indian story, No. 16 in the "Antarakathasamgraha" of Rajasekhara (Bolte-Polivka, 2 : 139), which connects the "divided-blanket" motif with the old "Jataka."