I love Philippine music and literature. Means to say, I also love Philippine fairy tales and folktales.
An example of the folk tale is the Pilanduk story which tells the story of animals. In such stories, human qualities are ascribed to animals, designed to show the cleverness of one animal and the stupidity of another. The interest of animal stories lies in the humour of the deceptions of the absurd predicaments into which the animal's stupidity lead him.
"Pilanduk and Singah" is a cycle of Tausug animal tales which revolve around the Pilanduk, a kind of mouse-deer and the lion, which are best friends. Whenever they go they are always together. The mouse deer helps the lion in hunting for food. One day, there occurs a plaque in the forest and almost all the animals are killed by the disease. The lion tells the mouse-deer that he will soon eat him, so the mouse-deer pretends to be dead near a river infested with crocodiles. When the lion sees the mouse-deer dead, he goes to the forest to die. The mouse-deer, meanwhile tells the crocodiles to line up and be counted because he wants to take a census of them. then he crosses the river safely on the back of the crocodiles. The mouse-deer is eventually saved.
This story is a version to the mouse-deer cycle of Malay-Indonesian popular tales ("Planduk"), which enter around the incident of the mouse-deer taking the crocodiles' census to cross a river of stream safely.
More Philippine Fairy Tales in English and German shall follow here. So, stay tune always!
Mehr Philippinische Märchen in Englisch und deutscher Übersetzung werden hier an dieser Stelle bald fortgesetzt!
