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Philippine epic poetry


Centuries before the Spaniards came, the Filipinos already had their own cultural traditions, folklore, mythologies and epics. They are the folk epics, transferred from one generation to the next through oral tradition, with the use of singers or chanters. These singers or chanters were often high priests or priestesses in their tribes. These epics were a great source of entertainment and inspiration especially to the youth. In Mindanao, they would call the epic singer, "Onor." Some of the epics, because of their length, would take the singer or chanter seven nights of singing or chanting to finish. The singer or chanter, may either be a male or a female, would sing for minimum of two hours to six hours every night. These events were often festal and recreational occasions like wedding ceremonies, wakes, prestige rites, peace pact agreements, when an ancestor's bones are dug out to be blessed, harvest seasons, when a wild boar is caught, or to welcome a guest, coupled with feasts for the community, supported by either the head of the tribe or a rich and prominent family within the community. The epics were later on transcribed and preserved by rich families as family heirloom.

When Islamic missionaries came to Mindanao and converted the Moros to become Muslims, some changes were adapted for the Mindanaoan epics to conform to this change of faith, thus, there are more epics from mostly Visayas and Mindanao that did survive. In the epic of Maranao, Darangen, for instance, they have made Muslim prophet Muhammad as the forefather of the hero, Bantugen. Today, there are twenty-one epics that survived from Visayas and Mindanao.

Some of the epics however, especially in Luzon, perceived to center on pagan beliefs and rituals, were burned and destroyed by Spanish friars during the Spanish colonization of the Philippines islands in the 16th century. There are only two folk epics that survived from Luzon.

Truly, there were substantial writings by early natives that Jesuit historian Fr. Pedro Chirino noted: "All of the islanders are much given to reading and writing. And there is hardly a man, much less a woman who did not read and write." (Relacion de las isles Filipinas-1604).

Stories of epics in verse displayed tremendous vitality, color and imagination. Tales of love and adventures about native heroes, endowed with powers from the gods, battle monsters, and triumphs over formidable armies, rode the wind, vanguard shields and protect the earliest communities of the islands.

Established epic poems of notable quality and length blossomed. And early historians like Padre Colin, Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga and Antonio Pigafetta have all attested to the existence of these epics. There were even reports of a dramatic play given by natives at the arrival of Don Miguel López de Legazpi in 1565.


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