Episode Details

Part 5 of Folk Tales of the Philippines is a pair of tales about one question asked two ways: how a poor man is made rich. In the first, a rich man's gold fails five times over, and his poor friend succeeds with five centavos and a fish; in the second, gentleness itself is put on trial, and a rope-maker is carried through every loss fortune can deal him by nothing but his neighbours' kindness and his own.

In "The Rich and the Poor," Mayaman the rich man wagers with his friend Mahirap over a poor wood-cutter of Pasig: Mayaman loads him with bag after bag of gold and silver, and the neighbours steal every bag; he gives him a ring that grants whatever he asks, and the lake takes the ring when his banca sinks; and then Mahirap, who has only five centavos in the world, spends them on a fish for the man's supper — and the fish gives the ring back. Told by José L. Gomez, a Tagalog from Rizal province. In "Lucas the Rope-Maker," Luis, who holds that gentleness and kindness are the second heaven, argues with Isco, who holds that wealth is the source of all happiness, and the two test their theories on Lucas, the poorest rope-maker in Cohija: an eagle snatches his first fortune off his head with his hat, his wife unknowingly gives the second away hidden in a jar of rice-bran, and the third gift is a lump of lead picked up in the street — which Lucas lends to a neighbour for her husband's fishing-line, and which comes back to him as the first fish of the catch, with a bright stone in its belly that a rich man buys for twenty thousand pesos. Told by Elisa Cordero, a Tagalog from Pagsanjan, Laguna, who says the story is well known and is old.

A word on the road here, told plainly. In "Lucas the Rope-Maker" there stands one hard moment, and it is kept at the book's own weight: Lucas, in despair at his children's hunger, is turned aside by his children in the same breath, and takes up his care of his family again; the moment stands in a single sentence, exactly as the book gives it, and nothing in it is enlarged. No one is harmed in either tale read here. No completeness is claimed for this stretch of the book.

The book's storytellers, kept with honour: José L. Gomez ("The Rich and the Poor"); Elisa Cordero ("Lucas the Rope-Maker").

Chapters:

00:10 — The Rich and the Poor

06:31 — Lucas the Rope-Maker

Source: Dean S. Fansler (ed.), Filipino Popular Tales, Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, Vol. XII (1921) — the tales written down in English by the Filipino narrators credited above; public-domain 1921 edition (Project Gutenberg eBook #8299). The collectors' notes stand in the book, unread here. Our telling is a fresh in-house rendering of the 1921 text. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.

Thank you for listening — Part 6 of the Philippine tales follows on this shelf.

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