Filipino Folktales – Storytelling for Everyone

How the Moon and Stars Came to Be

One day in the times when the sky was close to the ground a spinster went out to pound rice. Before she began her work, she took off the beads from around her neck and the comb from her hair, and hung them on the sky, which at that time looked like coral rock.

Then she began working, and each time that she raised her pestle into the air it struck the sky. For some time she pounded the rice, and then she raised the pestle so high that it struck the sky very hard.

Immediately the sky began to rise, and it went up so far that she lost her ornaments. Never did they come down, for the comb became the moon and the beads are the stars that are scattered about.

The Sun and the Moon

Once the Sun and the Moon quarreled with each other, and the Sun said:

“You are only the Moon and are not much good. If I did not give you light, you would be no good at all.”

But the Moon answered:

“You are only the Sun, and you are very hot. The women like me better, for when I shine at night, they go outdoors and spin.”

These words of the Moon made the Sun so angry that he threw sand in her face, and you can still see the dark spots on the face of the Moon.

The Man with the Cocoanuts

One day a man who had been to gather his cocoanuts loaded his horse heavily with the fruit. On the way home he met a boy whom he asked how long it would take to reach the house.

“If you go slowly,” said the boy, looking at the load on the horse, “you will arrive very soon; but if you go fast, it will take you all day.”

The man could not believe this strange speech, so he hurried his horse. But the cocoanuts fell off and he had to stop to pick them up. Then he hurried his horse all the more to make up for lost time, but the cocoanuts fell off again. Many times he did this, and it was night when he reached home.

____________

Source: Philippine Folk Tales by Mabel Cook Cole.  A.C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1916.

Art by Dante Hipolito