In the fables of the Filipinos the animals often speak together in a common language. The dove, however, is the only one that comprehends human speech, and it is a creature of uncommon shrewdness and intelligence, like the hare in the Indian myths and Br’er Rabbit in the stories of our Southern negroes. Once the dove was a child. In shame and anger that its mother should refuse to give it some rice she was pounding for panapig (a sort of cake), it ran out of the cabin, took two leaves of a nipa, shaped wings from them, which it fastened to its shoulders, and fluttered into the boughs of a neighboring tree, changing, in its flight, from a child to a dove. It still calls for panapig.

Darwin is read backward by the natives, for they say that the monkey was a man, long, long ago, and might have been one still but for his maÑana habit, so general in the Spanish colonies. He had a partner whom he greatly vexed by his idleness, and once, when this partner was planting rice, he glanced up and saw the monkey squatted on the earth, with his face between his hands, watching the labors of the industrious member of the firm,—for nothing makes loafing sweeter than to see somebody else work. Enraged, the busy one caught up a cudgel and flung it at the monkey, who was thereupon seized with a sudden but futile activity, and started to run away. The club struck him in the rear so mightily that it entered his spinal column and stayed there, becoming his tail.

In the Moro tradition of the flood—a tradition almost world-wide—Noah and his family got into a box when the forty days of rain began, and one pair of each kind of bird and beast followed them. All of the human race except Noah, his wife and children, were either drowned or changed. Those men who ran to the mountains when they saw the flood rising became monkeys; those who flung themselves into the sea became fish; the Chinese turned into hornbills; a woman who was eating seaweed and kept on eating after the waves broke over her became a dugong.

In Mindanao, Basilan, and Sulu the pig is held in suspicion and its flesh is not eaten. The reason for this aversion is that the first pigs were grandchildren of the great Mahomet himself, and their conversion to these lowly quadrupeds fell out in this way: When Jesus (Isa) called on Mahomet, the latter, jealous of his reputed power, bade him guess what was in the next room. Christ said that he did not wish to do so. Mahomet then commanded him to prove his ability to see through walls, and added that if he made a mistake he would kill him. Thereupon Christ answered, “There are two animals in that chamber that are like no other in the world.”

“Wrong!” cried the Prophet, plucking out his sword. “They are my grandchildren. You have spoken false, and you must lose your head.”

“Look and see,” insisted Christ, and Mahomet flung open the chamber door, whereupon two hogs rushed out. It should be added that while the divinity of Christ is denied in some of the Oriental religions, he figures in many of them as a great and good man, gifted with supernatural power. Moros charge as one reason for killing Christians that followers of Christ disgrace and belie mankind in teaching that men could kill their own god.

On Mindoro the timarau, a small buffalo that lives in the jungle, has given rise to rumors of a fierce and destructive creature that carries a single horn on his head. It is a wild and hard fighter, but it has two horns, and is not likely to injure any save those who are seeking to injure it. A creature with an armed head has lingered down from the day of Marco Polo, because in the stock of yarns assembled by that redoubtable tourist the unicorn figured. This was the rhinoceros, which is found so near the Philippines as Sumatra. The gnu of Africa is another possible ancestor of this creature, a belief in which goes back to the time of Aristotle; but the horse-like animal with a narwhal’s horn that frisks on the British arms never existed.

And, speaking of horses, it is strange that centaurs should figure in the mythology of a country like Luzon; but a mile from the church at Mariveles is a hot spring beside which lived a creature that was half-horse and half-man. As in ancient Greece, there is little doubt that a belief in this being came from the wonder excited by the first horsemen.

Sea-eagles in the East are large and powerful, and are believed to have long memories. According to report, a man living near Jala Jala once stole a nest of their young and carried it to his house. It was a year from that time before any retaliation was attempted. The birds then appeared above his premises, swooped down on his wife, clawed her face and beat her with their wings until she was half-dead; then picked up her babe and carried it away before the eyes of the helpless parents. Next year they came again, and another infant, a few months old, was stolen. The man tracked them to their nest, which had been built high on a cliff that no one had ever scaled before. Nerved by grief and anger, he climbed it. In the nest were the skeletons of his children. As he clung to the rock, hanging over a dizzy space and looking on these sad relics, the father bird came swooping from the sky and began to strike at him with claws and wings. In the face of such an assault the man could not descend in safety. Death was sure. He could only hope to kill his enemy, too. As the bird drew near he leaped from the rock, caught the eagle about the neck, and the two plunged down to death together.

An animal god especially to be feared is Calapnitan, king of the bats. He is so powerful and capable of mischief that in exploring a cave where bats are likely to have congregated the natives will speak in the most respectful terms of this deity, for he would be sure to hear them if they spoke flippantly of him, and might swoop from the cave roof and whip their eyes out with his leathern wings or tear them with his claws. Hence they bow their heads and speak with reverence of the Lord Calapnitan’s cave, the Lord Calapnitan’s stalactite, even recognizing his temporary ownership of their clothing, arms, lights, and so on, and alluding to their own jackets as the Lord Calapnitan’s. By carefully refraining in this manner from giving offence the Filipinos have succeeded in keeping their skins entire while guiding white travellers through the caverns in their islands.