Fighting the Panopticon:

Filipino Trickster Tales as Active Agency

against Oppressive Structures1

By Mila D. Aguilar

Abstract

The kernel of my master’s thesis, this paper demonstrates that the Filipino trickster is like no other in the world, first
because he is a person, not a god or animal, as most other tricksters in the world are; and second because he aims at the
King’s throne and gets it without fail, unlike most other tricksters, who aim merely at food to stave off their hunger, or
the little properties of others, to stave off their poverty. Such differences spell the Filipino’s basic distinction from all
other nationalities; the main lines of this distinction are spelled out in this paper, though not the full implications of it,
the full implications needing a longer dissertation to detail.

To understand the nature of a Filipino trickster tale, one must hear the story of a poor boy
by the name of Juan Pusong.

Juan Pusong is the name of a Visayan culture hero. The story goes that he is “very
mischievous,” an understatement that may have resulted from a direct translation of the
word “maldito” in Cebuano usage (see Appendix A). He is fond of playing pranks on the
King, one of which is to cut off the tails of the King’s cows and stick them in the mud, to
make the King think that they are all dead. After that prank, the king gets so piqued that
he orders Pusong to be placed in a cage on the beach, for dropping into the sea early the
next day. On the beach, a man passes by the cage and catches Pusong crying. The king
is forcing him to marry his daughter the next morning, Pusong explains. The man,
naturally, volunteers to take his place. Pusong passes by the palace the next day. The
King is aghast, but is told by the former that when his cage was lowered to the bottom of
the ocean, he saw the King’s parents and relatives in their beautiful houses. They would
love to see the King, he conveys. So the King places himself in a cage, and orders his
men to drop him in the ocean.

And that is how Juan Pusong becomes king.

Three things immediately strike us on hearing the story above. First, Juan Pusong is
poor, but also a prankster. Second, he plays deadly tricks on none less than the King.
And third, he ends up King.

1
A summary of this paper was originally delivered at Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature Lecture Series,
Bulwagang Rizal, 30 November, 2000.

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William Bascom, echoing Malinowski’s thesis that myth “served as a charter for belief”
(Dundes Study 279), explained in 1954 that folklore, aside from serving as a form of
amusement, “also reveals man’s attempts to escape in fantasy from conditions of his
geographical environment and from his own biological limitations as a member of the
genus and species Homo sapiens.” The rule applies, he adds, “when applied to the Zuni
hero who kills four bucks in a single day, to the Seven-League Boots, to the Magic
Flight, to life after death, or to the psychological identification with a hero who conquers
his enemies by magic, or with a trickster who overcomes his more powerful associates by
shrewdness and cunning” (291).

Structural-functionalist that he is, however, Bascom seems to lose this function of

folklore along the way, in his enumeration of the last three functions of folklore reverting
to the validating, educating and controlling roles of folklore, leaving us to wonder
whether his first function was meant to be amusement (more pointedly, using his own
word, “escape”) rather than subversion (290-4).

Dundes goes much further than Bascom to say, in his introduction to an article on
folksongs as regulators of politics, that “one of the most important functions of folklore is
its service as a vehicle for social protest,” the basic premise being, he adds, “that folklore
is a reflection and weapon of class conflict.” In fairy tales, Dundes goes on to recount,
“the rich aristocratic kings are invariably defeated by poor deserving peasants who
succeed in taking the king’s land and riches for themselves” (308). Note the word
“deserving.” In Dundes’ estimation of fairy tales, kings are defeated not only by poor
peasants, but by poor peasants who are at the same time deserving.

Suffice it to say for now that Dundes’ approach to folklore, though limited to
psychological semiotics, is to my mind the closest framework to the present study. To
him, “much of the meaning of folkloristic fantasy is unconscious,” folklore affording “a
socially sanctioned outlet for the expression of what cannot be articulated in the more
usual, direct way.” There is “patterning and system in folklore,” Dundes asserts, and “it
is this remarkable consistency which can assist the folklorist interested in meaning”
(Interpreting 36-7). However, the patterns he goes on to analyze are American, and the
meanings he culls out of them are therefore psychological and sexual, and so his service
to this study stops with his general assertions.

The contention of the present paper is that Filipino trickster tales, while deriving its
sources from the Malayan pelanduk (Lucero 120) and indirect Indian, as well as
Indonesian and Spanish influences (Eugenio 369-387), are uniquely adapted to the
Philippine situation of colonization and conquest, and express the longings and
aspirations of a society totally unused to the tyranny of hierarchies. A comparison of
such tales with other trickster tales will reveal this uniqueness.

The trickster in general

Trickster tales abound all over the world. Ziegler’s 1973 annotated bibliography of
folklore lists, among more well-known tales of trickery, Aladdin and the Wonderful
Lamp, Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, Hansel and Gretel,

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Little Red Riding Hood, Peter and the Wolf, Puss in Boots, The Three Little Pigs, and
The Trojan Horse. She also lists all of these, except for Little Red Riding Hood, in the
subcategory “wit prevails” (181-3).

In fact, a 1998 encyclopedia of clowns and tricksters claims that the category is “found in
virtually every culture,” being “among the most widespread category types in mythology
and popular culture throughout the world.” At the same time, however, the tome also
states, “They vary greatly from culture to culture, revealing distinct social and religious
dimensions of the cultures in which they are found.” (Christen ix)

Trickster tales encompass more than half of Volume 4 of Thompson’s 1957 six-volume
Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, officially confined to K: Deceptions, but most likely
being included in other categories, such as J: The Wise and the Foolish; L: Reversal of
Fortune; and N: Chance and Fate as well. The problem with Motif-Index is that while, as
Dundes enunciates, “it shows quite plainly that few if any narrative elements have
universal distribution” and that “most narrative traditions have strictly circumscribed
areas of distribution,” and therefore, that “the localization of fantasy is empirically
demonstrable” (Interpreting 34) through such a listing alone, motifs by themselves in
isolation of the circumstances in which they are told barely show a people’s longings and
aspirations.

An example of a disembodied motif retold by Thompson in The Folktale, which recounts

all that the Filipino Juan Pusong may have done but which, having been reduced to
another context, becomes meaningless in itself, is the following:
The rascal claims to have a flute (or a fiddle or knife, or the like) that will bring people back to
life. His confederate, a woman, plays dead, and he apparently revives her. The rich peasant buys
the magic object, kills his own wife so as to use it, and then is unable to bring her back to life.
Sometimes before and sometimes after this adventure the poor peasant reports the large price that
he has received for his cow-hide. The rich peasant is therefore induced to kill all his cows in order
to sell their hides. He finds, of course, that it was only the frightened lover in the chest who would
pay an exorbitant price for a cow-hide. Eventually the cheater is caught and is placed in a sack or
a chest where he must await execution of his sentence. A shepherd finds him there and asks what
he is doing. The cheater says that he is the angel Gabriel on the way to heaven or that he has been
put in the sack because he will not marry the princess. The shepherd is only too glad to take his
place so as to receive the good things he tells about. The rich peasant now sees the escaped
cheater and asks him where he came from. He tells him that he has been down in the river where
he has acquired many sheep, that the way to get them is to dive down after them. The rich peasant
dives off the bridge and kills himself. (166)

As we can see, the last two incidents (the sack and the bridge) are reminiscent of our
Cebuano Juan Pusong’s misdeeds. But the substitution of a shepherd and a rich peasant
for the King in both, as well as the removal of Juan’s assumption of that same king’s
position, would rob the Juan Pusong tale of its key elements: class conflict, and not only
class conflict, but the aspiration of the poor for the power and privileges of the ruler.

It is therefore essential to see the trickster within the context of the text itself, and, in
order to place him/her and his/her culture within the context of his region, to compare
him/her with other regional as well as Asian tricksters as they are found in their own texts
and contexts.
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From Pelanduk to Pilandok

To do this systematically we must perforce start with the Malaysian Pelanduk, oft cited as
the origin of the Philippine Pilandok (Lucero 120).

The Malay Pelanduk, unlike the Philippine Pusong, is a mouse-deer. A description of

one almost complete cycle of this mouse-deer (who, as the name implies, is small) shows
that he is an enemy of the predators of the forest, the tiger and the crocodile, and
therefore rightfully uses his wits against them. He is also a wise judge, preventing man
from taking advantage of his fellow man, and bigger animals from eating up smaller
ones. He is, in fact, so human and humane that he marries a woman, is transformed into a
man, and finally becomes King. (See Appendix B.)

The Malaysian concern for correct judgment and righteousness in one who is or would
become King is demonstrated further in their Pelanduk clock tale. Bin Yaapar describes
this tale thus:
According to one version (Skeat, Fables, No. 4), pelanduk is accused of war-dancing, and thus
killing the otter’s babies; and this leads to a chain of accusations. For as the trial reveals the
pelanduk danced because the wood-pecker beat his war-drum; the wood-pecker beat the drum
because the monitor-lizard carried his sword; the latter carried his sword because the tortoise
dragged around his armour; the tortoise dragged his armour because the king-crab went around
with his pike; the king-crab carried his weapon because he was alarmed by the cray-fish who
darted all over with his lance; and the cray-fish behaved such because the otter devoured his
babies. King Sulaiman, acting as the judge, finally dismisses the otter’s case. (165)

Bin Yaapar claims that this Malayan tale “is also very widespread in the Philippines,”
citing as his source Fansler’s FPT, No. 60 a-e. In fact, an examination of Fansler’s
collection of similar Philippine tales would reveal that the tale underwent a sea-change
upon reaching Philippine shores. Instead of a concern for justice as illustrated by the
Malay pelanduk clock tale, Philippine clock tales, if not simply interested in the origins
of things (as in why the mosquito buzzes in our ears, or why the firefly carries a light),
are more inclined to wreak vengeance on tyrannical human kings (See Variant d,
Appendix C) or king-crabs (Variant c, Appendix C).

The Bagobo variant, not cited by Fansler but told by E. Arsenio Manuel in his “Upland
Bagobo Narratives,” as cited by Bin Yaapar, is “exactly the same as that of the Malay”
(165). This is understandable since the Bagobos withdrew into the forest, far from the
infringements either of Sultans or Spaniards, thus preserving their Malay heritage. In all
other Filipino variants set in the lowlands, and especially in those places where Spanish
power was relatively greater, however, except for variant a, none carry over the righteous
judge of the Malay tale. And in the only one that does, Sinukuan, the judge, is described
immediately upon the opening of the tale in this melancholic, regretful way, implying
that it is better to be a judge of animals than of men, and therefore connoting further that
human society is full of envy and hate:

In ancient times Sinukuan, the judge of the animals, lived in one of the caves of Mount Arayat.
He had formerly lived in a neighboring town; but, since he was so brave and strong, the people
began to envy him, then to hate him. At last they made so many plots against his life, that he gave

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up all his property and friends in the town, and went to live in Mount Arayat, where he devoted all
his time to gaining the friendship of the animals there. (Fansler 385)

In fact, a further evidence of the dearth, if not death, of righteous judges in Philippine
animal tales is the absence of the “Election of Bird King” type (AT 221, according to Bin
Yaapar 170), “in which after various attempts, a chief and a guru (teacher) are appointed
to lead Malaysian birds in their daily lives.” The same type of tale is found in Thailand,
where the birds cannot decide on a crow and a swan, but finally choose the legendary
garuda. (Mesri 121) While there exists one verse written in 1916 by a Cebuano named
A. Bello entitled “Election of the Fishes” (Alburo 118-123), and while it may be argued
that the authored verse may have been based on folklore (though more likely it was not,
given its tack), the ending itself upholds our argument: that where the Malay
demonstrate their faith in mankind’s capacity to lead and the Thai resort to legend, the
Filipinos do away with the ruler altogether. For in the Filipino-authored “election,” the
end result is, in the words of the author himself, “chaos, disorder/ in the scramble for
positions.” In other words, no one is elected king.

Another vaguely related story, “Haring Gangis ug Haring Leon,” presumably an original
Cebuano tale set to verse by Cebuano writers, talks, instead of an election, of a war
between animals and insects. Predictably, following the consistent Filipino folktale
theme we are pointing out here, the Kings Gangis and Leon are overthrown by the insects
working in concert, and without their own king (Pagusara 18-29), demonstrating once
more a consistent dislike of persons in position and authority.

This equalizing tendency is further demonstrated in Filipino animal trickster tales. In the
Philippines, since the mouse-deer is not a widespread animal, there exist no pelanduk
tricksters, except in Sulu among the Tausugs, perhaps because they are closest to the
Malay Peninsula. In place of the pelanduk in most of the islands, the most popular
animal trickster tales belong to the turtle-and-monkey cycle, cited by Bin Yaapar from
Fansler’s Filipino Popular Tales, No. 55 a-f (see Appendix D). As can be seen from Bin
Yaapar’s motif list, between the monkey and the turtle there is no question of who is the
predator, but only of who is smarter. They are of almost the same rank; the turtle,
however, is supposedly slower, so when he wins a race, the sentiment is one of happy
surprise. Indeed, in the fable told by Jose Rizal, 55h in Fansler’s collection though not
narrated, it was the turtle that by his wits won the race against the supposedly more clever
monkey.

Fansler surmises the source of the story as “Kacchapa-jãtaka,” a Buddhist birth-story,

“which narrates how a monkey insulted a tortoise by thrusting his penis down the
sleeping tortoise’s throat, and how the monkey was punished.” He further surmises that a
trace of this story is found in the Bagobo version, where a blind and deaf monkey, the last
in the pack looking for the turtle, “becomes aware” of the tortoise when he “hits the tree,”
read by him to mean the tortoise “seizing the last monkey with his teeth” (Fansler 371).

Whatever the transmutations of this particular incident, the fact that it has been lost in the
Filipino telling indicates one thing: the reason for the rivalry is of no importance, or
perhaps, worse, the reason for the rivalry has been entirely forgotten, its roots in the

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divide-and-rule tactics of the conqueror left untraced. Thus, in the third version in FPT
narrated by a Jose M. Katigbak of Batangas, Batangas the turtle is characterized as being
“very kind and patient,” and the monkey as “very selfish,” (369) both, in the more
extended versions from Pampanga, having no other ostensible purpose than to do one
over the other.

Such smartness Bin Yaapar, citing Winstedt, calls “savage wit,” as against the “civilized
wit” displayed in the second part of the Malay Pelanduk. Indeed, the monkey-and-turtle
motif is, as we have already mentioned, very popular in the Philippines, certainly taking
the place of the Malay pelanduk as far as animal tricksters go, for the former motif has
the largest number of versions – 45 in all, far outnumbering the monkey-and-crocodile
cycle, a more unequal, indeed more vicious, rivalry, of which there are only 16 variants
(Mesri 73).

The Maranao Pilandok, a human trickster that carries the same name as the Malay
mouse-deer, however, exercises more purposeful wit. He is almost invariably doing one
over Solotan, or the Sultan; Busaon, the witch; or Bowaya, the crocodile. If not, he is
doing one over Sabandar, the chief servant of the Solotan (Wrigglesworth 160). All these
are enemies who are more powerful than he, and over whom he triumphs. However, he
could also be Pilandok sa Lilod (upstream) doing one over Pilandok sa Raya
(downstream), who is in the same state as he, if not Pilandok doing one over Bombola,
which means “hairy,” and sometimes refers “to an animal very similar to a bear” (Adeva
156). In both sets of Pilandok tales death is a likely outcome, in at least one instance the
death being Pilandok’s; in one Pilandok carts away half of the Solotan’s wealth.

From Mesri’s outline of the tricks Pilandok plays on his victims (see Appendix E)
Pilandok the Maranao trickster (1-9) is differentiated from Pilandok the Maranao
numskull (10-12). In no instance at least in Adeva’s collection of Maranao folklore
(cited as MFL in Mesri’s outline) is Pilandok the trickster also a numskull. This
distinction is blurred as the trickster moves up to the Visayas and Luzon.

Pilandok, however, is not the only Maranao trickster. Bugowamama, another character,
is known for his “guessing and feigned soothsaying” (Adeva 60). According to Adeva,
he corresponds with the Tagalogs’ “Suan Eket,” “Juan Pusong,” and “Juan the Guesser,”
the Kapampangan “Suan’s Good Luck,” and the Ilokano “Guachinango.” Bugowamama,
like his equivalent characters, accidentally discovers the thief of the sultan’s lost property
(in the others, the princess’ lost ring); marries the princess as a reward; and accurately
guesses the contents of the golden box (in the case of his equivalents, the number of
melon seeds) after eavesdropping. Also, Bugowamama, unlike the others, is about to
commit suicide due to his fear when he accidentally discovers the contents of the box
(60).

Another Maranao trickster is named Aratawata. He does not go to school, but spies on
his mother from a tree, making her believe that he has divining powers by telling her
what she did that day. The mother believes him until she finds out the truth and punishes
him (60). A variant of the story is found in one Juan tale of the Tagalogs, related by
Victoria Abelardo in “Folktales” (Mesri 261-2).

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The Tausugs, on the other hand, while maintaining a human counterpart of the Malay
mouse-deer Pelanduk in their Pilanduk, call another of their human tricksters Juan
Pusong like the Visayans do. This particular Juan Pusong likes playing tricks only on the
Sultan, through the game of having sex with his wives or other relatives. The Sultan,
upon finding out, orders a search for someone with a red anus. Caught, Pusong declares
that he is not the one because his anus is black (362). Mesri summarizes a typical Tausug
Pusong tale as follows:
One day, while Pusong is cleaning the backyard of the Sultan’s palace, the Sultan notices him and
tells one of his men to ask Pusong whether he knows of any doctor who can cure his ailing
daughter. Pusong himself accepts to cure the princess with his little bird. He paints his penis with
different colors and calls it the little bird. When ready, he enters the princess’ chamber and entices
her to come to him naked because his little bird is hungry and the only food for it is the princess’
vagina. So they make love. The princess is cured and tells her father about it. In the meantime,
Pusong disappears, but is caught later. He marries the princess. (362, citing Tausug Folk
Literature 72-3)

To the powerless poor, the only revenge, when they cannot kill the King himself, is on
the King’s family. And revenge seems to be sweetest when it comes with illicit sex. The
lurid and the political are one and the same.

The Ilokano Guatchinango and his Luzon/Visayas counterparts

If the Maranaos have their Pilandok and the Tausugs and Visayans their Juan Pusong, the
Bicolanos their Juan Usong (or Osong), and the Tagalogs and Kapampangans their Juan
or Suan (360), the Ilokanos have their own Guatchinango.

Mesri traces the word “Guatchinango” to Spain, where it meant a “shrewd and brusque”
person or “legendary rascal” (360). The name most likely hails from the word
“Guachinango,” or vagabond, a term used by the Cubans for some Mexicans and the
subject of one Kapampangan tale. (Fansler 215) His exploits, like the rest of Filipino
trickster tales in the Master Cheat tradition (53 versions in all) and including the tricks
and motifs of his counterparts in Luzon, are listed by Mesri (see Appendix F).

As Mesri states, some of the tricks in her list are played not by Guatchinango, but by Juan
Pusong (Visayas), Juan Tamad (Tagalog), or, simply, Juan. (368) The mix-up in Mesri’s
text seems to arise from the similarity between the Ilokano Guatchinango and his Visayan
and Tagalog counterparts: that is, they play tricks not only on the Sultan or King, as the
Maranao Pilandok and the Tausug Juan Pusong do in the main. Indeed, in none of the
tricks listed do they affect those considered superior to them, except for Nos. 9 (the king),
18 (the priest), and 19 (the judge), and these in a relatively minor way, without upsetting
the balance of power.

On the contrary, the main concern of Guatchinango, from an analysis of the motifs listed
by Mesri, would seem to be not the seizure of power but the acquisition of wealth
through deception, and, specifically, deception in terms of trade in fake magic.
Guatchinango, farther as he is from Manila, the seat of power, does not seem to care who
sits on top, or who he fools, as long as he can survive in a world of unproductive trade,
his favorite tricks according to Mesri being the gold-producing animal and the sale of
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resuscitated objects. He is most likely not as directly affected by oppressive rule as the
Maranaos and Tausugs are by their sultans, but his economic circumstances are such that
he has to go it alone, by his wits, without community – indeed, invariably against it.

The Tagalog Bertoldo is another Spanish trickster import, but unlike Guatchinango and
more like Juan Pusong/Osong, his foes are mainly monarchs, with a few ordinary people
thrown in. Quite unlike Guatchinango (who is all wit) and the Maranao Pilandok (who is
either all wit or all numskull), Bertoldo is both a trickster and a numskull at the same
time. His tricks are also definitely of a different quality from the Ilokano
Guatchinango’s. He cheats ordinary people only in two, and possibly four instances (see
Appendix G, nos. 3 and 13, possibly 12, and in a way 2), while in the rest of the stories,
he cheats the king, or the queen, or in one instance, the priest.

Bertoldo is definitely not into trading like the Ilokano Guatchinango; he just keeps on
playing mischief on the powers-that-be, but without taking over, like the Cebuano Juan
Pusong does at the start of this paper. Juan Pusong/Osong, on the other hand, comes
upon the throne more likely than not by marrying the king’s daughter, rather than by
doing in the King, as he so deftly does in our first tale.

Other Asian tricksters

Comparing the Filipino trickster with other Asian tricksters rounds out our view of the
Filipino trickster. So far, the information we have at hand is on Chinese, Thai and
Korean tricksters.

Let us start with the Chinese trickster, since the Chinese are closest to us in terms of
contact. A study by Pie Ting Ang Tan reveals that, while “Filipino and Chinese tricksters
play essentially the same types of tricks, …Chinese trickster heroes seldom play tricks on
their monarchs and kings[,] unlike their Filipino counterparts.” Moreover, “Filipino
tricksters sometime[s] lapse into stupidity and become numskulls while Chinese tricksters
could be losers but rarely numbskulls.” (Ang Tan xii)

Ang Tan describes the Chinese trickster, Hsu Wen Chang by name, in the following
manner:
Depicted as a clever, deceitful and [vengeful] master trickster, his motto is “do unto others and do
it first.” He plays dirty tricks on all – friend or foe, strong or infirm, healthy or handicapped,
women and children. Very often he is challenged to do the seemingly impossible and he
accomplishes them with flying colors. (393)

We can see the differentiation further by comparing the Chinese with the Filipino version
of the cage-by-sea or take-your-place trick. The cage-by-sea/take-your-place trick is a
favorite Filipino motif, especially in but not limited to the Juan Pusong tales. In the
Chinese version, Ang Tan relates,
…Trickster hero is captured and is tied with a rope or bound in a sack. Unlike the Filipino
trickster of this type who claims that he is forced to marry against his will, the Chinese hero
succeeds in changing place with another by asserting that the treatment he is getting will cure
victims of his ailment like hunchback or backache, etc. When caught again, he says that he has

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been given gifts of banquet by the dragon king. He instructs persecutor to put himself inside an
earthen ware, in order to float to the dragon palace. To announce his arrival, the latter hits his vat
really hard, breaks it, and drowns (Typen 191, TCV p. 245-246; FTFF v.ii, p. 18-27). (400)

Immediately, we can see quite a few differences from the Filipino cage-by-sea/take-my-
place motif: the Chinese trickster is bound with a rope or placed in a sack, which is much
more demeaning and painful, aside from affecting the respiratory process; or he/his
substitute is placed in a vat, which is later struck hard and broken – again, suffering a
death much more demeaning and painful (imagine being curled up in a vat, unable to
breathe normally). The Filipino, on the other hand, is thrown into a cage on the beach,
still able to breathe the open air of the sea, to be drowned without a beating. We shall go
back to this motif in the next section.

In the meantime, let us go to the Thai trickster. The name of the main Thai trickster is
Srithanonchai, or Sri for short. Mesri writes that no less than 17 collections of Sri tales
are circulated in Thailand, although in the northern and northeastern parts of the country,
he goes by the names Chieng-Mieng or Sieng-Mieng. (Mesri 371) The complete tale
accounts for Sri’s life from birth to death. Unlike the Filipino trickster, Sri, while a child
of Thai farmers, becomes a courtier in the king’s court, and does not take over the king’s
position. However,
Sri is so prevaricating (like an eel) that nobody can catch him up [sic]; or if one can keep up with
him, one even cannot hold him since he is very slippery. What is worse than that is Sri is very
[vengeful]. He will take revenge on any person who has offended him wittingly or unwittingly no
matter how insignificant the case seems to be. And Sri’s revenge is very serious and cruel. (385,
quoting Prayoon 26)

Mesri illustrates Sri’s vengeful character with the following incidents:

Sri likes to use the ‘language misunderstanding’ trick (SP 431) as a means of taking revenge. In
the episode ‘lancing brother’s fontanelle’ (SP 425) for instance, Sri does that to comply strictly
with mother’s instruction of ‘washing in and out the body of the brother.’ That is the method [by
which] …Sri releases the inflicted jealousy and abhorrence when he recalls the ‘brother gets one
more piece of dessert[]’ incident. Sri’s wickedness first show[s] at the age of five. Related to this
incident is ‘Sri’s throwing the desserts of the old vendor in the canal.’ He explains that he has
done that to follow the blessing of ‘Do sell all like they were thrown away into the waters.’ Sri
ends his revenge on this woman with her death by his deadly poison. (385)

Aside from Sri, the Thai have Sug. He is a temple boy who plays tricks on the abbot and
replaces him after the latter leaves the temple and is not allowed in by Sug, then is
consequently killed by an old woman who mistakes his head for a ripe musk melon. He
also becomes a ruler, after he is given one half of the town for defeating the ruler’s
enemies with an excrement trick (389-91). As may therefore be expected, like the
Filipino trickster, Sug is not vengeful in the same way as Sri is. But as Mesri states, “it is
suspected that [the] Sug cycle is possibly a newly invented trickster cycle” (391), so we
cannot say that he is representative of Thai thinking as handed down from generation to
generation.

Like the Chinese and main Thai trickster, Korean trickster heroes are differentiated from
their Filipino counterparts in that they “seldom play tricks on their kings” (Hong vii).

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In Priest Muhak’s case, he respond[s] to the king’s joke with a highly metaphysical repartee.
Filipino tricksters at times lapse into stupidity[,] becoming numskulls, whereas Korean tricksters
hardly change into another role. Korean tricksters usually deride the greed and pomposity of the
Yangbans. In the Philippine tales, however, the monarchs and datus are chief victims of the
tricksters. In earlier times Filipinos seem to have had more democratic spirit than Koreans. But
Korean tricksters show more sophisticated kinds of humor by witty puns, clever manipulation of
words, or by means of versification. (vii)

The most outstanding difference between the Filipino trickster and his other Asian
counterparts, then, is that the latter never seek to overthrow their kings or superiors.
However, while the Filipino trickster’s main characteristic is his distaste for kings and
superiors, he is also much milder and less vengeful than his Thai and Chinese
counterparts. Hong’s statement that “in earlier times Filipinos seem to have had [a] more
democratic spirit than Koreans” gives us a lead on why this is so.

The Filipino trickster in sum

In this study of Filipino trickster tales, we have had to proceed inductively, telling the
story of the Filipino trickster from his roots in the Malay Pelanduk as modified by his
own political economy and experience of colonization, and differentiating him from his
other Asian counterparts. This is how far removed we already are from the culture of our
folk, that we could not discuss this culture without first narrating the basic stories that
comprise it.

I have, besides, also chosen to proceed inductively because I have found no Western
framework sufficient to express the full impact of the Filipino trickster on Philippine
society and culture. A rundown of the closest possible Western theories at the end of this
essay will demonstrate this.

What then is the Filipino trickster and what part does he play in Philippine society and
culture?

He is the product of a terribly damaged culture. Losing the sense of righteousness and
justice of his Malay predecessor due to five hundred years of unbridled exploitation and
oppression, he dreams of doing away with the tyrannical king. Where he cannot, he
would play tricks on that king’s daughter, or even wife, or think up various stratagems so
that he could marry the princess and take over power. And in places where even that
possibility is too distant to dream of, such as in the Ilocos, he absolutely degenerates into
a mean, selfish dealer in all manner of fakery, tricking even his own kind.

The Filipino trickster is an expert in the art of survival in a colonized society that has had
to break up into endless splinters so as to preserve itself. He could not understand, much
less appreciate, hierarchies as the Chinese, Thai and Koreans do, because he did not grow
through the centuries into a hierarchy as they did. When the Spaniards imposed their
hierarchy on him in the North, or the Muslim empires their own in the South, he lived in
a relatively egalitarian, relatively free society that was barely beginning to develop
differentiations in tribal functions. That is why he has no respect for monarchs, kings or
sultans. He would continually subvert them, or dislodge them from power whenever and
wherever he could.
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He was thought illiterate, stupid and slow by the Spaniards because his society was not
on the same level as theirs when they found him. Instead of disabusing them of this
thought, he played their game, making them believe what they wanted to believe – that he
was a numskull, the better to trick them into granting him whatever little favors he could
curry for his survival. That is why he could, unlike the Chinese, Thai and Korean, be a
trickster and a numskull at the same time. That is why he would rather, in most
instances, play turtle to the monkey, rather than monkey to the crocodile, disguising his
trickiness in seeming slowness and patience, pandering humility the better to hide the
deception.

His fondness for the cage-by-sea/take-my-place motif is a scathing symbol of his

predicament, as well as his method of getting out of it. Unlike the Chinese trickster, he is
not tied with a rope or put in a sack, to be thrown into a river; he is imprisoned, in a cage
laid out on the beach for the delectation of passersby, to be drowned in a sea of
nothingness. The cage represents the centuries of Catholic repression not only of his
basic democratic instincts, but also of his natural hedonism and free pagan spirit. It
becomes all the more restricting set against the expanse of nature – the environment he is
used to – seeing others, those of his people who have been coopted by the colonizer and
therefore in a better position to advance their interests, going by unbound. Only by
duping that passersby – that fellow Filipino – with his own dream – the remote possibility
of marrying the king’s daughter – does he manage to get out of his cage. Only by duping
his own kind can he ever hope to finally dupe his – their – oppressor into drowning in the
sea of nothingness meant originally for him.

In the sense that he would dupe his own kind, the Filipino trickster tale is a sad
commentary on the state of the Filipino. But both this urge and the urge to overturn the
king and his poverty through deception issue from the same longing: the longing to bring
back a previous egalitarian state, where both individual freedom and the riches of nature
were to be had. Indeed, the relative gentleness of his schemes in comparison with those
of his Asian neighbors reflects the very state he subliminally longs for. We can but turn
such a longing into a positive tool for the redemption of our nation; to be sure history has
already done so, as three other studies will show.

The Filipino trickster validated in other studies

The picture of the Filipino as trickster for the nation is validated in other studies of a non-
folkloric nature. For our purpose let me cite three.

A recent paper of Norman Owen, an American professor of history at the University of

Hongkong, at the 21st National Conference on Local and National History contends that
“Filipinos might have tried to assert their power vis-à-vis the colonial authorities” in
“four broadly different ways:”
One, the best documented, was open resistance. xxx

xxx

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Another kind of resistance to colonial authority was represented by those Filipinos who chose to
withdraw, to live on the margins of society without the ‘benefits’ of Hispanized governance and
the Roman Catholic church. xxx But retreat to the hills, except in the Cordillera of Luzon and
the Muslim South, was available to those who were willing to abandon sedentary agriculture as
well.

xxx

A third way of asserting a certain kind of power may have been evasion (or covert disobedience),
one of the ‘weapons of the weak’ described by James C. Scott and Ben Kerkvliet. Deflection,
rather than defiance, seems in fact to have been the chief tactic of Bikol principales in dealing
with unwelcome claims by higher authority. The Spaniards did not always have things their way;
their orders were constantly evaded, resisted and manipulated by principales who publicly
professed their diligence and loyalty. xxx

Most of the time this ‘everyday resistance took the form of simple non-compliance, defensible (if
caught) as no worse than the result of accident or mistake: the order never reached here, we
thought it didn’t apply to us, the rice harvest was bad, the bridge was down, we’ll get it to you
next month… There would be apologies and reprimands, and all was apparently settled – at least
until the next time, when once again taxes were late, lists of laborers were incomplete, guards did
not show up, and roads remained unrepaired.

Besides the alternatives of open resistance, withdrawal or flight, and covert disobedience,
however, there was a fourth alternative that has largely been overlooked: peaceful challenge to
colonial authority. Although it was less common than the others, because it was difficult to
sustain, on a number of occasions in Bikol history we find local principales persisting in refusal to
obey orders even after the authorities became aware of this fact, arguing back – politely, of course!
– with the Spaniards who ruled them, and surviving to tell the tale. (Owen 2-3)

While Owen’s example in this paper was Bikol, we can assume the same conclusions for
all other regions in the Philippines, following the thesis of homogeneity of Philippine
culture propounded by Juan Francisco as well as such other scholars as U.P. linguistics
professor Ricardo Nolasco (as expounded in a previous paper, Aguilar Gibson 5).

My second example of the Filipino trickster outside of folklore, and in actual history, is
the picture of the Tagalogs and their trick response to Spanish translations drawn by the
extremely popular Contracting Colonialism by Vicente L. Rafael. Let me quote just
one paragraph from this book to illustrate my point:
Earlier I mentioned that the Tagalogs were converted despite and because of the failure of the
Spanish notion of translation to fully impose itself on the natives. The example of the people
listening to the priest’s sermon in Rizal’s Noli me tangere, the persistence of the peculiar
relationship between voice and writing in baybayin, Pinpin’s Librong, and Spanish descriptions of
native conversion all suggest as much. Tagalog responses seem to have been at odds with Spanish
intentions. Their conversion to Christianity, like their learning of Castilian, occurred in ways that
were not fully accountable in Spanish-Christian terms. It was as if the Tagalogs, in confronting
the discourse of clerical-colonial authority, always had something else in mind which the
procedures of missionary translation and conversion were unable to circumscribe. Some things
in Tagalog culture could not be unequivocally restated in Spanish-Christian terms, just as some
aspects of the vernacular exceeded the limits that the missionaries sought to set for it. (Rafael 110,
underscoring mine)

Finally, my last example is the trick-within-the-trick that was the 19th and early 20th
century komedya, as described by Nicanor Tiongson:
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The komedya’s efficacy as an ideological tool of the establishment should not lead to the
impression, however, that the natives simply accepted the colonial messages of the play. xxx
…The native culture invented ways of revalorizing the messages of the komedya within the
perspective of the people’s interests and sensibility. In the 19th and early 20th century komedya,
the character of the pusong was used by writers to comment on a range of political realities. In
Baltazar’s Orosman at Zafira, 1877, the clown score the guardia civil who can hoist indios up by
their hands and legs, simply because they forgot to bring their cedula personal, and leaders who
once elected to office succumb to laziness. (Baltazar 1990: 95-97). In performance, the pusong
made substantial comments through his antics. The audience favorite, he made fun of the
komedya’s pomposity by repeating lines of royal characters in mock-heroic tone, by pretending to
hit the prince’s head as the prince declaims his lines ever so seriously, by battling enemy soldiers
with a short bamboo sword, and most of all, by eating and drinking in the midst of the most
sentimental scenes, scratching his crotch, farting and feigning defecation as the king
ceremoniously holds court. (Tiongson 1998: 9-12). Through his scripted and spontaneous
comments and his ad lib gestures and movements, the clown punctured the pretensions of the
komedya and its world of royal make-believe and questioned the inviolability of its authoritarian
characters. By extension, the pusong likewise satirized social and political practices that
mimicked the culture of the overlords or took advantage of the weak; and by addressing the bodily
lower stratum, ridiculed standards of morality and good conduct that the colonial and feudal
establishment had set up for the natives to follow as a sine qua non of ‘civilization.’ (Tiongson
35)

I am certain that these are not the only three examples that could be cited to validate my
thesis of the Filipino trickster, the very first to be surprised by the indigenization of
hispanism in the Philippines having been John Phelan, way back in 1959. They all
demonstrate that the Filipino, instead of frontally assaulting the power and authority that
he dislikes, weaves around them a neat tale of deception, making them think he has been
subdued, the better for him to carry on with his own culture, as he has through the
centuries.

The inadequacy of Western theory

Few if any of the current Western theoretical approaches could fully account for the
dynamics of tricksterism in the Philippine context, its working in tandem with
buffoonery, its political overtones and economic undertones, as well as its dialectic
within Philippine history and society.

Indeed, none of Western theory may be able to account for other instances of tricksterism
either, except for Mikhail Bakhtin’s use of the ‘carnivalesque’ “to refer to the varied
popular-festive life of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance” and “carnivalized writing
… [as] writing which has taken the carnival spirit into itself and thus reproduces, within
its own structures and by its own practice, the characteristic inversions, parodies and
discrownings of carnival proper” (Dentith 65), which is not a full action theory but a
description of a type of writing. It is used by Tiongson in his analysis of the komedya as
such. Smith, in her book on novels by three minority American women, claims that
tricksters incarnate the carnivalesque. Tricksters play a pivotal role in the multivocal,
decentralizing aspects of the novel from its beginnings. Xxx

xxx Price Herndl’s description of feminine writing sounds strikingly tricksterlike: ‘…Like the
voices Bakhtin hears in the novel’s carnival, the female voice laughs in the face of authority.’ (11)
xxx Erdrich, Kingston, and Morrison…seek to upset hierarchies not just because they have an
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inherent philosophical ‘feminine’ dislike for binary oppositions, but because they pursue specific,
racially and ethnically grounded sociopolitical purposes. It is the trickster’s political exploitation
of the carnival that makes the figure attractive to these writers. (Smith 12-3)

Yet neither Bakhtin, nor Smith, who extends his concept of the ‘carnivalesque,’ go
beyond the “voice laugh[ing] in the face of authority” (13), a characteristically passive
literary image. Smith concludes her book with the injunction that “the contemporary
trickster operates less by subterfuge than by inspiring open celebration and laughter,”
adding that “writing tricksters becomes less of a subversive and more of a celebratory
culture-building act” (153), in none of the novels she analyses encountering the full
overthrow of the established order. Indeed, she writes, the trickster’s “fluidity and rule
breaking define and maintain culture” (111), the appeal to “the trickster’s relevance to a
politically revolutionary version of postmodernism” (17) notwithstanding. For in fact,
the American trickster’s contribution to postmodernism is quite safely confined within
established structures, and does not effectively subvert them.

But what can one expect of postmodernism, fathered as it was by Foucault and harking as
it does way back to structuralism? Foucault it was who picked up Jeremy Bentham’s
18th-19th century concept of the Panopticon as his main metaphor for disciplinary power,
describing it with the paranoid fear of the Western man in the belly of the Western beast
(Aguilar Foucault 4-6):
It is an important mechanism, for it automizes and disindividualizes power. xxx Consequently, it
does not matter who exercises power. Any individual, taken at random, can operate the machine:
in the absence of the director, his family, his friends, his visitors, even his servants. Similarly, it
does not matter what motive animates him; the curiosity of the indiscreet, the malice of a child, the
thirst for knowledge of a philosopher who wishes to visit this museum of human nature, or the
perversity of those who take pleasure in spying and punishing. The more numerous those
anonymous and temporary observers are, the greater the risk for the inmate of being surprised and
the greater his anxious awareness of being observed. The Panopticon is a marvelous machine
which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power.
(Foucault, Discipline 202)

To Foucault, the mechanisms of power can be so internalized that one need not be
threatened with physical punishment by authority, or even see the hierarchies of
authority, to obey, and be repressed (Foucault Sexuality 3-13). So concerned is he with
the “techniques and tactics of domination” (Foucault “Two Lectures” 217) that he could
not, and perhaps would not, imagine techniques and tactics of struggle, showing himself
to be a true child of Western structuralism.

Later Western social theorists have tried to get away from the structuralist mold without
much success, except perhaps for Giddens, the British inventor of the structuration theory
who subsequently sold out to former (and present) British premier Tony Blair. Giddens
seizes at the word “structuration” for want of a better word, he says (Giddens xvi-xvii), to
emphasize the intertwining and interdependency of agency and structure, arguing that
“the basic domain of study of the social sciences, according to the theory of structuration,
is neither the experience of the individual actor, nor the existence of any form of societal
totality, but social practices ordered across space and time” (2). Actor can be agency, and
agency can have power. “To be able to ‘act otherwise’ means being able to intervene in

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the world, or to refrain from such intervention, with the effect of influencing a specific
process or state of affairs” (14). However, “intentional acts often have unintended
consequences,” placing “constraints on actors.” (Ritzer 394)

What Giddens seems to stop at saying is that agency can radically change, subvert, or
reject structures, describing as he does the modern world within its imperialist centers.
Can structuration theory account for the flight of Filipino families to the mountains from
friar-monitored town centers, the Panopticons of the Spanish colonial era (Baquiran xiv),
either partially through the legitimate cultivation of their fields, their landlord’s or their
own, or fully to preserve the integrity of their tribes? Can structuration theory place the
Ilianen Manobo’s Pilanduk, the native Filipino who outwits a horde of man-eating
crocodiles sundry times, hiding farther and farther up the mountains, until, tired of
keeping under cover in the forest, he lures all the crocodiles into a large dry cogon field,
there to set them afire? The story ends with one pregnant crocodile escaping the kill
(Wrigglesworth 220-233). Is there any way that such symbolic wishes, acknowledging
reality anyway in the end, can fit into Giddens’ structuration mold, occupied as he is with
modern society in its Western progression?

The failure of Western theoretical approaches to fully understand, account for and
rationalize the Filipino situation is the reason why such eminent professors as Covar,
Salazar and the late Virgilio Enriquez thought up alternative paradigms like Pilipinohiya,
Pantayong Pananaw or Sikolohiyang Pilipino. As the process of social change proceeds,
engendered by Filipinos who are not only actors or agencies but authors of their history –
Filipinos who use such of their mass symbols as Pilandok, Juan Pusong and Guachinango
either to wreck their society or send it to greater heights – the science of the discovery of
Philippine society and culture is certain to become much clearer.

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Appendix A

The Boy Called Juan Pusong

Once there was a boy whose name was Juan Pusong. He was very mischievous.

One day he went to the fields to see the cows of the King. He thought of playing a prank on the king. He
cut the tails of several cows and then drove the cows away. Then he stuck the tails in mud holes, with half
of each tail sticking out of the mud.

Then he went to the King’s palace and told the King that many of his cows had jumped into the mud holes
and drowned.

The King was very sad. He went to the fields to see his cows. When he saw the tails sticking out of the
mud, he became even sadder.

But when he asked the people nearby he learned of Juan Pusong’s mischief. The King became angry. He
ordered his men to put Juan Pusong in a cage. The following day the cage was to be thrown into the sea so
that Juan Pusong would drown.

Early in the morning, Juan Pusong cried and cried. A man came along and asked, “Why do you cry, Juan?
Why are you in that cage?”

Juan Pusong answered, “I am crying because the King is forcing me to marry his beautiful daughter but I
don’t want to.”

The man thought that to marry the King’s daughter would make him a very lucky fellow. So the man
suggested that they change places. The man put on Juan’s clothes and placed himself in the cage. Juan
Pusong put on the man’s clothes and went home.

The following day, the King’s men came and carried the cage with the man in it and threw it into the sea.

The next day, Juan Pusong passed by the King’s palace. The King was surprised to see him. He thought
that Juan Pusong had drowned the day before.

The King was about to put Juan Pusong in prison again. But Juan told the King that he had returned from
the bottom of the sea. There he had seen the King’s dead parents and relatives. They were all very happy
and they wanted the King to come for a visit and see their beautiful houses.

The King marveled at Juan’s story. He wished to see his parents and relatives in their beautiful houses. So
he had himself put in a cage and ordered his men to throw the cage into the seas. And thus the silly king
was drowned. And clever Juan Pusong became king in his place. (Eugenio 369-70, as taken from
Cebuano Folktales 2, ed. Erlinda K. Alburo)

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Appendix B

A Complete Cycle of the Malay Pelanduk or Mouse Deer

1. Division of doe’s meat: pelanduk replaces tiger’s share with bark, saying that the meat
changes in taste due to the latter’s earlier mistake.
2. Beating of Raja Sulaiman’s gong: tiger made to strike hornet’s nest and is badly injured.
3. Wearing of Raja Sulaiman’s belt: tiger lured to put the sawa (snake) around its waist; it nearly
loses life.
4. Crocodile Census: crocodiles line up, forming a bridge across river; pelanduk runs across to
fetch ripe fruits.
5. Substitution of foot with bamboo: pelanduk’s foot caught by crocodile; tells her that it is
bamboo; the foot is released and crocodile gets bamboo instead.
6. Pelanduk presides over men: man refuses to return neighbor’s axe saying that it had been
eaten by weevils; pelanduk shows absurdity of the statement by saying that the sea has caught
fire; man returns axe.
7. Pelanduk presides over animals; tiger dreams of eating goat and wants to make it come true;
pelanduk shows absurdity of the statement saying that he dreams of burning Raja Sulaiman’s
court, and, therefore wants to burn it; the raja stops him, and thus stops tiger from devouring
goat.
8. Pelanduk marries a woman.
9. Pelanduk transformed to man; becomes King. (Bin Yaapar 161-2)

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Appendix C

Paraphrase of Fansler’s FPT No. 60, variants a-e

The cycle, in all Philippine variants, always ends up with the mosquito bite, except for e, the last variant.
In variant a (Pampanga), the bird accuses the frog for making noise during the night, the frog claims he was
crying for help because he was afraid of being buried under the house that the turtle was carrying on his
back, the turtle says he did so because he was afraid the firefly might set his house on fire, and the firefly
appeals to his right to self-defense from the mosquito’s dagger; so Sinukuan, the human judge, punishes the
mosquito to three days in prison, during which time the latter, a he, loses his voice and stops carrying his
dagger.

In variant b, also Kapampangan, the pugu asks the horse why he broke his eggs, and the horse points to the
cock, which crowed and startled him; the cock points to the turtle carrying his house on his back as his
excuse for crowing; the turtle, again, points to the firefly, and the firefly points to the mosquito; but this
time, the mosquito points to Juan, who, the former says, put up his mosquito net, and therefore he had no
one to sting but the firefly; so the pugu asks Juan why he put up his mosquito net, and Juan replies, simply,
that he did not care to lose any blood; and so the story ends there.

In variant c from Bohol, the story starts with the king of the crabs; he orders his men to keep the
surroundings quiet, because he wants to sleep; but the frogs croak, so in the morning he investigates them,
and they answer this way: they could not help laughing when they saw the turtle carrying his house; so of
course the turtle points to the firefly, and the firefly to the mosquito, prompting the king-crab to send for
the mosquito, who reacts by bringing his band with him; the king-crab is already shouting with rage when
he and his companions reach the palace, and so Lamoc, the mosquito, proceeds to bite him; the king-crab
orders Lamoc killed, but his companions rush at him, even if the order is successfully carried out; king-crab
rushes into his house, which is buried deep in the ground; and since Lamoc’s friends could not get in, they
remain buzzing at his door, which they do to this day, mistaking even our ears for the king-crab’s house.

In variant d from the Tagalog part of Nueva Ecija, a tyrannical king prohibits people from talking loudly,
but the frog croaks, and points to the snail, who points to the firefly, who points to the mosquito; but the
mosquito says that he cannot live without biting somebody, to which the tyrannical king replies with a
decree prohibiting him from biting anybody; when the mosquito protests the sentence, the king seizes his
mallet to crush the mosquito, but seeing the king’s intention, he alights on the latter’s forehead; and so the
king kills the mosquito, “but also put[s] an end to his own tyranny.”

Lastly, variant e, also from Pampanga, starts with a small bird complaining to the eagle-king about the
frog’s noise; and again, the frog points to the turtle, the turtle to the firefly, and the firefly appeals, simply,
that he has to carry his lamp in order to find his food; and so the story ends there. (Fansler 387-390)

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Appendix D

Bin Yaapar’s turtle-and-monkey motif list

1. Division of banana-stalk: monkey takes top; turtle, roots; monkey’s share dies.
2. Eating of turtle’s bananas: monkey eats all; turtle given excrement.
3. Killing of monkey: by planting sharp stakes around banana tree.
4. Selling of monkey flesh: flesh sold to other monkeys; turtle jeers them for eating their friend.
5. Turtle sentenced to death: turtle begs not to be drowned; it does not mind if burnt or pounded;
monkey “drowns” him, then he escapes.
6. Monkey tries to empty river to catch turtle but in vain.
7. Burning of monkey: fire kindled by turtle and a friendly bird.
8. Guarding of king’s fruit (peppers).
9. Guarding of king’s belt (sawa).
10. Death of monkey; turtle deceives monkey with answers; monkey thinks parts of his own body
mocking him; monkey strikes himself and dies.
11. Exchanging places: turtle lures monkey to take his place as a captive; monkey shot by hunter.
(Bin Yaapar 163-4)

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Appendix E

Mesri’s outline of the tricks Pilandok plays on his victims

1. He tricks the Sultan’s son into beating the Sultan’s gong (bees’ nest). This leads to the great
disaster of the son (MFL p. 150).
2. He tricks Bowaya (crocodile) who is going to eat Amomowai (monkey) into coming nearer a
shore. In this way, the monkey can jump over and escape (MFL pp. 145-146).
3. He deceives Sultan of Maono into buying his magic cane producing food; cheats sultan of
Agamaniog to buy his goat producing gold (MFL p. 146). Like one episode of “cow
producing silver coins” of Juan of the Tagalogs (FPT no. 20 b), but the Pilandok of the
Maranaos is starved to death.
4. One-eyed Pilandok is ordered arrested for this fake gong. But he tells the brother of Sabandar
that there are two Pilandoks; he is not the wanted one since he is not blind. Moreover, the
Pilandok fools Sabandar of Queen’s black belt (snake). Sabandar is coiled dead (MFL pp.
148-149).
5. He tricks Bombola into being tied to a tree by saying that the sky is going to fall (SP 8). B.
dies of hunger and thirst (MFL p. 151). He plays the same trick on Arimaonga (lion) to
“save” him when the world comes to an end (MFL p. 158).
6. He tricks Busaon, the witch into chewing the leaves of sagai, saying that it is tobacco. B’s
lips swell (MFL pp. 152-153).
7. Pilandok pretends to be a son of the dead Solotan (Sultan). He gets a share of Sultan’s
property (MFL pp. 154-155).
8. He tricks crocodiles into lining up (Census Trick, SP 4), so he can cross to the other side of
the river (MFL p. 161)
9. The Pilandoks fool each other into buying a carabao (log) and tobacco (only four leaves on
top, MFL p. 147). This same trick is used again between Pilandok and Bombola (a torn mat
for honeycomb and stones for a roasted something, MFL pp. 156-157).
10. Pilandok’s wife asks Pilandok to buy salt. He drops the salt in the river and leaves his shirt on
a twig, thinking that the salt and the shirt will go home by themselves. He gets a terrific
tongue-lashing from his wife that night (MFL p. 162).
11. Pilandok’s wife has labor pains; asks him to look for midwife towan (a religious person who
usually wears a white turban). Pilandok mistakes herons and a wild white goat as midwife
and tells them to go to his house. Lastly, he tells two giants to go. They frighten his wife and
himself that they have to rush out of home (MFL pp. 163-164).
12. The two Pilandoks invest their money in the wine trade. They get 5 centavos from selling it.
After that they alternately use the money to buy their own wine to drink when tired until the
wine is all consumed (MFL p. 165). (Mesri 364-5)

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Appendix F

Mesri’s List of Guatchinango Tales

1. ‘Bird in hat’ motif (SP 345)

Sells a hat that supposedly produces live chicken, but dead chicken is found (FLPF 624). In
another version, mud is found under the hat instead of a ‘beautiful singing bird’ (FLPF 645).

2. Made to explain daring cryptic sentence on his hat (SP p. 299).

3. Sells ‘gold-dropping animal’ – (coin-dropping cow, FLPF 583).
4. Escapes by wrapping himself with hog’s intestines filled with blood and stabbing them when
pursued (SP p. 300).
5. “Lawyer’s mad client” (SP 377)

Bribes a lawyer to convince judge that he is an imbecile and can say only ‘kurikik’. Juan
wins the case (where he is accused of the deceit in coin-dropping cow). He uses the same
trick when the lawyer goes to get the promised money (the trickster is Juan, FLPF 583).

6. Magic life-restoring-tube (FLPF 1465), whistle (FLPF 378), flute (1477).

7. Sells a magic hat that pays for anything (SP 379) purchased at any store or restaurant (FLPF
740).
8. Hat on poles to simulate workers in the field (SP 361). With this trick, he gets money and
plenty of food; he eats it all and nearly bursts (FLPF 1352).
9. Trespasser ‘8 defense’ (SP 380; AT 1590)

Juan, the hero, offends the superior (king, priest); is ordered: “Don’t you let me see you
walking on my ground around the palace without my consent.” Juan comes next day standing
on his sledge (paragos) covered with soil from his orchard (FPT 7 b, FLPF 394, priest).

10. “Educated crabs” (SP 417)

11. Sells “prophet powder” of which the smell will furnish the gift of prophecy. It turns out to be
nothing but bottled dung (FLPF 605).
12. Simulated corpse in cemetery frightens thieves into abandoning all their loot (FLPF 430).
This episode has a connection with the division in the cemetery type (SP 438, cf AT 1791) in
which a grave-warder mistakes a group of boys counting stolen fruits for counting souls of the
dead (FLPF 1075).
13. Sells a magic frog which reveals by his jumping where money is buried (FLPF 912).
Trickster is Juan Tamad of the Tagalogs.
14. Sells a magic whip which reveals where food has been buried (FLPF 645).
15. Guatchinango exchanges a by-product for a banca (bird under coconut-shell) (SP p. 300).
16. Guatchinango sells his mat to pay the inn-keeper (SP p. 301).
17. Guatchinango sells divining-book that uncovers concealed food in the house (SP p. 301).
18. Guatchinango and the parish priest

G and his accomplice disguise themselves as saints, posting themselves at the altar. When
priest says early mass, G as San Gabriel, the priest’s patron, tells him that God has sent him to
take the priest to heaven as a reward for his faithful service. Blindfolded, priest is led to top
of highest tower, where he is tied fast. While he is waiting for heavenly chariot, G and his
accomplice steal the priest’s money. Not till next morning is priest found and released by his
friends, who tell him it was no archangel who visited him (SP p. 301).

19. Guatchinango sells the porridge to flies and kills fly on head of judge, SP 421, 315, 378) (SP
p. 302).
20. Guatchinango deceives friend: borrows friend’s fast horse “to try it” and rides off, never to
return (SP p.302) (Mesri 366-8, edited by me)

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Appendix G

Tricks of the Tagalog Bertoldo

His own unique tricks:

1. Impersonates queen in her own robes; is sentenced to be hanged. He is allowed to choose the
tree; he finds no tree suitable enough for his hanging. King’s pardon is reduced, and he is
pardoned. (In FL 517, he is Juan; in FLPF 726, he is to be punished for hiding princess’
dress; in FLPF 2652, he finds no big tree on the mountain).
2. Gets priest’s horse and laundrywoman’s two suits by confusing them with two names (FLPF
726).
3. Cheats a candy-seller of her stock (the method is not stated, FLPF 726)
4. Queen orders him to give bread to the ducks in the pond; he gives flour, saying that “bread is
flour” (FLPF 1407).
5. King orders him: “Appear before the palace neither naked nor dressed.” Bertoldo puts on
banana leaves, is pardoned (FLPF 2652).
6. Suggests finding true robbers by having them carry a big box in which two children are
hidden inside to eavesdrop on the conversation (FLPF 726).
7. Tells king “women cannot be trusted.” To prove this, he leaves a box with women; tells them
not to open it when he is away. The women open it (FLPF 1906, 2652).
8. To avoid saluting king, hero walks backwards under the cow barrier, thus showing his rum to
king (FLPF 1162; Betholdino; LPF 1403, 2652, Bertoldo; FLPF 2049, Moro).
9. Takes service with king; is told not to spit anywhere but in the middle of courtyard. B spits
from palace window right on head of duke below; he is crowned ironically (FLPF 726).
(Mesri 370, edited)

Tricks shared with other Philippine tricksters:

10. Substitutes victim in “cage-by-sea” incident. The punishment results from his releasing
princess’ deer (FLPF 726; FLPF 2562; FL 517, not stated).
11. Takes trespasser’s defense (SP 380). In FLPF 1219, Birtuldo lies down and rolls over and
over past the palace.
12. Sells a hat with “beautiful loro.” It turns out to be only dung (FLPF 726).
Deceives an old woman by pretending to be her son-in-law; is given daughter (FLPF 726). (Mesri
368-70, edited)

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