Q:
What evidence from the folklore will prove the customs of the people living in the land of mindanao?
A: My experiences outlined below are intended to be a background for the discussion of the theory and practice of Philippine oral traditions that follows. I have been engaged in folklore activities for the past few decades. I was born and grew up in a central Luzon town whose population was about half Ilocano and half Tagalog. I had before me, therefore, a wealth of customs and practices which a mixed constituency offered for study, especially those related to marriage and burial, types of houses and wells, gardens in the field, and so on. However, I was then still too young to pay any attention to their meaning. My father was a well-known storyteller and anecdotalist but by the time scholars had taken an interest in these tales, I myself had long forgotten almost all of them. My interest in folklore study was first stimulated by the folklore course I took with Prof. H. Otley Beyer. He instructed his students to gather myths, legends, folktales, folksongs, games, tiddles and proverbs which were current in their birthplaces and hometowns but he said nothing to us about methodology. Later, I also took a course in world literature taught by Prof. Dean S. Fansler, who asked us to submit term papers on any aspect of ethnic literature, whether oral or written. I decided on submitting one on oral literature — Tayabas Tagalog songs. Both Beyer and Fansler hardly touched methodology. Fansler, however, paved the way for the historical interpretation of tales in his magnum opus, Filipino Popular Tales (1921). In this manner Fansler became an outstanding folklorist but Beyer remained the big-time collector. I became Beyer's helper in the tremendous job of gathering his materials. A third influence on my career was Prof. Gabriel A. Bernardo, then the librarian of the University of the Philippines Library, which I had joined in 1929, Bernardo regaled me with his ribald tales about friars, which he told in the manner of Boccancio and Chaucer. We also had long conversations on paleography and metrical romances, which added to my store of knowledge in the field.
