To Account for Beginnings

Learning Objectives

• Appreciate the diversity of legendary

accounts which result from ethnographic
differences;
• Explain the text in terms of literary
elements, genres, and traditions;
• Use critical reading strategies to make sense
of literary meanings in context.
 Historical texts use factual information and
artifacts to account for the origin of nations and
how they got their names.

Scientific texts likewise cite facts that indicate

what led to inventions and discoveries.

Literary texts, on the other hand, use the

imagination and show the origin of things and their
names by way of legends.
LEGENDS

Like other types of folklore, were passed down orally

from one generation to another and saw print only in
ethnographic studies of different cultural groups.

Legends highlight cause – effect relationships to

show how and why things came to be.
EXAMINING and RESPONDING to the TEXT

• Which character from the legend can you relate to? Why?
• The earth, the rivers, seas, sun, moon, and stars are mentioned in the
legend. Which elements of nature are not mentioned? Why do you think are
they not mentioned?
• In the legend, men and women are are not directly created but
come from the earth. What does this mean?
• The legend accounts not only for the creation of the world and of man and
woman but also of the different races. How does it account for the color
of the different races.