ORAL LORE FROM

PRECOLONIAL
TIMES
 WEIGH-IN

• What’s the last

thing you’ve talked
about with your
best friend/s or
your classmate/s?
 ◦ Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural
material and tradition transmitted orally
from one generation to another. The
messages or testimony are verbally
transmitted in speech or song and may
ORAL LORE take the form, for example, of folktales,
sayings, ballads, songs, or chants. In this
way, it is possible for a society to transmit
oral history, oral literature, oral law and
other knowledges across generations
without a writing system.

3
◦ Filipinos often lose sight of the fact that the first period of the Philippine literary history is the
longest. Certain events from the nation’s history had forced lowland Filipinos to begin counting the
years of history from 1521, the first written records by Westerners referred to the archipelago later
to be called “Las islas Filipinas”. However, the discovery of the “Tabon Man” in a cave in Palawan
in 1962, has allowed us to stretch our prehistory as far as 50,000 years back. The stages of that
prehistory show how the early Filipinos grew in control over their environment.
◦ The oral literature of the precolonial Filipinos bore the marks of the community. The subject was
invariably the common experience of the people constituting the village-food-gathering, creature
and objects of nature, work in the home, field, forest or sea, caring for children, etc. This is evident
in the most common forms of oral literature like the riddle, the proverbs and the song, which
always seem to assume that the audience is familiar with the situations, activities and objects
mentioned in the course of expressing a thought or emotion. The language of oral literature, unless
the piece was part of the cultural heritage of the community like the epic, was the language of daily
life. At this phase of literary development, any member of the community was a potential poet,
singer or storyteller as long as he knew the language and had been attentive to the conventions of
the forms.

4
 ◦ A riddle is a question, a puzzle, a phrase,
or a statement devised to get unexpected
or clever answers. It is a folklore genre as
well as rhetorical device, often having
veiled or double meanings. When
RIDDLES someone uses it as a puzzle or a question,
it could be a thought-provoking challenge
for the audience to figure it out
themselves, or it could be a funny
comment intended to make the audience
laugh.

5
 ◦ Lumuluha walang mata, lumalakad
walang paa.
◦ Limang puno ng niyog, isa’y matayog.
◦ Ang bintana ay pito, naisasara lamang ay
EXAMPLES tatlo.
◦ Bulaklak muna ang dapat gawin, bago mo
ito kainin.
◦ Dumaan ang hari, nagkagatan ang mga
pari.

6
 ◦ Our culture is replete with all kinds of beliefs
and traditions, some of which are
superstitions that have no scientific
explanation, while others are proverbs which
contain important life lessons. Filipino
PROVERBS proverbs are unwritten knowledge passed
down from generation to generation and
typically contain advice from our ancestors.
These pieces of advice are time-tested
nuggets of wisdom from hundreds of years
of our ancestors' experiences and blunders.

7
 ◦ ‘Pag binato ka ng bato, batuhin mo ng
tinapay.
◦ Nasa Diyos ang awa, nasa tao ang
gawa.
◦ May pakpak ang balita, may tainga
EXAMPLES
ang lupa.
◦ Hangga’t makitid ang kumot,
matutong mamaluktot.
◦ Mahirap mamatay ang masamang
damo.
8
 ◦ Lo-a, a folk tradition, mirrors the
Ilonggo’s folks’ creative or poetic
intuition. It encapsulates in a single form
the workings of the creative mind of the
Ilonggo folks or the common tao – the
ordinary souls that one may meet in his
LO-AS
daily existence; housewives, farmers,
“istambays”, laborers, teachers, even
students. Ordinary as they are, their lo-a is
a proof of an extraordinary mind whose
creativity flows spontaneously from the
soul.
9
 Rosas, rosas nga kamantigue
Soltero nga waay nobya, agi.
Bulak, bulak sang tangkong
Dalaga nga wala sang nobyo,
bingkong.
EXAMPLE Tapakan ko central, gupi
Guwa kalamay, puti.
Didto sa Bohol
May isa ka lalaki nga manol
Panawag sa kasilyas, City Hall.

10
 Rosas, pink na mantigue
Single walang girlfriend, pass.

Bulaklak, bulaklak ng tangke Babaeng

walang boyfriend, bentong.
EXAMPLE
Puntahan mo ako sa gitna, gupi Out of
the blue, puti.

Sa Bohol May isang lalaki na manol

Tawag sa banyo, City Hall.
11
 ◦ As children, myths and legends were one of
our first ways of understanding ourselves
and the world around us. The stories we
heard formed our views and values; told us
the origins of the world and of the things that
MYTHS AND
fill it; inspired us to dream or discouraged us
LEGENDS from doing wrong by showing us the
consequences of bad behavior. These myths
and legends, many and varied across our
archipelago, give a glimpse of the richness of
our culture, of our imagination.

12
 ◦ Si Malakas at si Maganda
◦ Ang Pinagmulan ng Daigdig
EXAMPLES
◦ Ang Alamat ng Pinya
◦ Ang Alamat ng Makahiya

13
 ◦ The Filipino word for ‘epic’ is epiko from the
Spanish. Philippine epics are lengthy narrative
poems based on oral tradition. The verses were
chanted or sung while being passed from
generation to generation before being written on
paper. The plots of their stories revolve around
EPICS supernatural events and heroic deeds.
◦ Instead of glorifying national heroes, Philippine
epics are specific to a particular part of the
country, and thus they are referred to as ethno-
epics or regional epics. In fact, the epic poems of
the Philippines are in many different languages,
not just the currently dominant Tagalog.

14
 ◦ Biag ni Lam-ang (Ilocos)
◦ Hudhud ni Aliguyon (Ifugao)
EXAMPLES
◦ Hinilawod (Panay)
◦ Darangen (Lanao)

15