THE CYCLE OF THE SUN AND THE MOON: A Manobo Folktale

       

 

     A long time ago, only the Sun rode to the sky. His wife, the Moon, stayed at home and tended the children and their farm. The Moon loved their two children and went about her tasks happily - fetching water, gathering gabi leaves, and digging camote for supper.

     One cloudy day when the Sun was home, the Moon had to go to the river for water. She crooned the children to sleep and called to her husband. "Dear husband, I am going to fetch water. Watch over the children, but do not go near them because you know what will happen if you do." And after the warning, she left.

     The Sun looked lovingly at his children. He had never before been able to really know them or even get near them. Overcome with love and affection, he kissed them. To his horror, they shrivelled up before his eyes and crumbled to ashes.

     His anguish was great. He moaned and cried. Suddenly he remembered what his wife had told - not to touch the children! Not knowing what to do, he hid in the forest.

     Soon after this the Moon returned. A water jar was balanced on her head and she carried a bundle of freshly cut gabi leaves in her arms. Laying down the jar and leaves, she turned to look for her children. Wild was her grief to find only ashes where her lovely brown babies had once been.

     Her screams and lamentations reached her husband in the forest, and his pity overcoming his fear, he went home. However, as soon as the Moon saw him, her wailing became louder.

     "My husband, why did you do it? Did I not tell you never to touch or even draw near our children? Why did you disobey me?"

     "I couldn't help kissing them, O wife; they looked so sweet. I have never seen anything so sweet before. Forgive me, O Moon! Forgive me," he begged her.

     But the Moon would not be comforted. Her reproaches increased in intensity. In the end, the Sun got angry.

     "Mang-gad!" he shouted. "Did you say that I disobeyed you? How dare you think that you are superior to me, that you can order me what to do. Mang-gad! Slave! How dare you say that I disobeyed you!"

     "Ai!" she moaned. "I am nothing, nothing at all! Then, my children are nothing too! And with one defiant sweep of her arm, she scattered their ashes out of the house.

     When he returned very late that night, his ill temper was gone. He regretted having shouted at his wife. He found the house dark and empty. His wife had fled, but pinpoints of glimmering light in the distance told him where she was, for he knew the lights were his children following their mother in her flight.

     So started the endless cycle of the Sun chasing the Moon fleeing from the Sun. The Moon is forever with her children, the many tiny lights we call the stars. Now and then a shooting star breaks across the path of the Moon. It is nothing more than an attempt from her husband to make her and their two children return to him. But the Moon speeds away faster, sometimes leaving the sky altogether, with only her star-babies there. This happens when the marks of the gabi leaves on the Moon's face swell, and she remembers the pain and humiliation of her husband's anger when he threw the gabi leaves to her face and called her mang-gad (property) and binotong (slave).

   

Source

Lapid, Milagros and Serrano, Josephine. English Communication Arts and Skills through Philippine Literature 7. 9th ed, Phoenix Publishing House, Inc, 2022.