A brief survey of Iloko literature from the beginnings to its present development, with a bibliography of works pertaining to the Iloko people and their language, by Leopoldo Y. Yabes.

14

ILOKO LITERATURE

ago's urine, was not salty. The story is told that he, his
wife, and their three daughters, while carrying salt to Manila from a land across the sea, stumbled with their loads of
salt in the middle of the sea, and since then the sea has been
salty.22
Several other stories are told about this giant. One is that
while his daughters, who were poor swimmers, were bathing
in what is now the China Sea, they got into very deep water
and were about to be drowned when Angalo came to their rescue
by dipping his baag (similar to a G-string) in the sea. The
baag absorbed a considerable amount of the water, making the
sea shallower. Another story is to the effect that what is now
Abra was formerly a lake, but that, in a fit of anger at his
wife, Angalo kicked away a part of the Ilokos Mountains, draining all the water of the lake into the China Sea. The opening
is the Banawang Gap, a deep chasm in the Ilokos Mountains
through which the Abra River bursts on its tortuous seaward
course. A different version of the story states that the opening
was caused by the unintentional kicking of Angalo when he was
sleeping one night on the Ilokos Mountains.23
These cyclopean beings are said to have lived thousands
of years ago, but they are still popular among the Ilokos today.
Besides their caves and footprints, there are other reminders
of their stay in the region. It is told that even today, the
spirits of the giant couple, especially that of Angalo, still haunt
the region patricularly the country around Banawang Gap,
working havoc and destruction among the people.
There are other popular tales on such subjects as: why
pukpuklo24 is now scarce in Sinait, a frog without a country,
the tale of the monkey's tail, where the pugot25 came from, the
barnacle and the dragonfly, and the like. But these tales contain plenty of extraneous element and so, with some exceptions,
cannot be considered as a safe index to the culture of the
ancient Ilokos.
C. FOLK-PHILOSOPHY
Even in primitive literature, before the literary types have
become differentiated, we already can see a philosophy of life
as reflected in proverbs and riddles. These constitute the
wisdom literature of the unlettered classes and remain to the
end their only philosophy. In Iloko, as in Tagalog and Malay,26
22-El Folklore Filipino, p. 52.
23 —Figuemas, H. A., op. cit.
24-An edible sea-weed.
25-Evil spirits.
26-Winstedt, R. 0. Malaya, the Straits Settlements and the Federated
and Unfederated Malay States. London, Bombay, Sidney, Constable &