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.

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ILOKO LITERATURE

before and after the Philippine Revolution. This period is
usually referred to as the Elizabethan or Agustan age in Filipino letters in Spanish, but in Iloko literature that is not the
case. Not that there were no able Iloko writers. Antonio Luna,
Isabelo de los Reyes, and Eduardo de Lete were able writers,
but Antonio Luna and Eduardo de Lete wrote in Spanish and
Isabelo de los Reyes wrote his best works in Spanish and only
his minor productions in Iloko. Other able writers of the
period preferred Castilian to Iloko as their medium of expression.
An important development of Iloko literature during this
century was the emergence of several native writers. In the
previous centuries very few names of native writers appeared
in written works; in this century the native writers cutnumbered
the writers of Spanish blood. They tried their hand at almost
every form of writing and in most cases did better work than
the Spaniards.
A. POETRY
Metrical Romances:-These exotic narrative stories in
verse continued to be the main profane literature of the people.
Surely, as T. H. Pardo de Tavera3 has pointed out, these stories
had a "detrimental influence" upon the people. To these and
to the novenlas he traces the Filipinos' heritage of ignorance.
Indeed, a people whose intellectual exercise consisted of nothing
other than the reading of the novenas and the fanciful and
falsified stories of the panagbiags could not be expected to
achieve any respectable degree of culture and progress.
Many of these stories were translated from the Tagalog
versions or directly from the Spanish. Some of the translators
displayed an amazing lack either of common sense or of a
knowledge of history. For instance the metrical romance dealing with the life of Richard Coeur-de-Lion was rendered into
Iloko as Historia a panagbiag ni Ricardo nga puso iti pagarian
sadi Francia (Life of Richard the Heart (sic!) of the Kingdom
of France). Possibly because England was under the French
during the times of Richard the Lion-Hearted, he was erroneously identified as king of France.
Among the most popular of these exotic stories in the late
nineteenth century, according to old people in the Ilokos. were
those relating to the Adarna bird, the Twelve Peers of France,
Bernardo Carpio, Jaime del Prado, and Alvaro de Castilla.
Lyric Poetry:-Among the most notable names in the nineteenth century Iloko lyric poetry were those of Jacinto Kawili,
Leona Florentino, Justo Claudio y Fojas, and Isabelo de los
3-"The Heritage of Ignorance", in ibid., p. 10.