Maximo D Ramos

Remembrance of Lents Past and Other Essays - Realms of Myths and Reality Maximo D Ramos

THE FOLKLORE MATERIAL put together in this book is from all over the Philippines. Some are from the Ilocos region and the Cordilleras in the Christian and pagan north. Many are from the Christian provinces in the rest of Luzon and the Visayan Islands. The others are from Mindanao and the Sulu group in the pagan and Muslim South.
Represented here are the ethnic groups of the plains and coastal areas, of the foothills and mountains, of the swamps and rain forests. They were originally told in Bikol, Bontok, Ifugao, Iloko, Kalinga, Maranao, Pampango, Tagalog, Tausug, Tinguian, Visayan, and other Philippine vernaculars.
An attempt was made to exclude from this collection any material that showed borrowings from the West. But the attempt may not have fully succeeded, for in matters of folklore one cannot always tell what is Western and what is Eastern. The East and the West have been blending nicely in the Philippines ever since Magellan discovered the country for the white man in 1521. Moreover, most folklorists think that Asia, to which the Philippines geographically belongs, was the early home of many of folktales of Europe and America.