tales among the Filipinos is not stereotyped; and
there is likely to be no less variation between two Visayan versions
of the same story, or between a Tagalog and a Visayan, than between
the native form and the English rendering. Clearly Spanish would not
be a better medium than English: for to-day there is more English than
Spanish spoken in the Islands; besides, Spanish never penetrated into
the very lives of the peasants, as English penetrates to-day by way
of the school-house. I have endeavored to offset the disadvantages
of the foreign medium by judicious and painstaking directions to my
informants in the writing-down of the tales. Only in very rare cases
was there any modification of the original version by the teller,
as a concession to Occidental standards. Whatever substitutions I
have been able to detect I have removed. In practically every case,
not only to show that these are bona fide native stories, but also
to indicate their geographical distribution, I have given the name
of the narrator, his native town, and his province. In many cases I
have given, in addition, the source of his information. I am firmly
convinced that all the tales recorded here represent genuine Filipino
tradition so far as the narrators are concerned, and that nothing
has been "manufactured" consciously.

But what is "native," and what is "derived"? The folklore of the
wild tribes--Negritos, Bagobos, Igorots--is in its way no more
"uncontaminated" than that of the Tagalogs, Pampangans, Zambals,
Pangasinans, Ilocanos, Bicols, and Visayans. The traditions of
these Christianized tribes present as survivals, adaptations,
modifications, fully as many puzzling and fascinating problems as
the popular lore of the Pagan peoples. It should be remembered,
that, no matter how wild and savage and isolated a tribe may be,
it is impossible to prove that there has been no contact of that
tribe with the outside civilized world. Conquest is not necessary
to the introduction of a story or belief. The crew of a Portuguese
trading-vessel with a genial narrator on board might conceivably be
a much more successful transmitting-medium than a thousand praos full
of brown warriors come to stay. Clearly the problem of analyzing and
tracing the story-literature of the Christianized tribes differs only
in degree from that connected with the Pagan tribes. In this volume
I have treated the problem entirely from the former point of view,
since there has been hith