erto a tendency to neglect as of small value
the stories of the Christianized peoples. However, for illustrative
material I have drawn freely on works dealing with the non-Christian
tribes, particularly in the case of stories that appear to be native;
and I shall use the term "native" to mean merely "existent in the
Islands before the Spaniards went there."

In the notes, I have attempted to answer for some of the tales the
question as to what is native and what imported. I have not been
able to reach a decision in the case of all, because of a lack of
sufficient evidence. While the most obvious sources of importation
from the Occident have been Spain and Portugal, the possibility
of the introduction of French, Italian, and even Belgian stories
through the medium of priests of those nationalities must not be
overlooked. Furthermore, there is a no inconsiderable number of Basque
sailors to be found on the small inter-island steamers that connect
one end of the archipelago with the other. Even a very cursory glance
at the tales in this collection reveals the fact that many of them
are more or less close variants and analogues of tales distributed
throughout the world. How or when this material reached the Philippines
is hard to say. The importation of Arabian stories, for example,
might have been made over many routes. The Hindoo beast-tales, too,
might have quite circled the globe in their progress from east to west,
and thus have been introduced to the Filipinos by the Spaniards and
Portuguese. Again, the germs of a number of widespread Maerchen may have
existed in the archipelago long before the arrival of the Europeans,
and, upon the introduction of Occidental civilization and culture,
have undergone a development entirely consistent with the development
that took place in Europe, giving us as a result remarkably close
analogues of the Western tales. This I suspect to have been the case
of some of our stories where, parallel with the localized popular
versions, exist printed romances (in the vernacular) with the mediaeval
flavor and setting of chivalry. To give a specific case: the Visayans,
Bicols, and Tagalogs in the coast towns feared the raids of Mindanao
Mussulmans long before white feet trod the shores of the Islands, and
many traditions of conflicts with these pirates are embedded in their
legends. The Spaniard came in the sixteenth century, bringing with
him stories of wars between Christians and Saracens in E