eir
daughter to him. After this Juan is a good and sensible fellow,
and does not do foolish things any more.

Notes.

This long, loosely-constructed droll is not of any fixed length,
according to the narrator; adventures are added or omitted at the
caprice of the story-teller. It would be useless to attempt to parallel
the tale as a whole, because of the very nature of its composition. The
separate incidents, however, we may examine, pointing out analogues
already in print, and citing others from my own manuscript collection.

(1) "If it smells bad, it's dead." This joke is common among the
Tagalogs and Pampangans, and forms the basis of many of their comical
stories. As an example I will give the opening of a story entitled
"Ricardo and his Adventures" narrated by Paulo Macasaet, a Tagalog
from Batangas:--

Ricardo and his Adventures.

Once there was a widow who had a son named Ricardo. One day the mother
said to the boy, "Ricardo, I want you to go to school, so that you
may learn something about our religion." Ricardo was willing enough,
so he took his Catechism and set out. Instead of going to the school,
however, he went to a neighboring pond and listened to the merry
croaking of the frogs. When eleven o'clock came, he went home and
told his mother about the real school. The poor woman was very happy,
thinking that her son was spending his time wisely. Ricardo took great
delight in joining the chorus of the frogs, for his mother gave him
food as a reward for his diligence.

One morning the woman asked her son to read his lesson. The boy opened
his Catechism and croaked very loudly. His mother was glad when she
heard that her son could croak so well, because she thought that that
was the way to read the book.

As Ricardo was playing with his schoolmates one day, he saw a dead
cat. It smelled very bad, so he left the pond and went home. He
said, "Mother, I saw a cat lying near our school. It had a very bad
odor." The mother said, "My son, remember this: whenever a body smells
bad, you may be sure that it is dead." Ricardo repeated the words of
his mother many times to himself, and learned them by heart.

One day, when he was on his way to the pond, Ricardo smelled something
bad. He looked in every direction, but he could not find anybody. So
he said, "Since I cannot find any dead body here, I must be the one
who is dead." He lay down on the ground, and said, "Ricardo is dead! I
cannot eat any more. O ho