In the past Balladeer’s Blog has examined neglected epic myths from around the world. From Vietnam I dealt with A War Between Gods, from the Navajo pantheon I explored the saga of the war god Nayanazgeni battling the dark gods called the Anaye and I even examined the Dinka people’s epic about Aiwel Longar.
Epics from Inuit, Iroquois, Chinese, Korean and Bunyoro myths were also tackled.
This time around I move on to the Philippines for a look at the epic myth of the demigod named Baybayan.
BAYBAYAN
This enjoyable and often action-packed tale comes from the Bukidnon people of the Philippine island of Mindanao. This story fuses native Bukidnon beliefs with elements of Vietnamese, Christian and Muslim myths.
Baybayan’s mother, whose real name was considered too sacred to share with non-Bukidnons, was a beautiful and virtuous mortal woman. In Philippine myths the gods in Skyland found Earth women to be more beautiful than the goddeses in their celestial homeland. One of those gods frequently visited Baybayan’s mother in her dreams and had sex with her. (Exact godly parentage was never an obsession in Philippine or Vietnamese myths. It was enough to just refer to a hero as “the child of a god and a mortal woman.”) Continue reading
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