The mythology of the Ifugaos

262 Pages·1955·13.227 MB·English

by  Roy Franklin Barton

Mythology of the Ifugaos
1956
NUNC COGNOSCO EX PARTE
THOMAS J. BATA LIBRARY
TRENT UNIVERSITY
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in 2019 with funding from
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://archive.org/details/mythologyofifugaOOOObart

MEMOIRS OF THE
AMERICAN FOLKLORE SOCIETY
VOLUME 46
1955
library
frent UnW OHT.

The Mythology of the Ifugaos
By
Roy Franklin Barton
PHILADELPHIA
AMERICAN FOLKLORE SOCIETY
1955
All rights reserved by
the American Folklore Society
Printed in Germany at J. J. Augustin, Gluckstadt
Foreword
“The Mythology of the Ifugaos” is the last to be published of the
three major manuscript volumes which the late Roy Franklin Barton
preserved through Iris Japanese captivity in the Philippines and
brought back to America to revise and edit in the few years that
remained to him before his untimely death in 1947. “The Religion of
the Ifugaos” was published in 1946 as Memoir 65 of the American
Anthropological Association, and “The Kalingas” in 1939 by the
University of Chicago Press.
Barton possessed an extraordinary gift for entering into rapport
with primitive peoples and their institutions and for portraying these
with their psychological implications. This faculty shows throughout
the present volume. He lived eight years with the Ifugao, all told,
spoke the language, and collected all myths in text.
From the point of view of literature, the semi-poetical recitatives
of myths 1 and 2 are of outstanding interest. They are presented with
the Ifugao and English in parallel columns in line-for-line equivalence,
enabling the reader to taste for himself the literary quality of the
Ifugao text in Barton’s marvelously exact and vivid translation,
which does equal justice to native content and native form. That the
near-metrical form was wholly aboriginal seems doubtful now, in
view of what Fred Eggan has recently published from the Sagada
Igorot, and Richard Howell on Ainu verse form, also in the Journal
of American Folklore. But whether these attempts at narrative poetry
originated spontaneously or under stimulus of foreign influences, they
are equally interesting for their bearing on the philosophy of litera¬
ture.
The third and fourth myths in the present volume also retain the
Ifugao text as well as its English translation, and thus provide a
sample of Ifugao “prose.”
Barton had kept the Ifugao original also in myths 7, 29, and 30.
This the present writer has reluctantly sacrificed in order to keep
down cost of publication; but the three texts are being deposited
with the University of Chicago in its Anthropology Department.
In Part I, Barton analyzes the qualities of Ifugao mythology from
several angles. He considers the myth as an instrument of ritual
magic. He goes at some length into the form, style, and literary
v
Foreword
VI
attributes of the mythology. And he discusses the classification,
affiliations, and possible origin of the principal motifs in the Ifugao
corpus of myths. These he divides into “general” or widely spread
motifs and “recent” or locally developed ones. The latter group he
subdivides into “traditional,” “invented,” and “contest type.” The
names of the classes are unusual, but it is quickly evident what they
represent, and Barton substantiated his interpretations by interesting
analyses of several narratives.
Throughout, we are brought in contact, through a vigorous and
original mind, with the products of the active mythopoeic faculties
of an also vigorous and original native people. Barton thoroughly
respected Ifugao creativity, without sentimentally overvaluing it,
and thereby earns the respect of scholars for his role as transmitter
and interpreter.
A. L. Kroeber
The officers of The American Folklore Society
wish to express their gratitude to A. L. Kroeber for
undertaking the difficult task of editing the author’s
posthumous manuscript.
The publication of this work is made possible through generous
subventions by the Bollingen Foundation, Inc., and the Philippine
Studies Program (supported by the Carnegie Corporation) of the
University of Chicago.