Reading Notes: Filipino Popular Tales, Part A

The Three Friends: the Monkey, the Dog, and the Carabao

Honestly, I didn't read this story because I have a slight phobia of snakes. So when I saw the photo, I immediately clicked to the next story.

 
Three Brothers of Fortune

I think the boys should be homeschooled and the boys should be triplet girls of the age of 12. I might make the book, the mat and the stone different objects. This story seems to be genie like in a sense, and I think I would make the story more practical and use objects that could actually fix things. There wouldn't be a woman dying, but instead a woman almost drowning and the girls have to figure out how to save her with the three tools each of them has. But they three girls are so spoiled rotten and don't think for themselves that the woman almost drowns because it takes forever for the girls to figure out what they should do. The story would continue on to that the woman says she owes the girls, but can only pay one, give food to the other and give books to the last. The girls don't want any of it.
The Clever Husband and Wife

I honestly would not make this a happy ending. I would make it so that the husband and his wife learned a valuable lesson about money and faking death and lying. 

 
The Devil and the Guachinango

I would change the end so that the devil died once all the bells were rung. I think the princess shouldn't have married the guachinango at all. She should marry a poor boy, whom I would add in as a character. She would fall in love with the poor boy, but instead have to be forced to marry the guachinango because of the devil. When the guachinango sees that the princess isn't in love with him but instead, the poor boy, he would try to back down, but the devil would insist that he stay and finish what he started. 

Church bells. Source: Imagejournal.org

Bibliography: These stories come from Dean Fansler's monumental Filipino Popular Tales, published in 1921.


Note: All of these stories are well-thought out, but the endings seem abrupt and too positive. I would definitely change my own story to make a lesson out of the characters that are negative or evil.