The Cañao
Media
Part of The Young Citizen: The Magazine for Young People
- Title
- The Cañao
- Year
- 1941
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- THE YOUNG CiriZEN READING TIME FOR YOUNG FOLKS v/ THE CANAO By FILOMENO BISCOCHO • AMONG the lgorotes of Mo�ntain Prov- A platform was made of pine s�plings. ince it has long been the custom to have The pigs and the carabao were to be a caiiao from time. to time. Caiiao is an butchered there. All the neighbors, and lgorot word among the mountain people of course the medicine man, too, were in for a meeting with singing, dancing, and vited to the caiiao. Dishes wer·e bar eating. The following is a true story rowed. Pine torches were secured, for and gives one of the reasons· for holding the feasting would be carried on even an lgorot caiiao: after it was no longer light. It seem's that an lgorot girl was sick. The sick girl remained in the house. This _girl had attended school, a�d so She remembered what her teacher had , knew the better way of recovering from said: "You should open the windows to some kind of sickness: But these be�tcr admit ·fr.esh air." So she said to her sister, ways learned at. the school were not ac- "It is very warm. My eyes are burning. cepted by the older generation. So the· Please open the windows." Then she medicine man was called to cure the sick remembered that her parents' house was· fourteen-year old Igorot girl. window-less, dark, and smoke-stained. "The spirits are very angry," said the "Never mind," the sick girl's sister med-icine man. "Ther·e is nothing we said. "You will soon get well. All the can do except to have a caitao to appease signs show that you will get well. There the spirits." were many bubbles in the rice wine when The sick girl heard the word caiiao . . Yotokan and I were. dancing �around it." Turning to the medicine man, she said_, Yotokan was a boy, arid he was a class "Our teacher told us that caiiaos do no mate of the sick girl. · They were of the good-they just waste our pigs and cara- same age. Her parents liked her to baos. They are useless. It is time th'at marry Yotokan, but she wanted to study we should stop this superstitious native to become a teacher. custom." . She heard the beating of th-e ganzas But the medicine man only said to the and the agongs outside, the laughing and girl's mother, "Let us have the caiiao." the occasional yells and the other noises The girl saw her mother, who was squat- incidental to the caiiao. Then she sank ting in the room, nod assent. into a deep slumber. Accordingly, preparations were made The next morning she was better, and for the caiiao. The girl's father decided in a few days returned to school. to. sacrifice three pigs and a carabao. So Of course, everybody except the girl he brought home three pigs and the very believed that she recovered because of carabao which the girl used to feed and · the sacrifices. She knew tbey had noth ride on the hillside to a nearby stream. • Principal, Pacdal Elementary School, Baguio, l\Iountain Province. ing to do with it. "Alas!" thought the girl. "The old customs are still with us!"