“You must stay there,” said Lumawig, “because you have troubled me a great deal.”  And they went home, leaving him in the rock.

Some time after this Lumawig decided to go back to the sky to live, but before he went he took care that his wife should have a home.  He made a coffin of wood [103] and placed her in it with a dog at her feet and a cock at her head.  And as he set it floating on the water, [104] he told it not to stop until it reached Tinglayen.  Then, if the foot end struck first, the dog should bark; and if the head end was the first to strike, the cock should crow.  So it floated away, and on and on, until it came to Tinglayen.

Now a widower was sharpening his ax on the bank of the river, and when he saw the coffin stop, he went to fish it out of the water.  On shore he started to open it, but Fugan cried out, “Do not drive a wedge, for I am here,” So the widower opened it carefully and took Fugan up to the town, and then as he had no wife of his own, he married her.

How the First Head was Taken [105]

Igorot

One day the Moon, who was a woman named Kabigat, sat out in the yard making a large copper pot.  The copper was still soft and pliable like clay, and the woman squatted on the ground with the heavy pot against her knees while she patted and shaped it. [106]

Now while she was working a son of Chal-chal, the Sun, came by and stopped to watch her mould the form.  Against the inside of the jar she pressed a stone, while on the outside with a wooden paddle dripping with water she pounded and slapped until she had worked down the bulges and formed a smooth surface.

The boy was greatly interested in seeing the jar grow larger, more beautiful, and smoother with each stroke, and he stood still for some time.  Suddenly the Moon looked up and saw him watching her.  Instantly she struck him with her paddle, cutting off his head.

Now the Sun was not near, but he knew as soon as the Moon had cut off his son’s head.  And hurrying to the spot, he put the boy’s head back on, and he was alive again.

Then the Sun said to the Moon, “You cut off my son’s head, and because you did this ever after on the earth people will cut off each other’s heads.”

The Serpent Eagle [107]

Igorot

Once there lived two boys whose mother sent them every day to the forest to get wood [108] for her fires.  Each morning, as they started out, she gave them some food for their trip, but it was always poor and there was little of it, and she would say: 

“The wood that you brought yesterday was so poor that I cannot give you much to eat today.”

The boys tried very hard to please her, but if they brought nice pine wood she scolded them, and if they brought large dry reeds she said: 

“These are no good for my fire, for they leave too much ashes in the house.”

Try as they would, they failed to satisfy her; and their bodies grew very thin from working hard all day and from want of enough to eat.