My First Ever Poem in Isinay
HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TAKING A CROW'S BATH?
Wonderful how sunshine makes one's memory activated.
I had that experience again when I walked to and from the grocery around noon yesterday to buy mait (corn), kamote (sweet potato), and mahalila bananas) and had an overdose of the blessing from the soy-ang (sun).
Foremost of the sunshine-generated recollections I had was the term omos si gayang.
I'm sure many people of Dupax don't use it either as a term or as way of taking a bath. But yes, omos si gayang is the Isinay term for "taking a bath using no soap or shampoo or bath towel".
In Ilokano, we call it digos uwak.
To find out what the internet has anything to say about this practice or style, I googled "crow's bath".
Except for a litany of tips on how to prevent crows from messing the birdbath, not one of the hits came close to the crow's bath that I'm discussing here.
Actually, I was curious if omos si gayang is also practiced in other places outside the Philippines. I'm certain it is not a monopoly of my countrymen.
But more important, I wanted to know how the uwak (crow or raven) came to be the bird used among us Isinays and Ilocanos to symbolize taking a bath without soap.
In case you didn't know, other sun-loving birds also do it. I delighted seeing a number of feathered friends bathe in the shallow parts of the river in upstream Dupax -- kalapati (dove), tulin (billit-tuleng in Ilokano, maya in Tagalog), martines (mynah), and osberd (wood sparrow, mayang-bahay in Tagalog).
As a kid, particularly when my father bought me a boldog (bulldog) bicycle, I often went to the river in I-iyo to have a soap-less bath.
For one thing, I loved the joy of fully immersing my body on sun-warmed and free-flowing water. I enjoyed, too, the sound of running water and the colorful action and scenes by the river, including carabaos and birds also doing their baths.
Yes, each time I go to my hometown, I still prefer taking a bath in the river often with only a smooth stone for bubbur (is-iso in Ilokano, panghilod in Tagalog) to rub off the dirt on my arms, body, and legs.
WE USED TO EQUATE HALLOWEEN WITH "KANKANEN"
LAST HALLOWEEN I joined my twin grandkids here in New Jersey in their very first "trick-or-treat" experience. Their mom held them so they would not lose their shoes & bunny tails, their dad led the way to the rooms that were open for such kiddie event during Halloween, and I was the official photographer.
Compared to the bigger kids in the 25-storey condo, the twins' tiny hands could only grab enough candies, chocolates and lollipops to cover the bottom of their plastic-pumpkin containers. But they were happy....
And all the while I was also happy remembering.
Foremost among the flashbacks that played in my mind was how, as a kid, I also used to go house to house with my cousins in my grandparents' barrio during Undas.
That was in Palabotan when it was not yet a barangay and was still a sitio (smaller than a barrio) and was more popularly called I-iyo.
Of course, we didn't use the words Halloween and Undas then. The former was only used in school, in much the same manner that we pupils had next to zero knowledge on what "All Saints Day" and "All Souls Day" were all about.
In fairness, days before those days, we young ones were herded by our teachers to the kampusanto to pull cogon grass and other weeds growing on the sides of tombs -- and on the side, the more naughty among us boys would pick up a bone fragment -- sometimes a skull with some teeth still grinning -- from an antique and open tomb and then use it to show off their bravery or to scare our giggling classmate girls.
I recall I never heard the word undas uttered in my little community then. Nor did I ever hear the Isinay translation Pistan si Natoy of the Tagalog Araw ng mga Patay.
Instead, we used the Ilokano Panagkakararua or simply Kararua.
Yes, we also sang or rather half-shouted Halloween songs then. I remember the English version went like this:
I am glad when it's Halloween // when it's said that ghosts can be seen // tan-tan-tan-tan-tan-tan-ta-tan // then we'll eat some sweet guinatan!"
Sorry I forgot the words of the third stanza. But here's the Filipino (then called Pilipino or simply Tagalog) version:
Kaluluwa'y dumaratal (dumaratal) // sa tapat ng durungawan (durungawan) // kampanilya'y tinatangtang (tinatangtang) // ginigising ang maybahay (maybahay). Kung kami po'y lilimusan (lilimusan) // dali-dali nyo pong bigyan (nyo pong bigyan) // baka kami'y mapagsarhan (mapagsarhan) // ng pinto ng kalangitan (kalangitan)!
Note the words in parentheses. They are sang by those in the "second voice" or in this case the back-up "tsuwariwariwap" singers that were the chorus singing style in those days.
Of course, Dupax being then half populated by Ilocanos (including the faculty of the Dupax Central Elementary School), there is also an Iloko/Ilokano version of the Pangaluluwa song:
Naragsak ti agkararua (agkararua) // kunada nga adda al-alia (al-alia) // agrararagtayo ngarud (tayo ngarud) // satayto mangan ti kankanen (kankanen)!
The tsuwariwariwap words of this Ilokano version would often be changed depending on the seriousness or lack of it of the singers and the singing venue. Thus, agkararua would become "agkarawa" (grope other person's private parts), al-alia would become "ar-aria" (meaning the carolers be on the alert with their pranks), tayo ngarud would be "tay sarukod", and kankanen would be "dudumen" (pinipig in Tagalog) or "kankanun" (the genuine Iloko pronunciation of the word where the letter E sounds like muffled U).
...
UNLIKE IN the USA, there was no need to make any trick-threats during Halloween when I was young. This, even as there were anecdotes of chicken gone missing or a ladder moved somewhere (especially if the house-owners were known for being "naimut" (stingy) and would not give even a single tupig no matter how good the singers' voices were or how well-meaning and well-behaved the kararua visitors were.
I digress, but my coconut remembers a song reserved for houses whose residents do not even wake up to say sorry they were not able to make kankanen. It went like this:
Bulbulong ti appatut // kararuayo nga naim-imot // umulog ti makarurod // ta pak-olak iti sarukod! (Literal translation: Leaves of the achuete // your stingy souls // come down whoever is annoyed // and I'll hit his head with a walking cane!)
Fortunately for me, I never encountered "selfish" houses in my boyhood barrio. In fact, there were even occasions my group didn't need to sing Halloween songs. We would just approach the mother/s of the house and give the perfunctory greeting "Kararuayo, apo!" (literally Kaluluwa po nyo!). In turn they would say something like "Ay, tay apoko ni Baket Feliza dayta!" (Oh, that's the grandkid of old woman Feliza!) After which they would hand us generous samples of the kankanen (Tagalog kakanin) they prepared for All Saints & All Souls.
Yes, being an apo to my grandmother, who was the only mammaltot or hilot (barefoot midwife) in the village at the time, was a good passport. Thus, after going the rounds of the then barely 30 houses in the barrio, I would go home with my pasiking full of my share.
I wonder how, unlike today, the tupig, baduya and linapet that we collected then were able to last many days. I recall they would still be delicious snacks when a week later I would do my chores of splitting firewood, shooing away chickens from raiding the peanuts being dried in the yard, etc. -- or when my friends and I went gallivanting with our carabaos and slingshots in the hills and later in the river.
THE DEER AS SYMBOL OF THE DUPAX THAT WAS
Why do I weep when my heart should feel no pain
Why do I sigh that my friends come not again
Grieving for forms now departed long ago
I hear their gentle voices calling Old Black Joe!
...
THOSE LINES, from Stephen Foster's classic parlor song "Old Black Joe", should give the clue to one of the reasons behind my sharing nostalgic stories of Dupax.
Yes, it is a longing for those days when, another song (this time "Try to Remember" by the Brothers Four) says, "grass was green and grain was yellow" and (still from one more song, "Greenfields") "there were green fields kissed by the sun" and "valleys where rivers used to run".
Oh well, I could go on and on with songs where "the mood is one of gentle melancholy, of sorrow without bitterness"... but let me now tell why I chose the picture of the two deer as signature photo for Dupax Stories.
To me, the deer thus depicted signify a number of things:
First, they tell history, particularly that Dupax (including both Sur and Norte) used to be rich in deer and other wildlife, including wild plants and thick forests where such animals lived.
Second, the deer's white color (though it may not have been intended to be that way when I shot the photo in June 2015) implies both ghosts and the prevalent color of tombs in the cemetery -- which means that there are no more deer where they used to be found, and what remains are just memories.
And third, the deer are male and female -- which should mean hope, hope that somehow somewhere someday in Dupax there would be such a couple of deer again that would give birth to young ones, until such lost glory of Dupax being a deer-abundant and forest-rich country would come back and make all of us happy again!
STORIES OF OLD, LIKE RAINBOWS, GIVE US JOY AND HOPE
THE STORIES shared in this Dupax Stories blog are narratives that I initially felt foolish to tell.
Foolish, because most of them are about the past -- like the virgin and wildlife-rich forests that Dupax and most other towns of the Philippines used to have but are now just pitiful remnants.
They are about places, creatures, lifeways, people, and events that are either too remote or “too yesterday” for today’s audiences.
Thus, it took me sometime to start this blog. Each time I would sit before the computer even if only to list the possible titles of the stories I would tell, I would be haunted with this: “Who cares about stories of old when there are tons and tons of other -- and more recent -- stories to hear or read out there?”
But then I realized that I would be more foolish, and also guilty, if I didn’t give it a try.
Why?
Because I believe that stories, no matter how old, have their reasons for being. They inspire. They bring out the rainbow on otherwise gloomy days. They give hope. (Yes, remember the oft-repeated stories of Adam&Eve, Noah's Ark, and David&Goliath.)
And also because, even if the stories here are definitely not of Biblical proportions, they have never been told. Meaning, they are original. Or, granting that other storytellers may have somehow touched their themes somewhere, their stories don’t totally look, sound, smell, and taste the same as – eherm… -- the ones waving at you in this little house, as it were.
Another “because” can be gleaned in the following story that I’m telling for the first time:
For the past ten years I have been doing what no other creature from Dupax today is doing -- that is, word hunting, fishing, and digging.
No sir, not just any word but all the words I could find to flesh out my dream to make what may yet be the very first comprehensive dictionary in Isinay, the formerly main but now dying language of Aritao, Bambang, and Dupax del Sur – three old municipalities in the southern part of Nueva Vizcaya.
The word “dying” may be too shocking. But, oh well, that’s how it hit me when I found out that in my hometown, many Isinay words that were commonly used when I was small are already Greek or alien to children, even those with Isinay parents. For example, tavungeyon (rainbow), dalimahon (termite hill), i^irung (firefly), pipingngaw (the bird swallow), and sappilan (the goby fish).
In my word hunting, I also found terms that even my Isinay father, uncles, aunts, and playmates did not use or, rather, I never heard them speak, during my childhood. Three such words are: teyantah (river bank), tahelle^ (the dancing moves of a rooster before making love with his beloved partner), mandogdoggo^ (hovering between life and death), and Duviral (Christmas).
To cut the story, it dawned on me that very much like such Isinay words, many of the stories about how Dupax was siren poto^ (many years ago) would soon be buried and forgotten unless they are passed on as oral history to its citizens and other people who care.
It is therefore this need, among other imperatives, to help prevent such a sad scenario from happening, that this little house of Dupax Stories is dedicated.
A warm welcome then, wonderful people, for visiting. Whether you are a homesick overseas Filipino, a young-at-heart senior citizen, or an accidental visitor, I have many more delicious items for you being prepared in my kitchen. So please do come back anytime you have time.
Oh yes, should you wish to enrich, corroborate, check, or know some more of the stories, please feel free to give your feedback in the COMMENTS section below. Alternatively, you can flick my ear by email (charlzcastro@yahoo.com) or tap my back thru Facebook.