Oral Lore from Pre-Colonial

• 1564 is the year of Oral Lore from Pre-Colonial
• Oral lore was passed through the generations by word of mouth, and was often used to explain the natural world.
• Riddles/Bugtong - to see similarity between the object being described & object that is referred to
• Proverbs/Salawikain - good behavior laws/rules as practical guides in living life (imparts lesson)
• Chants/Bulong - used in witchcraft & enchantment
• Short Poems - quatrains (4 lines) with monoryhming (1 rhyme used) heptasyllabic (7 syllable) line
• Ambahan - short poems in pre colonial (name from Hanunoo - Mangyan of Mindoro)
• Tanaga - short poems in spanish colonial (named in Sanlucar and Noceda's Vocabulario)
• Folksong - expresses hope & aspiration, lifestyle traditions
• Kundiman - songs of love
• Kumintang/tagumpay - songs of war
• Ang Dalit/Imno - songs to Visayan Gods
• Oyayi/Hele - lullaby
• Diona - songs for wedding
• Soliranin - songs for laborer
• Talindaw - songs for fishing
• Pananambitan/Tagulalay - song for the dead
• Prose Narratives - sentences & paragraphs that tells stories
• Prose Narratives

  Myth/Mito - explains natural phenomenon (Gods & supernatural beings)
• Prose Narratives

  Legends (Alamat) - regarded true & set in more remote period
• Prose Narratives

  Folktales (Kwentong Bayan) - made up of stories that one can drive lessons about life
• Prose Narratives

  Fables (Pabula) - animals are characters that impart lessons
• Rituals & Dance drama - simplest form are mostly mimetic dances imitating natural cycles & work activities
• Damania Eugenio - defined epics as “long heroic narratives which recount the adventures of tribal heroes
• E. Arsenio Manuel - He said the 6 characteristics of epic
• Bidasari - Moro epic
• Biag ni Lam-ang - Ilokano Epic
• Maragas - Visayan epic
• Parang Sabir - Moro epic
• Godinez-Ortega - he said "a form of folk lyric which expresses the hopes and aspirations, the people’s lifestyles as well as their loves."
• Doctrina Christiana- first literature piece in the Philippines
• Who wrote Doctrina Christiana 


  Padre Juan de Plasencia
• Pre-colonial Period - considered to be the longest period of Philippine lit.
• Pre-colonial Period - Literature bore the mark of the community
• Characteristics

  • spontaneous and instinctive
  • uses the language of daily life
  • crude in ideology and phraseology
• Conventions

  • formulaic repetitions
  • stereotyping of character
  • regular RHYTHMIC and MUSICAL devices
• Riddles (bugtong) - require the audience to see the similarity between objects described and the object that is actually referred to.