Tubigan

1. The Religious Dimensions of Some Philippine Folktales. Link directs to a pdf file, Nanzon University, PH, pdf file link: nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/954
Scroll down to page 16,
"The Boholanos believed that their ancestors came from heaven that is why they are peaceful, peace-loving and good natured:

The people were living beyond the sky. One day, the chiefs daughter
fell sick.
The medicine man of the barangay said:
“The cure is in
the roots of this wild Balite tree (Ficus closiodes). Dig around it and let
her arms touch the root.5
5
They dug around the root and they placed the sick girl in the trench,
when suddenly the woman fell through the hole in the sky. Below the sky
was a big water. Two gakits (wild ducks: Anas poecilorhyncha luzonica)
saw the woman fall. They caught her lightly on their backs where she
THE R E L IG IO U S D IM E N S IO N S
67
rested. The gakits found Big Turtle. When Big Turtle saw the woman,
he called a council of all swimming animals. They said:
“We must save
the woman and make her a home•”
The leader commanded the frog:
“Dive and bring up dirt from the
tree roots.” The frog tried and failed.
The mouse tried also and failed. Finally,the Big Toad volunteered:
“ I will try.”
At this, all animals jeered and laughed except Big Turtle who said:
“You do well to try. Perhaps you will be lucky .,
,
The Old Toad took a long breath and went down, down.
At last a
bubble of air came up and the Old Toad followed. In its mouth she
carried a few grains of sand,which she spread around the edge of Big
Turtle’s shell. Then an island grew on Big Turtle’s back, and it became
Bohol island, and the woman lived upon it.
If anyone will examine carefully the shape of the turtle’s back, he will
find some similarity to the shape of the island of Bohol.
The woman seemed to feel cold.
She needed more light to keep her
warm.
The animals held a council again.
Said Little Turtle:
“If I could only get up into the sky, I could gather the lightning and make a
light.”
.
.
“You do well to try, perhaps you will be lucky,” said the Big Turtle.
One day, not long after dark, a whirling cloud carried Little Turtle up
into the sky where he gathered lightning, and made sun and moon that
gave light to the woman.

There follows then the woman’s living with an old man
whom she found on the island and how they begot tw ins: Good
One and Bad One. After the disappearance of Bad One, Good
One made the Boholanos by “taking two lumps of earth and
shaped them like figures. Then he spat upon them and they
became man and woman. They were endowed by Good One
with sterling qualities, like industry, hospitality, obedience,
good-nature and peace-loving.”
We should link this myth with the myth of the Ascension
into Heaven according to which Tubigan, the legendary hero of
Bohol, himself a demi-god brought his entire people up to
heaven in a boat. This return to heaven is in reality a return
to their home: for, according to the myth, the Boholanos ori­
ginated from the heavenly realms.
 
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This story sounds strikingly similar to Rebecca Mayor's story told at the 2nd Intl Babaylan Conference.  Cross reference with Rebecca needed.
The story of Tubigan says that he would eventually take his entire people to heaven in a boat, because that is where they are from.
 
2. The Ascension into Heaven. A Folktale from Bohol, Philippines, Maria Casenas, from the text Anthropos, originally published 1906.  From JSTOR.org website, download available for purchase or free online with registration. Website http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40451112?uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103744478271 , stable web address: http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=anthroposinst .  
 excerpt of sample:  
In a remote barrio of Carmen, Bohol, there lived a pure and virtuous woman.  All her life she tried to do things which would please others, and there was not anything about her that one could not admire.  One sunny day, this woman was walking along the river, and feeling warm, she sat down under a tree to rest.  The shade was cool and refreshing and she had not sat there long when she suddenly realized that everything around her had changed.  The eetation that had been wilting in the heat  was now green and diademed with slivery dew-drops. "Surely", she said to herself: "I mut have slept overnight"
  She started for home but all nature seemed to bid her stay.  The wind whispered a song through the leaves of the trees, and the branches seemed to bow to her as hse passed,  The grass parted to make way for her feet.  overwhelmed by the reverence done to her, her  limbs became numb and heavy, and she felt she, who only in a dream had met her pure-hearted lover now dead and sleeping beneath the grass, should  bear the burden of a mother.  In that desolate place, her boy child was born.  She called him Tubigan because he was born by the river.
  Tubigan was unlike other children.  He grew very fast and soon was not a baby any more, but a half-grown boy.  One day he went down to the seashore, at Loay at Hinawanan Beach.  When he arrived there, he hid in the bushes.  After a while six fishermen came to the place and began to divide their catch among themselves, puttin the fish in six piles.  When everyone had taken his share, there was one pile left over.  They re-divided the fish several times, but there was always that one pile left over...{end sample provided}