Review of Book, GoodReads- Ibalong: The Bikol Folk Epic-Fragment...

Ibalong: The Bikol Folk Epic-Fragment: English and Bikol Translation, Views and Comments, author Merito B. Espinas.

Title recommended by Diyan, a Bikolana, in 2016.

Review:

Probably the most complete study about the Bikol epic fragment--as of now.

That comment, since the book suffers from a lot of defects which readers should really look out for. The author quotes from obsolete sources such as H. Otley Beyer's claim that a friar (who?) burned ancient scrolls (when did pre-Hispanic non-Muslim Filipinos use scrolls?) and defunct ideas such as the Lemuria hypothesis. And with shoddy research, the analysis and conclusions logically suffer as well; I was particularly incensed with the author's specious attempt at equivocating the commonly agreed occurrence of the Stone Age in prehistory by quoting a not so PC opinion in an old edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, to argue that the Ifugaos had a "more recent" Stone Age than the Bicolanos, and ergo, the Alim (the Ifugao folk epic) is younger than the Ibalong (and insert here the assertion that the precolonial Bicolanos are more advanced because they have writing and a more complex civilization--again from a single biased source). I couldn't care less about ethnic vaunting, but why do it in quasi-scholarly, quasi-jingoist hocus pocus whose pretenses quickly fall into shambles anyway? Moreover, the author believes that the Ibalong is older (which we observed is one iota less than "greater") than the Iliad (5000 years old compared to the Greek epic's 3000) and that it was written during Noah's Flood (perhaps a forced connection to Christianity?). And that is just in one seating! Despite the author's own caveat--which is somehow written on the middle of the book already--of separating fact from legend, it is ironic that the author himself fails this basic test
of academic skepticism.

On the good side, I really learned a lot about the folkloric background of the epic fragment, but I guess I could easily do that by doing my own research and consulting other sources. The author simply compressed all that information in a measly book.

Future scholars should take note of the errors committed by the work to finally give justice to this oft-unexplored gem of Bicolandia through rigorous, stringent scholarship--and yes please, since this book is really, really bad for a first try. (less)