Juan the Orphan
Narrated by Leopoldo Uichanco, a Tagalog from Calamba, La Laguna.
There once lived a boy whose name was Juan. His parents had died, leaving Juan nothing but a horse. As he did not have a place at home in which to keep the animal, he begged his Uncle Diego to let the horse stay in his stable. From time to time Juan went to the stable to feed his horse. He loved the animal, and took as great care of it as a father would of a son.
One day Uncle Diego noticed that Juan’s horse was growing fatter and more beautiful than any of his own animals. In his envy he killed the horse of his nephew, and said to the innocent boy that the animal had been stricken by “bad air.” Being thus deprived of his sole wealth, Juan cut off the best meat from the dead horse, and with this food for his only provision he set out to seek his fortune in another country. On his way through a forest he came across an old man dying of starvation; but the old man had with him a bag full of money.
“Pray,” said the old man, talking with difficulty in his pain and weakness, “what have you in your sack, my son?”
“Some dried horse-meat,” said Juan.
“Let me see!” The old man looked into the sack, and saw with watering mouth the sweet-smelling meat. “Will you exchange your sack of meat for my sack of money?” he said to Juan. “I have money here, but I cannot eat it. Nor can I go to the town to buy food, because I am too weak. Since you are stronger, my son, pray take this sack of money in exchange, and go to the town and buy meat with it for yourself. For God’s sake, leave this meat to me! I am starving to death.”
Juan accepted the money in exchange for his meat, and pretended to feel great pity for the old man. He put the heavy bag of money on his shoulder, and with difficulty carried it home. “Uncle Diego!” Juan called out from the foot of his uncle’s ladder, “come here! Please come here and help me carry this bag upstairs!”
“Tremendous sum of money,” Uncle Diego remarked to his nephew. “Where did you get it?”
“I sold the meat of my dead horse. This is what I got for it,” said Juan.
The uncle once more became jealous of Juan. “If with only one horse,” he muttered to himself, “he could gain so much money, how much should I get for my fifteen horses!” So he killed all the horses he had in his stable and cut the meat from them. Then he placed the meat in bags, and, carrying two on his shoulders, he cried as he went along the street, “Meat, meat! Horse-meat! Who wishes to buy fresh horse-meat?”
“How much?” asked a gray-headed old woman who was looking out of the window.
“Three hundred ninety-nine thousand pesos, ninety-nine pesetas, six and one half centavos a pound,” said Uncle Diego.
The people who heard him only laughed, and thought that something was the matter with his head. Nobody would buy his meat. Nobody cared to deal with him in earnest, and all his meat decayed.
He went home in despair, and planned to take vengeance on his nephew for the mischief he had done him. He cast the little orphan into a big sack, and sewed the mouth of the little prison all up. Then he said that at night he would take the sack and throw it into the river. However, Juan managed to get out of the bag, and in his place he put a muzzled dog. When night came, the uncle shouldered the bag, took it to the river, and hurled it into the deep water. He hoped that Juan would perish there, and that he himself could gain full possession of his nephew’s money.
But when morning came, Uncle Diego saw Juan smilingly enter the door of his house. “Juan,” said the uncle, “I am surprised to see you again. Tell me all about how you managed to escape from the sack.”
“Oh, no, Uncle!” returned Juan, “I haven’t time; there is not a moment to lose. I have only come here to bid you good-by.”
“And where are you going?”
“Back to the bottom of the river. My love, the Sirena,4 is waiting for me.”
“O Juan!” pleaded the uncle, “if I could only go with you!”
“No, no, no!” protested the boy. “Only one can go at a time. The Sirena would be angry, and she would consequently refuse to admit to her glorious habitation any being from this outside world.”
“Then let me go first!”
“No, no, no!” said the boy.
But the uncle pleaded so earnestly, that finally the boy yielded with pretended reluctance. The uncle then covered himself with a rice-sack, and Juan tied the mouth of the bag securely. “I will fool him,” Uncle Diego said to himself. “When I am under the water and the Sirena takes me to her house to become her husband, I shall never come back to Juan. Ha, ha, ha!”
“I will fool him,” Juan said to himself. “There is no such thing as the Sirena in the river. Thank God, my dreadful uncle will soon be disposed of!” At midnight Juan hurled his happy uncle into the river, saying, “There is no one who owes that must not pay his debt.5 May my act be justified!”
The heavy sack sank to the bottom of the river, and nothing more was heard of Uncle Diego.
Notes
Two other variants, which were collected by Mr. Rusk, and which I have only in abstract, run about as follows:—
Juan the Ashes-Trader.—Juan, a poor dealer in ashes, was in the woods when he heard some robbers coming, and climbed a tree for safety. While they were busy at the foot of the tree, counting their money, he dropped the sack of ashes among them. They ran away in fright, and he acquired all their gold. When the people of the town heard Juan tell how valuable ashes had become, they all burned their houses and took the ashes to the forest, where they arrived just in time to suffer from the wrath of the robbers. Only two escaped to accuse Juan; but Juan was already on a journey, doing good with his money. A dying woman, whom he helped, gave him a magic cane; and when the angry villagers at last found him, he summoned a legion of soldiers by means of his cane, and all of his assailants were killed. [With the second half of this story, cf. No. 28 and notes.]
Colassit and Colaskel.—Colassit was good but poor; Colaskel, rich but bad. Colaskel, quarrelling with Colassit, killed the latter’s only carabao. Colassit skinned his dead animal, and took the hide to Laoag to sell it, but could find no purchaser. At night he asked for shelter at a house, but was refused on the ground that the husband was away from home; yet he boldly staid under the house. At midnight he heard the clatter of dishes above, looked up through a hole in the floor, and saw the woman dining merrily with a man. Just then the husband arrived home and knocked at the door. Colassit saw the woman put her paramour into a box in the corner, and the food in another box. Colassit now appeared at the door, and was invited in by the hospitable husband. On being asked what was in his bag, Colassit replied that it was a miraculous thing, which, when it made a noise, as it had a moment before when he had stepped on it, desired to say something. On being asked to interpret, Colassit said that the skin told him that there was delicious food in one of the boxes. Thereupon the food was produced. Now, it was said in the neighborhood that this house was haunted by the Devil, and the owner thought this a good opportunity to find out by magic where the Devil was. Colassit interpreted for the carabao-hide. The Devil was in the other box, he said. After tying the box with heavy ropes, Colassit started toward the river with it. He repeated a jingle which informed the man inside of his imminent fate. The latter replied (also in verse) that he would give a thousand pesos ransom. Colassit accepted, and so became rich. [The narrator says that this is only one of ten adventures belonging to the complete story. It is a pity that the other nine are missing.]
The cycle of tales to which all our variants belong, and which may appropriately be called the “Master Cheat” cycle, is one of the most popular known. It occurs in many different forms; indeed, the very nature of the story—merely a succession of incidents in which a poor but shrewd knave outwits his rich friend or enemy (the distinction matters little to the narrator), and finally brings about his enemy’s death while he himself becomes rich—is such as to admit of indefinite expansion, so far as the number and variety of the episodes are concerned. There have been at least four comprehensive descriptive or bibliographical studies of this cycle made,—Köhler’s (on Campbell’s Gaelic story, No. 39), Cosquin’s (notes to Nos. 10 and 20), Clouston’s (2: 229–288), and Bolte-Polívka’s (on Grimm, No. 61). Of these, the last, inasmuch as it is the latest (1914) and made use of all the preceding, is the most complete. From it (2: 10) we learn that the characteristic incidents of this family of drolls are as follows:—
A¹ A rabbit (goat, bird) as carrier of messages. A² A wolf sold for a ram.
B A gold-dropping ass (or horse).
C A self-cooking vessel.
D A hat which pays the landlord.
E¹ Dirt (ashes) given (sold, substituted) for gold. E² Money which was alleged to be in a chest, demanded from the storer of the chest.
F¹ Cowhide (or “talking” bird) sold to adulteress, or (F²) sold to her husband, or (F³) exchanged for the chest in which the paramour is concealed, or (F⁴) elsewhere exchanged for money.
G¹ A flute (fiddle, staff, knife) which apparently brings to life again the dead woman. G² The dead mother killed a second time, and paid for by the supposed murderer.
H Escape of the hero from the sack (chest) by exchanging places with a shepherd.
J Death of the envious one, who wishes to secure some “marine cattle.”
The opponents in this group of stories, says Bolte, “are either village companions, or unacquainted marketers, or a rich and an avaricious brother.” In addition to the episodes enumerated above, might be mentioned two others not uncommonly found in this cycle:—
F⁵ Frightening robbers under tree by dropping hide or table on them.
F⁶ Borrowed measure returned with coins adhering to it.
As these last two occur in other stories, both droll and serious (e.g., Grimm, No. 59; and “1001 Nights,” “Ali Baba”), they may not originally have belonged to our present group. However, see Cosquin’s notes on his No. xx, “Richedeau” (1: 225 f.). It is hard to say with certainty just what was originally the one basic motif to which all the others have at one time or another become attached; but it seems to me likely that it was incident H, the sack-by-the-sea episode, for it is this which is the sine qua non of the cycle. To be sure, our third story (c) lacks it, but proves its membership in the family by means of other close resemblances.
Of the elements mentioned by Bolte-Polívka, our five stories and two variants have the following: “How Salaksak became Rich,” F⁴BE¹HJ; “Clever Juan and Envious Diego,” G¹F⁵HJ; “Ruined because of Invidiousness,” F⁴F⁵F⁶; “The Two Friends,” F²G²HJ; “Juan the Orphan,” F⁴H (modified) J; “Juan the Ashes-Trader,” E¹F⁵; “Colassit and Colaskel,” F³. In a Visayan tale (JAFL 19: 107–109) we find a combination of HJ with a variant of our No. 1. Incident D (hat paying landlord) forms a separate story, which we give below,—No. 50, “Juan and his Painted Hat.” Incident B is also narrated as a droll by the Tagalogs; the sharper of the story scattering silver coins about the manure of his cow, and subsequently selling the “magic” animal for a large sum. An examination of the incidents distributed among the Filipino members of this cycle reveals the fact that episode A¹ (hare as messenger) is altogether lacking. I have not met with it in any native story, and am inclined to believe that it is not known in the Islands. It is found widespread in Europe, but does not appear to be common in India: among fifteen Indian variants cited by Bolte it is found only twice (i.e., Indian Antiquary, 3: 11 f.; Bompas, No. 80, p. 242). These Indian versions show, however, that the story in one form or another is found quite generally throughout that country, the Santali furnishing the largest number of variants (six, in all). It would seem reasonable to conclude, therefore, considering the fact that at least seven forms of the tale are known in the Philippines, extending from the Visayas to the northernmost part of Luzon, that the source of the incidents common to these and the Indian versions need not be sought outside the Orient. The case of incidents F¹F²F³ seems different. They are lacking in the Far-Eastern representatives of this cycle; and their appearance in the Philippines may be safely traced, I think, to European influence. However, an Indian source for these incidents may yet be discovered, just as sources already have been for so many Italian novella and French fabliaux of a similar flavor. The fact that the earliest form of the “Master Cheat” cycle known is a Latin poem of the eleventh, possibly tenth, century (Köhler-Bolte, 233–234), is of course no proof that elements F⁴G¹HJ, found in that poem, were introduced into India from Europe, though it might be an indication.
1 Tulisanes, highway robbers or bandits.
2 Salop, a dry measure of about fifteen centimetres cube.
3 Carreton, a heavy two-wheeled springless cart.
4 Sirena, a beautiful enchantress, half woman and half fish, who was supposed to dwell in certain rivers. This belief is fairly common in La Laguna province, especially in the town of Pagsanjan.
5 One of the most common Tagalog proverbs.