Patrice P.

Maranan BSA-BAG Philippine Literature

Lumabat and Mebuyan

(Ancient Mindanao Deities of Philippine Mythology)
Long ago, Lumabat and his sister had a quarrel because Lumabat had said, "You shall go with me up
into heaven." And his sister had replied, "No, I don't like to do that."

Then they began to fight each other. Soon the woman sat down on the big rice mortar, and said to
Lumabat, "Now I am going down below the earth, down to Gimokudan. Down there I shall begin to shake the
lemon-tree. Whenever I shake it, somebody up on the earth will die. If the fruit shaken down be ripe, then an
old person will die on the earth; but if the fruit fall green, the one to die will be young."

Then she took a bowl filled with pounded rice, and poured the rice into the mortar for a sign that the
people should die and go down to Gimokudan. Presently the mortar began to turn round and round while the
woman was sitting upon it. All the while, as the mortar was revolving, it was slowly sinking into the earth. But
just as it began to settle in the ground, the woman dropped handfuls of the pounded rice upon the earth, with
the words: "See! I let fall this rice. This makes many people die, dropping down just like grains of rice. Thus
hundreds of people go down; but none go up into heaven."

Straightway the mortar kept on turning round, and kept on going lower down, until it disappeared in the
earth, with Lumabat's sister still sitting on it. After this, she came to be known as Mebu'yan. Before she went
down below the earth, she was known only as Tube' ka Lumabat ("sister of Lumabat").

Mebu'yan is now chief of a town called Banua Mebu'yan ("Mebu'yan's town"), where she takes care of
all dead babies, and gives them milk from her Breasts. Mebu'yan is ugly to look at, for her whole body is
covered with nipples. All nursing children who still want the milk, go directly, when they die, to Banua
Mebu'yan, instead of to Gimokudan, and remain there with Mebu'yan until they stop taking milk from her
breast. Then they go to their own families in Gimokudan, where they can get rice, and "live" very well.

All the spirits stop at Mebu'yan's town, on their way to Gimokudan. There the spirits wash all their joints
in the black river that runs through Banua Mebu'yan, and they wash the tops of their heads too. This bathing
(pamalugu ) is for the purpose of making the spirits feel at home, so that they will not run away and go back to
their own bodies. If the spirit could return to its body, the body would get up and be alive again.