Patricia E.

Montenegro ABLL-II

Biuag and Malana is an Ybanag epic entailing the lives of the two heroes of different
towns and family. Hailing from Enrile, Biuag was gifted with immense strength and
speed through necklace with three little stones given by a goddess on the day of his
birth. Poweful he may be, Biuag felt miserable not until he gets smitten by an
unnamed beautiful maiden from Tuao. Meanwhile on the western town of Rizal lived
an eighteen-year-old Malana, whose strength proven to matches Biuag through his
heroic deed of feeding his starving people by getting several sacks of rice all the way
from Sto. Niño after a storm ravaged Rizal, but the news of Malana reached Biuag as
a spear was thrown into Malana’s house. After that, Biuag still carried on with his
immense admiration to the mysterious lady until the lady rejected his wedding
proposal as she said that her heart already belongs to Malana, causing Biuag to be
enraged, threw a spear and shouted that Malana doesn’t deserve the woman. Malana,
agreeing to fight for her hand, waited until the day of their battle at the peak of both
mountains with the river dividing beneath them. The forlorn woman was on the river
riding a raft as the battle started by Biuag throwing a coconut tree to Malana (which
landed somewhere in Rizal instead) then in sheer anger, he threw his magical spear to
Malana aiming at the rival’s heart, but it landed on a river instead. Before Malana
gets his turn, Biuag used a giant crocodile to splash waves at Malana and opened the
crocodile’s mouth as a makeshift weapon to end Malana once and for all. Just as
Malana was about to battle Biuag, the woman floats up in the air who revealed to be
the goddess’s daughter. Furious at Biuag’s cowardice, she revoked him of his powers
and blessed all of the people in the area as they went to the kingdom in the heavens.
Out of humiliation, Biuag drowns himself and until this day, it’s believed that his
spirit roams around the strange mountains of Il-luru in Rizal.

As the historical context of the epic and the Cagayan province itself isn’t readily
found in the internet, I sought for numerous websites including the government
websites and a free preview of Damania L. Eugenio’s “Philippine Folk Literature: An
Anthology”. We can draw that from their culture of tribalism, belief in supernatural
fantasies and beings and the terminology like goddesses (Pre-colonial Filipinos are
animists/pagan) used in the original language, it’s high likely that the epic takes
place in pre-colonial times.

According to the websites,

http://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph:81/CC01/NLP00VM052mcd/v1/v24.pdf and
https://kablog2.wordpress.com/2008/05/17/si-biuag-anni-malana/, we can draw some
information that the story, like every Ytawes and Ybanag tales, survived through oral
transmission. Also, during the Spanish period, the Ybanag language became the
official language that the Spanish missionaries used here in Cagayan. As it became
the official language of the local colonial government, the Ybanag language raised its
status as something so prestigious that many non-Ybanags sought to learn the
language. With this linguistic event, the process made not only the Ybanag and the
Ytawes language virtually indistinguishable but also exchanged and passed on the
tale to the future generations.

With the reader’s response I’ll provide, I could say that this story is to be treasured.
So, I will first comment on the story itself.

At first, the story seems like the usual “Superpeople with God-given strength and
became the hero kaboom!” trope prevalent on most epics. However upon reading the
story further, the characters took me by surprise. Biuag is hailed as hero in his town
just because of his abilities yet he didn’t actually helped anyone with those abilities
aside from his self-serving motives in the tale while Malana on the other hand, whose
abilities weren’t told to be bestowed from the Gods, used his abilities to save his
people from starvation. Which also brings me to another question- What makes a
hero? For me, a real hero strives to do what is noble and knows where to stand like
Malana, who used his abilities to fight for his loved one and save his people. I like
how the story showed to us a scary mentality prevalent to our society- that whoever
have some physical traits that are desirable even though they’re morally twisted are
rewarded- like how Enrile folk in the tale hailed Biuag as a hero solely for his powers
and his looks. In the end, justice was served as his powers were stripped off and
blessed Malana instead as karma bites really bad. For an early literature, this plot
twist is incredible the more that you analyzed both the strong men.

It also brought light to some stereotypes to pre-colonial people that they’re not
savages like what out our colonial masters made us believe before. That these values
are already way present before the evangelization of the Philippine islands which
brings me to another point- Not everyone with different beliefs and cultures are
always superior and that we should not shun the good thing in our culture because it
makes us who we are. The xenophobia has caused us to have an identity confusion to
our nation.

As peculiar or corny the story may sound to younger audiences, stories like these tell
us the nature of the Ybanag people and how it reflected some bits of the history
behind the tale of these superhuman warriors which is endangered from obscuring
due to lack of exposure to mass media and xenophobia. With the epic, we learn that
Ybanag and Ytawes language evolved which made it eerily similar to one another as
a form of cultural exchange which equates to patching up the culture gap of the
Ytawes and the Ybanag people. Thus, bridging the Cagayanos to a better place.