I am a sucker for cosmogenesis stories, but reading the following passage amused me. Didn't we all know back in grade school that the first man and woman emerged out of a bamboo and peopled the world?

Aside from getting curious if they did the nookie while inside the reed, how did they exactly make people? Bamboo people cutouts?

"One day the man asked the woman to marry him, for there were no other people on the world; but she refused, saying that they were brother and sister, born of the same reed, with only one knot between them; and that she would not marry him, since he was her brother. Finally, they asked advice from the tunnies [fish?] of the sea, and from the doves of the air; they also went to the earthquake, who said that it was necessary for them to marry, so that the world might be peopled."

There were also some paragraphs which could make feminists search for Miguel de Loarca's soul and cut it further into bits:

"While Pandaguan was dead, his wife Lubluban became the concubine of a man called Maracoyrun; and these people say was the time concubinage began in the world. When Pandaguan returned, he did not find his wife at home, because she had been invited by her friend to feast upon a pig that he had stolen; and the natives say that this was the first theft committed in the world. Pandaguan sent his son for Lubluban, but she refused to go home, saying that the dead do not return to the world. At this answer Pandaguan became angry, and returned to the infernal regions. The people believe that, if his wife had obeyed his summons, and he had not gone back at that time, all the dead would return to life."

Ah, childhood. We can take "just because" for answers. Look what happened to us now.

This entry was posted by sky, on Tuesday, August 29, 2006. You can leave your response.