When we were young. . .
May 20, 2009 by Rufus_Agtedted Leaking filed under Childrens Story, Essays, Shorty | 691 viewsThe stories my father told us kids and the stories his father told us kids had one common theme of abundance. Although life was hard because money was hard to come by, things seemed very abundant then. Basic life necessities, such as, the yield of seasonal crops planted out in the bang-bang-kag, the abundance of the schools of fish that came close to the shoreline to be caught using dragnets (daklis – see the photo below), and the ready availability of edible plants growing wild in the forests.
Consider the fishing. My father tells us about the asar he and our grandfather built and installed right there downstream from the bridge in Banaoang. The stories they told us about giant sized mullets (called Pasga when their scales grow to be as big around as dimes) caught there during spawning season, the schools of ludong that came down the river from Abra, their bellies bulging with roe as big as coffee cup saucers.
My father told us stories about how he and his cousin (our Uncle Inso) caught a grouper in the shallow tide pools of the live reef stranded by the retreating tide that was as big as a steamer trunk (lacasa), it took them all afternoon to secure it with vines unto a carrying pole they made out of an ipil-ipil tree so they could carry it out of the live reef before the tide came back in.
Daklis participants ready the boat with the dragnet for the "wayat" maneuver for catching the school of fish.
Then there were stories of catching huge white shrimps (bingalo) in the waters of the lo-ob (brackish water where the river emptied itself to the sea) using a ban-war (a long netted tunnel-like device with a secured fine mesh sac at the end) installed at the bend where the flowing river’s strong current takes with it and directs all marine life from the river delta out into the open sea. The ban-war catches all sizes of shrimp, crab, crayfish, eel, milkfish (bangus), grown bag-sang, and medium sized mullet (si-siaw) in its fine mesh sac at the end of the netted tunnel as they are carried out by the speedy current flowing from the river out into the open sea.
These accounts or folkloric tales tickled the imagination and left stories and tall tales for retelling to up and coming generations. From my own experiences, I can share with my own children stories of bivouacs I did with my father and brothers. We would trek out to the far away fields (bang-bang-kag), to gather leafy purslane. And from all these experiences we have come to benefit, learning that it takes hard work to get things done.
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manonton dalan
meaning to me. my relatives in pinas keep singing
this song “paan-anak tay ub-ubing” for some
reason seem to know meaning of sisiaw, i was
told it’s a bird “sipsipmawen ti si-siaw” i never
question cause whole tribe doesn’t know it.
every time i see “kuraraknet” dive into water
to drink i think about it. there are birds
that does that too … kingfisher.
we don’t call it “daklis” in pangasinan, we call it
“segay”, “la casa” we call it “baol”.i believe
fishermen from western pangasinan are really ilokanos
who migrated to (used to) rich fishing ground. one town
there is “bimmaley” which means “bimmalay” and they
alter the pangasinan language by adding “ag” to pangasinan
words…and many more but nobody seem to accept it.
oops i wrote a lot already thank you manong atep ya manterter
May 20th, 2009 at 5:54 pm(bobong nga agtedted)(rufus leaking)(sillag nga turog koma)
Rufus_Agtedted Leaking
Dear MD – One of my younger brothers married a beautiful girl from Mangaldan (the DeVera family) of Mangaldan – the owner and proprietor of the Peanut Brittle factory there. We spent many vacations enjoying the beaches at Mangaldan. Talk about the abundance of seafood there… ar-arosip seaweed, shrimps, clams… my goodness – that is a virtual paradise.
The difference between “daklis” and “sigay” is the size of the apparatus. Daklis is a dragnet that needs a few people to pull it ashore much like the Hawaiian hukilao. The Sigay can be deployed by one person on a raft because the operator doesn’t have to pull the entire net ashore. He or she only has to raise it up by sections to check if there are any fish caught in the netting – specially by the gills.
Also in the heart of Ilocandia, the word for bat is kura-rapnit. The word for kingfisher is toldo. The toldo dives into the water to snag si-siaw (which is the medium sized mullet). Once the sisiaw grows to a larger size so that its scales resemble the size of marungay leaves, it is called pasga. Funny how these things like fish are named. At its smallest stage, the mullet is called pilpiltok… then it grows larger into si-siaw, then it grows to its largest size called pasga. The same goes for the bulong unas or the belt fish. When it becomes large, with the eyes as big as a quarter, it is called tambocogan.
May 21st, 2009 at 2:40 ammanonton dalan
apong,apong nga lakay,panglakayen. “bulong unas”
is “pingka” bagsang = begsang ilokano(pangasinan).
i remember the hukilau in hawaii; i lived in hawaii
May 21st, 2009 at 6:35 amfor eight years, (waipahu, aeia, salt lake city, honolulu)
see hawaiian language ending is “u” not “o” which means hawaiian
first. hey! bra! laulau is good kaukau. exception: mahalo bra!
Rufus_Agtedted Leaking
Da kine kaukau – terrific… Mahalo bra…
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:44 pmsherma
…and these stories of our great grandfathers need to be retold over and over.
thanks for sharing, Manong Tom.
May 27th, 2009 at 2:11 pmRufus_Agtedted Leaking
My dear Sherma – I thought you had gone on an extended vacation – been looking for you. Your short absence in the blogosphere left such a hole and we have noticed. Welcome back and thank you. IMHO these tales are ageless. Lamentably, these days, story telling has been supplanted by the public’s over-exposure to and over-dependence on television for entertainment – never mind that most TV programming is an insult to one’s intelligence.
Compounding this current dilemma are the readily available electronic game boxes that the Japanese, Chinese and Indian engineers – purveyors of everything software – invent and sell specially to the young. Imagination and creativity are stifled, I think, if not completely rendered dormant. In the mind of the young today are streaming numbers or digits, presented in some video form or CGI, complete with special effects audio. How else can a young person enhance his or her brain’s creative capacity when everything is already “programmed” to plug and play?
Why, even dating services are now largely online. Pick up lines are canned and memorized. No creativity at all. Even medicine is getting into the Internet world – diagnosis via computer. The doctor has become no more than a medical technician able to read whatever is shown on the screen. Like Obama and his teleprompter. What a joke! The president of the United States reading from a teleprompter in order to introduce a person for his cabinet. Can this man ever even think on his feet or what? This world is quietly changing from analog to digital. Soon we will all be acting and thinking like robots, I’m afraid – spewing programmed statements and making logical decisions 100% of the time. No spontaneity… just programmed precision and accuracy. Politically correct perhaps but what a boring existence it would be.
Forgive me for being long and rambling. . . but thanks for dropping by and commenting.
May 27th, 2009 at 11:15 pm