Tales about men with tails and mermaids

WORKING with a primary source like a historical document or book can be very challenging because when you read it, you cannot always take it at face value. For example, there is a book titled, "The Monkeys Have No Tails In Zamboanga," published in the American period which recalls a racist song of the same title. What is funny is that there are earlier travel accounts of the Philippines that refer to humans with tails. Guillame Joseph Hyacinthe Jean Baptiste le Gentil de la Galasiere, who visited the Philippines in 1776, scoffed at a Franciscan chronicler who was quoted as saying:

"It is said that in the Island of Mindoro there is a caste of men who have little tails, like those of monkeys. Several priests have witnessed this and have so assured me; and not long ago on the Pacific coast near Baler, a woman was found who had a tail. Of this I have been assured by the missionaries who saw her. It has not been possible to determine the race of these people, unless it be that they are of the Jewish race."

Reading the above reminded me of the many urban legends that are believed to be true today like the White Lady (ghost) of Balete Drive in Quezon City, the Manananggal who terrorized Tondo and got caught in the clotheslines and TV antennae, and Robina Gokongwei's alleged "snake twin" who preys on customers in the fitting rooms of Robinson's Department stores. All these stories are so fantastic and yet they claim to have had a shred of truth because they have been verified by "a friend of a friend" who of course cannot be interrogated directly.

One can think of several historical urban legends, like Andres Bonifacio having a love child in a place in Bicol, appropriately called Libog, Albay (now mercifully renamed Sto. Domingo), or the yarn about Rizal being the father of Adolf Hitler, the fruit of a one-night stand in Vienna, or the rumor that the root of the Cojuangco fortune was a bag (or box) of money collected during the Revolution entrusted by Antonio Luna to his alleged girlfriend, Ysidra Cojuangco, before he was assassinated in Cabanatuan in 1899.

Each time I'm asked to comment on these historical urban legends, I present the historical documentation and people leave unconvinced because they want the fables to be true. I have enough materials on these urban legends to fill a book. My only problem is that I have little time to sit down and write it up.

Going back to Le Gentil's visit to the Philippines in 1776. He left some very interesting observations on the country and its people for European consumption. Like any typical guidebook, he mentions the climate, natural resources, agricultural products, customs of the people and even has a chapter on earthquakes that he experienced. But there are some things that are almost incredible, like descriptions of mermaids and mermen of which engravings were made. Surely, all those books and maps that have illustrations of sea monsters and other strange creatures must have aroused fear among European readers.

In some early accounts I have read, there are descriptions of a sea-cow or dugong, that caused a lot of curiosity. This gentle creature was said to be what some European travelers mistook for mermaids or mermen. There seemed to be a lot of them centuries ago but their number has been decimated because although they were technically fish, their meat when cooked tasted like beef. Thus, on days of abstinence, meaning Fridays and during Lent, the Spaniards took to the dugong and thus reduced the species. Le Gentil gave this account of a creature that he seems to have seen and examined:

"This creature (I have not seen the male, but specimens of both sexes are known in the Philippines under the name of 'woman-fish') resembles a man or a woman only in organs of generation. The female has on the breast well-formed teats with which she suckles her young, holding them like a tender mother with her baby at her breast. All the rest of the body is like that of a fish. The features are very irregular. These creatures have a very large body and a long and thick tail like that of a dogfish. The head and face are round, but the face is flat, with very ugly features, with a large mouth and coarse snout, which looks something like that of an English or Irish greyhound or mastiff. The teeth look like the teeth of a mastiff, with two fangs on each, projecting from the mouth. The sides of this fish look very much like the sides of a man. Their nostrils are open like the nostrils of a dogfish. They have limbs that look like arms as far down as the elbow but the rest looks like the fin of any other fish. In the water the tips of the fins look like hands and fingers, although they are neither one nor the other. The skin on the belly is white and soft. The skin of the back is like that of a dogfish but quite coarse. The fish does not talk or sing, although some persons claim that it is really the siren of which the ancients speak. When it is killed, it weeps and utters the most lamentable cries. It does not live out of water, but if not killed, it does not die for a long time after being taken from that element."

Reading the above passage, with pencil in hand trying to draw and recreate what was described, makes one feel like the proverbial blind men touching different parts of an elephant and getting everyone confused.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.