The Mythology of Mindanao

Caw, caw, heroes!

Hello, reader. This week's story comes from the Philippines. The Mythology of the Mindanao is a story about brotherly love and destroying monsters. Click on the link above to read the story and continue below to analyze it with me.

In this tale, we have a brave and mighty king and his brother, who is also brave and mighty. It's a nice change for the brothers in a fairy tale to get along and both be good. They are both strong, since they were each able to kill two of these terrifying monsters, but there was still some risk in traveling to fight these creatures who were so far from them. It's nice to see two genuinely good guys in a fairy tale. Lucky that divine water appeared to bring Sulayman back from the dead, though.

It is also a nice reversal that the old woman gave the king something to eat, as opposed to the other way around. I liked that this story wasn't entirely about the king and his brother from a distant land killing monsters, but that we also got some detail about how the people of that land had been living. It was pretty smart to hide underground, but I guess that was really their only choice. Hiding in a tree sounds pretty chancy.

I do have questions, though. The king sees a girl, thinks she's pretty, and gets to marry her. What happens next? Did they actually get along? Did Indarapatra stay in her land? Did they go back to his land so he could rule his kingdom? What happened with them?

I suppose the moral of this story is that if you're going to go try to kill dangerous monsters, make sure your brother has a way of knowing if you die so he can come reserect you. Or, I guess, don't die when you're fighting monsters. Have another question? Think of something I didn't? Have a story you want me to talk about? Comment below!