Why the Water Buffalo's Hoof Is Split

About the legend

Being

Tagalog Animal Fable

Cultural meaning

The carabao, the gray water buffalo of the Philippines, has long been a working animal all over the islands, pulling heavy loads. In Tagalog animal fables, a big, proud animal is sometimes beaten by a small, clever one: in another tale from the same collection, a hummingbird beats a carabao at drinking a river. Fables like this one also explain how an animal got a mark it still carries.

Fun fact

In Pampanga, the same race is told with a snail and a deer. Every time the deer stops and calls out, a snail answers from just ahead of him!

Cultural notes

Dean S. Fansler printed this fable in Filipino Popular Tales (1921) as Tale 82, "An Unequal Match; or, Why the Carabao's Hoof is Split". It was told by Godofredo Rivera, a Tagalog from Pagsanjan in Laguna. The same trick is told elsewhere in the Philippines: in a Visayan telling from Panay, snail cousins wait in the town wells and answer a deer, and among the Tinguian, shells answer a carabao along a river. Fansler called it a very widespread story. In a tale from Annam, a tiger races a turtle over twelve hills with a turtle waiting on every top; in Java a mouse-deer who mocks the snails is beaten by them on a riverbank; and in "The Hare and the Hedgehog", printed by the Brothers Grimm, a hedgehog beats a hare. The folklorist Oskar Dähnhardt gathered many of these versions in 1912. Fansler thought the Philippine forms were native and need not have come from Europe.

About this retelling

Traditional retelling of a Tagalog fable A Tagalog animal fable from Pagsanjan, Laguna, printed by Dean S. Fansler in 1921, retold for children.

From Fansler's telling come the meeting on the road, the turtle who jokes and knows clever ways to find food, his wish to live and find food together, the carabao's "You slow thing!", the threat to call him a coward, the three days, the race over seven hills, the seven turtle friends on the hilltops, "Here I am!" and the hoof split at the seventh hill. In Fansler, the angry carabao kicks the turtle, and his hoof splits on the hard shell. We changed this for children: he stamps on a stone, so no one is struck. Fansler's turtle wants a strong friend who can help him when he is in trouble, and races to get even; ours is lonely and wants to be seen. The turtle who never leaves the start comes from a Visayan telling of the same race. The friends' two-day climb, the guava trick, the egret's signal and the ending after the race were written for Filipino Tales: the oldest turtle's help and the truth about the trick, the water buffalo looking closely at the turtles for the first time, the ride home, his apology and the friendship. So were all the other words the animals speak. In the story, the carabao is called a water buffalo.

Sources

• Dean S. Fansler, "Filipino Popular Tales" (1921), Tale 82: "An Unequal Match; or, Why the Carabao's Hoof is Split" (Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive (1921 edition))
• Oskar Dähnhardt (ed.), "Natursagen", vol. 4 (1912), ch. 3: "Der Wettlauf zwischen dem Hasen und der Schildkröte" (Internet Archive)

Themes

• Respect
• Humility
• Friendship
• Laguna
• Tagalog
• Carabao
• Water buffalo
• Turtle
• Animal fables
• Why stories
• Seven hills

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