The Crabs and the Waves

About the legend

Being

Visayan Animal Tale

Cultural meaning

On Panay, tales like this one were told by parents to their children, and by the storyteller in the market while people gathered to buy food for the evening meal. Some of them explain why an animal lives the way it does. This one explains why little crabs live on the beach, between the land and the sea, and run back and forth at the edge of the waves.

Fun fact

The little crabs that run back and forth on the beach are fiddler crabs. A male fiddler crab has one claw much bigger than the other. People thought the big claw and the small one together looked like a fiddle, and that is how the crabs got their name.

Cultural notes

This tale is known from a printed collection. Berton L. Maxfield and W. H. Millington, two teachers on the island of Panay, collected Visayan tales there in the spring of 1904, in their classrooms in Iloilo and Mandurriao. Many of the tales were written down by their Visayan pupils, others by Visayan teachers, and the collectors checked them with people from other parts of the island. They printed this one as "The Battle of the Crabs" in the Journal of American Folk-Lore, volume 20 (1907), pages 101 and 102. Mabel Cook Cole retold the same tale in her book "Philippine Folk Tales" (1916).

About this retelling

Traditional retelling of a Visayan animal tale A Visayan animal tale from Panay, printed in 1907, about a town of crabs who march down to fight the waves, retold for children.

From the old telling come the crabs' meeting about the waves that sing so loudly at night that nobody can sleep, the eldest crab's plan to go down and fight them, the march the next day, the shrimp they meet on the way, his warning that the waves are strong and the crabs' legs weak, his laughter, the joke that his face is turned the wrong way, the spear on his head, the big wave he sees while the crabs are all looking toward the shore, and the ending with the little crabs on the beach. In the old telling only the male crabs march, they pinch the shrimp until he promises to help, and the wave kills them. Their wives come looking for them and are killed too, and the shrimp later tells the little crabs about their parents' sad fate. The old telling also says the little crabs never find the courage to fight the waves. We changed this for children. The whole town marches together, nobody pinches anyone, and the shrimp comes along because he is worried about his friends. He shouts a warning, the wave rolls the crabs up onto the sand unhurt, and the little crabs run back and forth because they never turn their backs on the sea. The names Old Ambo, Ising and Doro, the coconut drum, the shout of "Hold on!", the shrimp tipping the crabs back onto their legs, Old Ambo's apology, the night of counting waves and most of the words the characters speak were written for Filipino Tales.

Sources

• Berton L. Maxfield and W. H. Millington, "Visayan Folk-Tales II", Journal of American Folk-Lore 20 (1907), pp. 101–102: "The Battle of the Crabs" (Internet Archive (Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 20), Project Gutenberg #11028 (same text, with the collectors' introduction))

Themes

• Listening
• Humility
• Friendship
• Panay
• Visayas
• Animal fables
• Why stories
• Crabs
• Shrimp
• Beach
• Waves
• Listening

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