The Hawk and the Hen

About the legend

Being

Tagalog Animal Legend

Cultural meaning

This old Tagalog animal story tells why hens scratch the dust and keep one eye on the sky: they are still searching for something that was lost long ago.

Fun fact

In a telling from the island of Panay, the bird is a dapay, a brahminy kite: a hawk-like bird of prey that looks a little like an eagle.

Cultural notes

This story is known from print. Dean S. Fansler's "Filipino Popular Tales" (1921) gives two tellings side by side as Tale 74. "The Cock and the Sparrow-Hawk" was told by Dolores Asuncion of Manila, who heard it from an old Tagalog. "The Lost Necklace" was told by Facundo Esquivel, a Tagalog who had it from a friend from Cebu, and Fansler calls it a Visayan story. A third telling, "The Eagle and the Hen", was collected on Panay and printed in the Journal of American Folk-Lore in 1907, and Mabel Cook Cole retold it in 1916 as "The Hawk and the Hen". The hens' cry is spelled "Tac-ta-laoc" as Fansler printed it. Fansler also points to a tale from southern Nigeria, printed by Elphinstone Dayrell in 1910, that explains in its own way why hawks go after chickens.

About this retelling

Traditional retelling of a Tagalog animal legend A Tagalog legend of why hens scratch the ground, printed by Dean S. Fansler in 1921, retold for children.

The old tellings give this story its frame: the hawk and the chicken as friends, the bracelet borrowed for a great fiesta in the next village and lost while dancing, the borrower who goes back, says sorry and asks what he can give, the heirloom that must be searched for until it is found, and the hens who scratch the ground, look up at the sky and call for help. In the Tagalog telling the borrower is a young rooster who wants to look rich and win a wife. We left the courtship out and let the hen borrow the bracelet, as in the Visayan tellings, where the hen holds the jewel. In every old telling the bird takes chicks, as payment or as punishment. We changed this for children: our hawk takes no chicks. He circles to look for the glint of gold, and the hens gather their chicks under their wings and keep scratching. The hen's excuses come from the old tellings too, where one hen says her chicks lost the jewel and another invents a snake. Ours thinks of both and tells the truth. Hawk's grandmother as the bracelet's first owner, the chicks and their names, the mango tree, the bamboo-pole dance, the night of doubt and all the words the characters speak were written for Filipino Tales.

Sources

• Dean S. Fansler, "Filipino Popular Tales" (1921), Tale 74: "The Lost Necklace" and "The Cock and the Sparrow-Hawk" (Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive (printed book))
• Berton L. Maxfield and W. H. Millington, "Visayan Folk-Tales. II", Journal of American Folk-Lore 20 (1907): "The Eagle and the Hen", p. 100 (Internet Archive)

Themes

• Honesty
• Responsibility
• Friendship
• Tagalog
• Luzon
• Animal legends
• Hawk
• Hen
• Fiesta
• Borrowing
• Honesty

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