Ibong Adarna – The Singing Bird of Healing

About the legend

Being

Enchanted Healing Bird

Cultural meaning

The Ibong Adarna is a long Tagalog story poem that many Filipino children read in school. Its healing bird, whose songs can cure a king but put careless listeners to sleep, tests the patience and kindness of those who look for her.

Fun fact

The name of the Adarna's tree, Piedras Platas, comes from Spanish and means silver stones.

Cultural notes

The Ibong Adarna is a corrido, a long Tagalog story poem in rhyming verse from the Spanish colonial period, and it is still read in Filipino schools. Berbanya is a fictional kingdom; the Spanish names and Mount Tabor, a mountain named in the Bible, come from that period. Dayap are small, sour limes. This story follows the poem's first quest, and in the poem Juan's adventures go on long after it.

About this retelling

Abridged literary adaptation The first quest of the Tagalog corrido Ibong Adarna, abridged and retold for children.

King Fernando's illness, the seven songs and colors at the Piedras Platas tree, the brothers turned to stone, the hermit's limes, golden cord, jar of water and warning about the droppings, the betrayal, the bird that will not sing until Juan arrives, and Juan's plea to forgive his brothers come from the anonymous Tagalog corrido. In the corrido the king dreams that Juan is killed and thrown into a well, Juan cuts his hand and squeezes lime juice into the cuts to stay awake, he gives his bread to a leper before he meets the hermit, his brothers beat him and leave him on the mountain until an old man heals him, and the bird is kept in a cage. Here the dream only warns of danger, the lime juice goes on Juan's tongue, one hermit guides him throughout, the brothers slip away while he sleeps, and Juan sets the bird free, as he promised, and she chooses to stay.

Sources

• Anonymous, "Ibong Adarna", Project Gutenberg eBook 16157 (Project Gutenberg)
• Philippine corrido and school-story tradition

Themes

• Perseverance
• Kindness
• Mercy

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