Why Dogs Wag Their Tails

About the legend

Being

Visayan Animal Tale

Cultural meaning

This is an explanatory animal tale: a story that tells why animals behave the way they do. On Panay, tales like this were told by parents to their children, and by storytellers in the market while people gathered to buy food for the evening meal. This one explains two everyday sights at once: dogs greeting each other with a wagging tail, and cats keeping away from water.

Fun fact

Many of the old tales collected on Panay were first written down by schoolchildren, as part of their English lessons.

Cultural notes

Bantay, the old dog's name in our retelling, means guard or watchman in Hiligaynon, one of the languages of Panay, and in several other Philippine languages. The tale itself was collected on Panay in the spring of 1904 by Berton L. Maxfield in Iloilo and W. H. Millington in nearby Mandurriao, in their own classrooms, from pupils and Filipino teachers, and they printed it as "Why Dogs Wag Their Tails" in the Journal of American Folk-Lore in 1907. Mabel Cook Cole retold it in 1916. In the old telling the master lives in a pueblo, the Spanish word for a town, and his daughter studies at a convent school in a city. Dean S. Fansler (1921) saw in it a Philippine piece of the worldwide "Magic Ring" story, in which a helpful dog and cat carry a ring across water, quarrel on the way and lose it.

About this retelling

Traditional retelling of a Visayan animal tale A Visayan animal tale from Panay about why dogs wag their tails and cats keep away from rivers, retold for children.

We know this tale from one printed telling. It gives this story its frame: the rich man and his daughter at school in a faraway city, the weekly presents, the old dog who has lost his teeth but knows the way, the strong, clever cat, the magic ring given to the cat to carry, the river with no bridge and no boat, the dog who wants to carry the ring because the cat swims badly, the ring dropped just before the far bank, the dog who is too afraid to go home and runs away, the cat who tells the master, the search by all the dogs in the world, and the closing about wagging tails and cats who will not swim. In the old telling the dog gets the ring by threatening to kill the cat, and the master declares that the dog will lose its tail when it is found; the dogs' question ends the same way. We changed this for children. Our dog only refuses to swim until the cat hands the ring over, and the master is not angry: he wants the old dog to come home and tell him what happened himself, and that is the message the dogs pass on. The names Bantay, Mingming, Rosa and Andres, the house with shell windows, the toothless gums that cannot hold the ring, Bantay's wish to feel useful again, the cat owning her share of the blame instead of telling only the dog's part, the open gate with its bowl of rice, and all 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. 98–100: "Why Dogs Wag Their Tails" (Internet Archive (journal scan), Project Gutenberg)
• Dean S. Fansler, "Filipino Popular Tales" (1921), notes to No. 10 (Project Gutenberg)

Themes

• Responsibility
• Honesty
• Courage
• Visayan
• Panay
• Animal tales
• Why stories
• Dog
• Cat
• Magic ring
• Honesty
• Responsibility

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