Note 5 — Chapter V · The Filipino People Before the Arrival of the Spaniards.

Early Filipino Writings.—The Filipinos used this writing for setting down their poems and songs, which were their only literature. None of this, however, has come down to us, and the Filipinos soon adopted the Spanish alphabet, forming the syllables necessary to write their language from these letters. As all these have phonetic values, it is still very easy for a Filipino to learn to pronounce and so read his own tongue. These old characters lingered for a couple of centuries, in certain places. Padre Totanes5 tells us that it was rare in 1705 to find a person who could use them; but the Tagbanua, a pagan people on the island of Paragua, use a similar syllabary to this day. Besides poems, they had songs which they sang as they rowed their canoes, as they pounded the rice from its husk, and as they gathered for feast or entertainment; and especially there were songs for the dead. In these songs, says Chirino, they recounted the deeds of their ancestors or of their deities.