Note 23 — The Origin of the Stars and the Explanation of Sunset and Sunrise

It has been mentioned above that among their tales and stories they preserve a tradition relating to their origin and beginning, after a great and dreadful flood which, a very long time ago, as their old people relate, covered the earth. All the inhabitants except a brother and sister were drowned. The brother and sister, though separated from each other, were saved, the woman on the summit of the highest mountain in the District of Lepanto, called Kalauítan, and the man in a cave of the same mountain. After the water had subsided, the man of the cave came out from his hiding place one clear and calm moonlight night, and as he glanced around that immense solitude, his eyes were struck by the brightness of a big bonfire burning there on the summit of the mountain. Surprised and terrified, he did not venture to go up on the summit where the fire was, but returned to his cave. At the dawn of day he quickly climbed toward the place where he had seen the brightness the preceding night, and there he found huddled up on the highest peak his sister, who received him with open arms. They say that from this brother and sister so providentially saved, all the Igorots that are scattered through the mountains originated. They are absolutely ignorant of the names of those privileged beings, but the memory of them lives freshly among the Igorots, and in their feasts, or whenever they celebrate their marriages, the aged people repeat to the younger ones this wonderful history, so that they can tell it to their sons, and in that way pass from generation to generation the memory of their first progenitors.23