Beyond the Blue Mountain: Short Tales from the Philippines - Paperback

by Kathy M. Thompson (Editor), John B. Thompson (Author)

Beyond the Blue Mountain: Thirty Filipino Folk Tales Collected in Baguio, 1948
Baguio, Mountain Province, February 1948.

High in the pine-clad mountains of Luzon - 5,000 feet above the sea, where Ifugao terraces carve the slopes and mist rolls through the valleys - an American teacher sat by a window and wrote down the stories children told around their fires.

He gathered them from Filipino students' classroom themes, from his father-in-law Amado O. Picart of Baguio who spoke the Igorot dialects, and from mountain villages that had scarcely been explored. He wrote: "Beyond the blue mountain is another which I cannot see but I know it is there, and another behind it and still another behind that."
For over 70 years that manuscript, with its hand-drawn illustrations, waited in a drawer. This book is that manuscript - preserved exactly as it was told.

Inside you will find 30 timeless tales, including:

• Why the Hen Scratches - the story of a lost ring and a hawk who still steals her chicks
• Why the Turtle Carries His House - how the turtles lost their villages to fire
• The Dwarfs' Parade - little Jose and the duwendes who marched with sacks of jewels
• Why the Sky is High - how a woman's beads, comb, and cooking pot became the stars, the crescent moon, and the sun
• The Origin of Butterflies, Coconuts, Bananas, and Rain - and many more
• 11 Authentic Igorot Tales identified by the author: The Ki-ling and the Rat, Why Crocodiles Eat Human Beings, Mount Data Falls, Tuguinguing and Kot-éng, The Monkey Judge, and more

Why this collection is different:
This is not a retelling. These stories were collected before television, before the highways - when 7,100 islands still spoke 87 dialects and storytellers remembered the old ways. The Introduction, written in Baguio in 1948, gives you the rare historical context of who told each story and where.

Perfect for:

• Filipino-American families sharing heritage with their children
• Teachers and homeschool parents teaching Asian folklore and world mythology
• Lovers of fairy tales, folk tales, and cultural history
• Readers who want the gentle, wise, and sometimes funny stories that little boys and girls in the Mountain Province heard by the fire

From the Igorot highlands to the lowland barrios, these are the stories that have shaped Filipino identity for centuries - finally brought home.

Thompson Story Studio- Preserving stories that would otherwise be lost.