For my Penguin Book discovery post, I wanted to dwell on the water spirits of the Philippines. Even though I was raised in a country known for its beaches and biodiversity and a culture that deeply values its rivers and seas, it still surprised me to see not one but four mermaid stories from the Philippines. When I lived in the Philippines, I’d only ever learned of the sirena or its male equivalent, the siyokoy, in passing and mostly as a joke to watch out for what lurked in the water. But the thing that interested me the most about these mermaid stories is the place that these stories are from: the Ilocos region. My dad’s side of the family is from the Ilocos region of the Philippines (specifically from Pangasinan) but this is the first I have ever heard of these mermaid/mermaid-aligned legends associated with the region.

The story that I was particularly interested in was the first story: the Mermaid Queen of Binalatongan. According to the section introduction, this story is “one of the oldest stories in the Ilokano volumes, dating back to the 1600s” (213), and its paragraphs are full of snippets of the Philippines’ pre-colonial economy and politics. The story tells of a prosperous kingdom called Binalatongan, named for its main export of balatong, or mung beans, which sees traders from China, Japan, and Borneo, its ordinary citizens wearing luxurious Chinese silk as everyday clothes, and its rivers flowing with gold. (215) Although the last two items might be a bit of an exaggeration, this is a far cry from the image of pre-colonial Philippines that is usually painted for the everyday person, including me. I was taught that before the Spanish came to the Philippines, the country was a savage, untamed land and its people were equally savage and untamed, with no religion, culture, or economy to organize the land and its many islands and tribes. Imagine my surprise when I learned through this story of the complex political systems and lush trade routes that existed long before the Spanish even put the Philippines on their maps.

Another aspect of the story that interested me was how the mermaid of Binalatongan is portrayed in contrast to how the sirena is painted. In the story, the mermaid is a benevolent spirit who guides fishermen back home after a storm, saves children from drowning, and gives widows pearls to help support themselves after the death of their husbands. (215) This is also a far cry from the image of sirenas that I grew up with. Growing up, saying that my favorite Disney movie was “The Little Mermaid” and that I loved mermaids was met with a wince or a grimace. Sirenas in the Philippines have a reputation for drowning any unsuspecting person who comes too close to their territory or luring them with their looks and voices to watery deaths. To delight in a creature that uses its beauty to kill was not a popular opinion; in fact, it might have been downright controversial. The word sirena, along with the sinister mythology that came with it, was borrowed from the Spanish who brought Christianity to the Philippines. The kind mermaid of Binalatongan is nothing like the Spanish sirena, which exposes each culture’s relationship not just to nature but to women as well.

In the beginning of the story, Maginoo Palasipas yearns “to be conquered by the heart of a woman” and to have someone fair and beautiful rule alongside him and his prosperous kingdom, only finding his match in the mermaid that has helped his people many times. (215) It does not matter to Maginoo Palasipas that the woman is not entirely human; it only matters that she uses her powers to help rather than hurt. This reveals the pre-colonial view of nature as benevolent and life-giving and the pre-colonial view of women as essential to the function of society and politics. Contrast that with the colonial view of the sirena as a temptress, constructed to demonize women and to illustrate the natural world as capricious and something to fear. The sirena‘s folklore, especially when coupled with Christian indoctrination of the Philippines, reveals not just a change in attitude within the people towards women and nature but within the culture as well, from an egalitarian view to a more patriarchal, misogynistic one.