Mga Pilipino
Malakas at Maganda
A great bird with nowhere to land, islands hurled from the sky, and the first man and woman stepping out of a stalk of bamboo.
- First recorded
- Miguel de Loarca, Relación de las Yslas Filipinas, 1582
- The first pair
- Sicalac and Sicavay (Visayan) · Malakas and Maganda (Tagalog)
- The names mean
- malakas “strong” · maganda “beautiful”
The legend in seven scenes
Choose a scene to start the film there“These islands will be our home.”
In the beginning there was no land, only the sky above and the sea below. A great bird flew between them for days and days, and found nowhere to rest.
Weary of flying, the bird set the sea against the sky. The sea rose in fury and threw its waves up at the heavens. The sky answered with storm and lightning and hurled down great rocks, and where they fell into the water they became the islands.
On the shore of one island grew a stalk of bamboo, thicker than any tree. When the bird came to rest on it, it heard knocking and voices from inside: “Let us out!”
The bird struck the bamboo with its beak until it split open in a blaze of light. Out stepped a man, Malakas, the strong, and a woman, Maganda, the beautiful.
They looked out over the green islands and made them their home. Their children, and their children’s children, sailed from island to island, and from them, the story says, come all the peoples of the Philippines.
Where the story lives
Banaue rice terracesCarved by hand into the Cordillera mountains by the Ifugao over many centuries.
Chocolate HillsMore than a thousand grassy domes on Bohol, brown in the dry season.
Lapu-LapuChieftain of Mactan, whose warriors defeated Magellan’s men in 1521.
Mactan, 1521The warriors watch the ships of Magellan’s fleet sail away.
ViganA Spanish colonial trading town of the 16th century, where Asian and European building met.
Paoay ChurchFinished in 1710, with massive buttresses to stand against earthquakes.
MayonThe near-perfect cone of Albay, the most active volcano in the islands.
PalawanHidden lagoons among black limestone cliffs in the far west.
The Philippine eagleOne of the largest eagles in the world, found only in these islands.A bird over the first sea
In the Finnish Kalevala, a duck flies over an endless sea with nowhere to nest, until it lands on the knee of Ilmatar, the Maiden of the Air. Its eggs break, and from them come the earth, the sky, the sun and the moon.