The original manuscripts could not be bought, but exact and true copies of the same have been secured and translated and their translations are herein published for the first time. THE TRANSLITERATION These tarsila are written in the Magindanao dialect with Arabic characters, and a great part of their text is Magindanao names which have never yet been expressed by means of Romanic characters. In translating these tarsila such a large number of words have to be transliterated that it is deemed necessary to adopt a system of transliteration which can be easily understood by every English reader and which is more adequate to express Magindanao sounds than either Spanish or English. Such a system is herein adopted and is briefly described as follows: With the exception of ng and sh, the characters used in this system are simple and represent simple sounds only. Every radical modification of a certain simple sound is regarded as a different simple sound and is represented by a separate and distinct character. Every compound sound is represented by those characters that express its simple constituent sounds. It is an unvarying rule in this system that every character represents an invariable sound and every sound has only one invariable character. The Magindanao dialect has only twenty-seven simple sounds and can be expressed by twenty-seven simple characters. These characters are the following: a, a, i, i, u, u, u, b, d, g, ng, h, j, k l, m, n, ñ, p, q, r, s, sh, t, w, y, z The sounds which these characters represent conform very closely to the original Roman sounds of the letters. a is the short sound of a; it is pronounced midway between the a in bad and the e in bed a is pronounced as the a in far, father i is pronounced as the i in fin, ill i is pronounced as the i in machine, police u is pronounced as the u in put, push u is pronounced as the u in rude, flute u is a midvowel, pronounced with the tongue slightly moved from its normal position; it is intermediate between u and e, and is somewhat related to the u in hurt b, d, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t are pronounced as in English g is always hard, as the g in gold, get ng has a guttural-nasal sound like the ng in ring h has an aspirate sound and should be always pronounced like the h in hill, behind j is rarely used; when used it is pronounced like the s in adhesion, vision ñ has a distinct palato-nasal sound and is related to the Spanish ñ in señor; it is generally followed by ya q is a clicking, guttural sound related to k sh is equivalent to sh in ship w is always consonantal and sounds like the w in we, twin, water y is always consonantal and sounds like the y in you, yes, beyond z is pronounced midway between z and s