Nationalists -- Philippines -- Fiction; Philippine fiction (Spanish) -- Translations into English; Philippines -- History -- Fiction
tertiary sister: A member of a lay society affiliated with a regular
monastic order.
tienda: A shop or stall for the sale of merchandise.
tikbalang: An evil spirit, capable of assuming various forms, but said
to appear usually as a tall black man with disproportionately long
legs: the “bogey man” of Tagalog children.
tulisan: Outlaw, bandit. Under the old régime in the Philippines the
tulisanes were those who, on account of real or fancied grievances
against the authorities, or from fear of punishment for crime, or from
an instinctive desire to return to primitive simplicity, foreswore life
in the towns “under the bell,” and made their homes in the mountains or
other remote places. Gathered in small bands with such arms as they
could secure, they sustained themselves by highway robbery and the
levying of black-mail from the country folk.
NOTES
[1] The Spanish designation for the Christianized Malay of the
Philippines was indio (Indian), a term used rather contemptuously, the
name filipino being generally applied in a restricted sense to the
children of Spaniards born in the Islands.—Tr.
[2] Now generally known as the Mariquina.—Tr.
[3] This bridge, constructed in Lukban under the supervision of a
Franciscan friar, was jocularly referred to as the Puente de Capricho,
being apparently an ignorant blunder in the right direction, since it
was declared in an official report made by Spanish engineers in 1852 to
conform to no known principle of scientific construction, and yet
proved to be strong and durable.—Tr.
[4] Don Custodio’s gesture indicates money.—Tr.
[5] Duck eggs, that are allowed to advance well into the duckling
stage, then boiled and eaten. The señora is sneering at a custom among
some of her own people.—Tr.
[6] The Jesuit College in Manila, established in 1859.—Tr.
[7] Natives of Spain; to distinguish them from the Filipinos, i.e.,
descendants of Spaniards born in the Philippines. See Glossary:
“Indian.”—Tr.
[8] It was a common saying among the old Filipinos that the Spaniards
(white men) were fire (activity), while they themselves were water
(passivity).—Tr.
[9] The “liberal” demonstrations in Manila, and the mutiny in the
Cavite Arsenal, resulting in the garroting of the three native priests
to whom this work was dedicated: the first of a series of fatal
mistakes, culminating in the execution of the author, that cost Spain
the loyalty of the Filipinos.—Tr.
[10] Archbishop of Manila from 1767 to 1787.—Tr.
[11] “Between this island (Talim) and Halahala point extends a strait a
mile wide and a league long, which the Indians call ‘Kinabutasan,’ a
name that in their language means ‘place that was cleft open’; from
which it is inferred that in other times the island was joined to the
mainland and was separated from it by some severe earthquake, thus
leaving this strait: of this there is an old tradition among the
Indians.”—Fray Martinez de Zuñiga’s Estadismo (1803).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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