Búgan was the only child of the god Hinumbían and his wife Dakáue. They lived in Luktán, the highest level of the Sky World. Búgan’s parents wanted her to get married, but she wasn’t interested in any of the available bachelors in Luktán. So her parents sent her down to a lower sky region, but there was no one there she wanted to marry, either. Then they sent her down to the lowest sky region, Kabúnian, which is the level just above the earth, and tried to set her up with Bagílat, the god of lightning.
Nothing doing, said Búgan.
“That Bagílat, he’s always running all over the Sky World, from the north to the south, from the east to the west, sending lightning bolts down to earth and destroying the plants and the trees. Why would I want to marry him?”
“In that case,” said Bagílat’s father, “maybe you should just go back home, to Luktán.”
But Búgan didn’t want to go home. Instead she went down to earth, to a place called Pangagauan, where she saw a young Ifugao man named Kinggauan, digging pits to catch deer and other game in. He was a poor man, so poor that he’d worn out his only clout [loincloth] and had to go about naked. He must have been handsome, too, because when Búgan saw him, she was filled with pity and decided that she wanted to marry him.
She went home to ask permission from her parents, which they gave (I guess they really wanted her to get married), and so she went down to earth with a pot of cooked rice, and a brand new clout (bahág). But when she approached Kinggauan’s hut, he was too embarrassed to come meet her, because he was naked.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said. “I have a clout for you.” And she tossed the clout into the open doorway. He put it on, but he still didn’t want to let her in.
“It’s bad luck to meet a woman when one is hunting,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll have good luck. Let’s eat the rice that I brought, and spend the night in your hut, and tomorrow we’ll go out and see how lucky you are in the hunt.”
And that was that. The next day, the two went out to the game pits, and discovered that they were full. Kinggauan spent the rest of the day slaughtering the game (except two little piglets, a male and a female, which he gave to Búgan) and hauling the meat back to the hut.
On the following day, Búgan asked Kinggauan why he lived in such a tiny hut, in such a remote place. Kinggauan told her that his parents were miserly, and wouldn’t help to support him.
“We’ll see,” said Búgan. “Let’s go back to Kiangan [the oldest town in the province of Ifugao].” And so they did. They went to the house where Kinggauan’s parents lived and sat themselves down, much to his parents’ surprise.
“Who is this woman?” asked Kinggauan’s mother. Búgan explained who she was, and that she had seen Kinggauan when looking down on earth from the Sky World, and out of pity came down to visit him and bring him game. Kinggauan’s parents didn’t fully believe her, but Búgan sent them to their son’s hut, where they saw the abundance of meat that Kinggauan had recovered from his pits. After that, there wasn’t much that his parents could say.
And so Kinggauan and Búgan lived as man and wife, in Kiangan. Eventually, Búgan gave birth to a healthy son; the couple named him Balitúk. The two little piglets grew up, and bred, and soon the couple had a large herd. Kinggauan’s luck with the hunt continued, and the family were happy and prosperous.
But their prosperity made the other townspeople jealous, and they disliked this strange woman, with her strange habits. Sky people don’t eat like Earth people do; Búgan ate only rice, fowl, and flesh; she wouldn’t touch fish or vegetables. So the townspeople, to drive her away, began to surround the family’s house with fish, and vegetables, and garden crops. The smell of the food made Búgan ill, with a fever and a rash. And so she moved out of the family house, to another hut. But the townspeople continued to harass her, surrounding her new home with all the foods that they knew would make her sick.
Finally, Búgan got tired of this, and decided to go home, to the Sky World. She wanted to take her family with her, and she tried to carry Kinggauan up to the sky in a hammock, but he was too frightened to go up with her. What to do? He couldn’t go to the Sky World, and she couldn’t stay on Earth.
So Búgan took a knife, and cut their son in two, just above the waist. She gave the top half to her husband — because the top half would be easier to bring back to life — and kept the bottom half for herself. The entrails and organs she divided evenly between the two halves of the body. Then Búgan went up to the Sky World and made her half of Balitúk whole again, and brought him back to life.
And of course, poor Kinggauan didn’t know how to reanimate his half of his son. The corpse rotted, and eventually, the stench made it up to the Sky World, and to Búgan.
Crying with grief, Búgan came back down to earth. She took her son’s head, and turned it into an owl. She threw the ears into the forest, where they became tree fungi. She turned the nose into another type of tree fungus, one that looks shells. From the entrails she made the bill of the ído bird [a sparrow-like bird with a long tail].
The tongue had begun to rot, so from it she made an illness that causes people’s tongues to swell. From the ribs she made poisonous snakes. From the heart she made the rainbow, and from the hair, maggots. From the intestines she created rodents [possibly squirrels], and from the bones of the arms she made the rotten branches that fall from trees upon passers-by.
And then Búgan went back to the sky.
Luzon 2 