
@proceedings {4262,
	title = {Of Golden Ships and Divine Mediators: Folklore in Small Bisayan Island Communities},
	journal = {11th Literary Studies Conference},
	year = {2023},
	pages = {336-343},
	publisher = {Universitas Sanata Dharma in collaboration with the Critical Island Studies Consortium},
	address = {Yogyakarta, Indonesia},
	abstract = {
	Small island communities across the Visayas region of the Philippines are sites of convergence,engagement, and tension among people and entities of different origins and backgrounds. Iexamine the content of folk narratives gathered through linguistic fieldwork in two suchcommunities: (i) the Municipality of Romblon, on the island of Romblon, Province of Romblon(from 28 April-2 May, 2014) and (ii) the Municipality of Poro, on the island of Poro, in Camotes,Province of Cebu (from 8 March-30 April, 2022) and sketch out the ways in which high relativeinsularity (Baldacchino, 2006; Nash, et al., 2020) may have influenced these accounts. Oneaccount is a tale involving a golden ship which allegedly abducts children during Holy Week inRomblon, Romblon (Santiago, 2019). Another tale involves the intermediary namedPanganoron who is said to have settled a dispute between the two tribes Tag-Anito and Tag-Maktang in Poro Island (Costas, 1997; Santiago, 2022). Further, I seek to demonstrate that thespecific experiences associated with island life in the Central Philippines are encoded in thesetwo selected folk narratives. The distinctiveness of Southeast Asian island experiences(Andaya, 2006) may also be gleaned from comparing the above case studies with narrativesfrom other sites which have a similar character, such as the island of Jandayan, Bohol whereentities called agta inhabit the mangrove forests (Guieb, 2017) and the island of Cuyo, inPalawan where a place called napuro in the local language is said to be inhabited by similarsupernatural entities (Lee, 2021, 2022).



	Keywords: island studies, folklore, Visayan communities

},
	url = {https://drive.google.com/file/d/14mlViWILQ85uTFtLh4p_xfH2EM93yAHG/view},
	author = {Vincent Christopher A. Santiago}
}
