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After the war the victorious Ilocanos settled in the province of Pangasinan; so that now they constitute a greater number in population than the Pangasinanes themselves.
—Sixto Guico.
III. The Fairy Tale
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The attitude toward fairy stories
"From Ghoulies and Ghoosties, long-leggetty Beasties, and Things that go Bump in the Night, Good Lord, deliver us!" the quaint old litany pleads, and is probably better representative of the attitude of primitive peoples toward the extraordinary personages of the sub-world than is our more modern and debonair view. We have come to look upon a fairy story as a mental holiday, to enjoy which the narrator and the listener are off on a picnic. But not so do the unsophisticated folk think of the events. The grown-up primitive man believes more seriously in the tricks of goblins and sprites than do our most credulous modern children. To him, the good or malicious influence of the nunu or ticbalan is not a fiction, but a reality that must be reckoned with. Luckily he can reckon with it; for even in the earlier folk tales the fairies are not generally immortal, and they do not have unlimited power.