How the Moon and the Stars Came to Be

HOW THE MOON AND THE STARS CAME TO BE

Bukidnon (Mindanao)

One day in the times when the sky was close to the ground a spinster went out to pound rice. 113 Before she began her work, she took off the beads from around her neck and the comb from her hair, and hung them on the sky, which at that time looked like coral rock.

Then she began working, and each time that she raised her pestle into the air it struck the sky. For some time she pounded the rice, and then she raised the pestle so high that it struck the sky very hard.

Immediately the sky began to rise, 114 and it went up so far that she lost her ornaments. Never did they come down, for the comb became the moon and the beads are the stars that are scattered about.