Joshua Lawrence B.

Perez Socio 179 — Summary #7

2013-43336 / BA Sociology Prof. Laura Samson

A Preliminary Survey of Waray Poetry1

By Ma. Luz C. Vilches

- …The geographical proximity of the two provinces [Leyte and Samar] may account for the cultural
bond that exists among the natives; the primary indication of which is the people’s use of a
common medium of expression — the Waray language.

THE LANGUAGE, THE PEOPLE, AND THE EARLY FORM OF LITERARY EXPRESSION

- Waray is the language of the people of the entire province of Samar and Eastern Leyte (people
from Western Leyte speak Cebuano).

- It is one of the eight major languages of the Philippines and its roots can be traced to the
Malayo-Polynesian family.

- Like other languages in the Philippines, Waray is distinctly polysyllabic.

- This fact explains the naturally alliterative, consonontal, and assonantal nature of the language.

- Fr. Francisco Ignacio Alzina, a Spanish Jesuit did his missionary work in Leyte and Samar for
almost forty years, made a report on his observations concerning the culture of the people in the
two provinces.

- “The name Bisaya, if we derive it from the language of the people, means a happy man, good
tempered and pleasant…”

- Daroy [who translated his Alzina’s work] draws a similar conclusion: “The Waray, therefore, is
carefree and sybaritic.” This can be substantiated by practices that are still existing in
contemporary Waray society.

- Among the Warays, a fiesta is an occasion to express thoughts and sentiments in metaphoric
language through poetry and songs.

- Waray literature is primarily poetry.

- Daroy pointed out that one of the oldest verse forms in Waray was the lua… “a spontaneous
verse or oral discourse usually in verse.”

- Waray poetry took shape in the seventeenth century when the people began to use the
Romanized alphabet fairly well.

- [Vilches] found out that though Waray poetry had no variety of metrical rhymes and assonants as
Spanish poetry, it nevertheless had rhymes distinct from Spanish rhymes.

1 Vilches, Ma. Luz. (1982). A Preliminary Survey of Waray Poetry. In Luangco, G. C. (Ed.), Kandabao:
Essays on Waray Language, Literature, and Culture (pp. 59-88). Tacloban City: Divine Word University
Publications.
- Alzina… enumerated six poetic forms, several characteristics of which are still embedded in modern
Waray poetry:

1. The first poetic form was the Ambahan… likened to a ballad with two blank verses in
heptasyllabic lines; each stanza was self-contained.

2. Bical had the same structural pattern as the Ambahan but differed from it by its intent: Bical
was a poetic discourse between two persons, either two men or two women, who said
anything they wished in satiric fashion, with strict musical time for one or two hours.

3. Balac had the same structural pattern as the two but was distinctly metaphorical. Love was the
usual theme of Balac, expressed by a man and woman in the form of oral discourse.
Sometimes [it] was accompanied by two musical instruments — coriapi for the man, and
corlong for the woman.

4. Siday was the most difficult of all to compose. It was sung… to praise people, to relate the
accomplishmets of ancestors, and to tell of the beauty of some women.

5. The fifth poetic form, Parahaya, was given no further description by Alzina except that it was
used to mourn the dead.

6. The most popular poetic form was the Awit. It was composed of two verses without rhyme in
a couplet, and sung by sailors to the rhythm of the oars.

- …early Waray poetry appeared to have been very subjective since it dealt with the personal
sentiments of the writer… early Waray poetry was totally lyric poetry… It seems that adaptability to
music is one characteristic of Waray poetry.

- Of the six poetic forms mentioned by Alzina, only the Sidai (or Siday), now the standard Waray
term for poetry, has evolved from oral form to a deliberately written piece of Waray writing.
It has retained its serious intent: deeply reflective and almost always occasional. The popularity of
the Sidai among Waray writers must have been due to the adaptability of its form to different
themes for different occasions.

LITERARY AWARENESS IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY

The Sanghiran San Binisaya

- By February 1, 1900, the Americans occupied Leyte and Colonel Murray later established the
military government in the province.

- With the new colonial power renewed, emphasis was placed on socio-cultural development. The new
dimension was marked by the introduction of democracy and popular education. Popular
education provided such a stimulus to cultural life that it resulted in the emergence of literacy and
the educated group.

- By 1909, the educated elite of Leyte and Samar saw the necessity of founding an Academy of the
Bisayan Language of Leyte and Samar known as Sanghiran San Binisaya.

- [It] was dedicated to “cultivating, refining and enriching the dialect as spoken in Samar and
Oriental Leyte.”
 - [mentions the founder and members already mentioned in previous summaries] …later included
Epifanio de los Santos, Pedro Serrano Laktaw, Najeeb M. Saleeby, David P. Barrows, Otto
Schreerer, Paul L. Stangle.

- The campaign for the enrichment and purity of the Waray language gave way to the revival of
written Waray poetry.

- In 1923… the academy organized its aims and policies… to found a newspaper and make standard
orthography, phonetics, dictionary, grammar, rhetoric and rules in poetry writing. In 1924, the first
issue of the newspaper came out: Pahayagan Sine Nga Akademya San Binisaya sa Samar ug sa
Sidlangan San Leyte…

- One of the most successful incentives was a poetry contest sponsored by the Sanghiran in Manila.

- The six winning poems show different characteristics.

- The Sanghiran had, indeed, played a significant role in creating the literary awareness of the Warays
in the early twentieth century. From 1960 on, however, the Academy started losing support from
its member until it became inactive.

- The proliferation of written Waray literature, which was basically poetry, was brought about by the
rise of publication that characterized the American Occupation of Leyte and Samar in the early
1900.

WARAY PUBLICATIONS

Eco de Samar y Leyte

- Eco de Samar y Leyte was a weekly magazine, an official publication of the Diocese of Calbayog,
Samar… For almost thirty years, this magazine… became the basic source of information to the
people of Leyte and Samar in matters concerning social, political, ecclesiastical, and literary
interest…

- Poetry, lyric poetry that is, was the main literary form that captured the interest of the
people… it became the expression of their lives, the mirror of their preoccupations, and the
embodiment of their general worldview.

- Most of the Waray poems were written for different occasions… Every year, there were two
important events that the poets never missed: the birthday of the bishop of Calbayog, and the new
year.

- “Tuig Usa Cayocot Sian Cagatos Napulo Cag Upat” (Year 1914) is a typical example of a poem
written to welcome in the new year… the religious and moral tone of the poem is a typical
characteristic of other poems.

- The bulk of Waray poetry in Eco de Samar y Leyte had one favorite subject matter — man. All major
thematic preoccupations such as the transiency of earthly possessions and the notion of the
inevitability of death revolved around it. Eco de Samar y Leyte, basically a religious publication,
allowed itself to become the vehicle for cathetical instruction. It catered to the interests of the
church.
 - The image of man projected in the poems was an “existential” one. Man was conceived as a
creature-unto-death.

- Other themes like beauty of nature, or love… were minor preoccupations of the poems. They
were not treated in the same depth and attention as the theme of man.

- It was the practice of the time for writers to conceal their true identities behind certain
pseudonyms as an act of humility.

- The development of Waray poetry in Eco de Samar y Leyte was seen as a change from reflective
lyrics to social commentaries in a form of satirical verse.

- The general patterns of satire were set forth in “An Tadtaran”. Vices that were satirized
included the dishonest practices of usury fraud by businessmen, or the neglect of duties on
the part of government officials.

- …the satirical verse were light in spirit with its humorous, down-to-earth commentary on
people’s behavior

- The reflective lyrics in Eco de Samar y Leyte were predominantly decasyllabic quatraints with
monorhyming scheme… In general however, the poems were not primarily concerned with formal
structure but with the message they conveyed.

Voz de Visayas

- In 1927, La Voz de Bisayas with its Waray counterpart An Tingog han Kabisay’an, cameout as a
bilingual bi-monthly publication in Manila, but it lasted only for one year… it was nevertheless
valuable for its publication of literary news items and of Waray poems.. was specially useful when it
serialized winning entries of the poetry contest sponsored by the Sanghiran in 1926.

- The objectives of the publication… were to defend the “Taloohan” (Religious Faith) and the “Iroy nga
Tuna” (Motherland).

An Lantawan

- An Lantawan was founded in 1928.

- From 1928 to 1934, the publication came out once every ten days with its Spanish La Antalaya.
From 1934 to 1941, the Spanish text was replaced by the English The Lookout, weekly on
Saturdays.

- The Waray poems produced in An Lantawan were varied. There were occasional poems, most of
which were actually prayers, written to commemorate feast days of saints. This tendency often
recurs in Waray poetry…

- Agustin O’Mara introduced a new poetic form to embody prayers and adorations; this was
called “sunanoy” or “soneto” (sonnet)… His sonnet, however, did not exhibit the peculiar
characteristics of Western sonnet forms… It was simply a 14-line stanz in the usual dodecasyllabic
meter with a monorhyming scheme… The sonnet form did not become popular among the
writers, though. Perhaps writers found it difficult to follow a definite form that was foreign to
their poetry.
- An Lantawan also produced poems that dealt with personal convictions about the meaning of life,
happiness, love and death. These poems attempted a polished presentation of ideas by
introducing nature imagery… the explicit didacticism intentionally moral and religious was giving
way to an implicit one not necessarily preachy.

- Love was another subject that became a favorite interest of the poets.

- In its purest undefined form, love was understood as a treasure, a source of happiness.

- Love was also idealized.

- The poets dealt with three types of love.

- First, was motherly love — a love equated with tenderness and compassion in a very nobling
way.

- Second, was love of country — a love expressed in the form of allusions to the bravery of
past heroes, and in urging the people to follow the examples set by them.

- The third type of love was romantic love — the love between man and woman.

- The idea of love was sometimes lined with the ideas of youth and hope.

- The fondness for argumentation was… an echo of the Tagalog Balagtasan… any poetic debate is
loosely referred to by the Warays as “balagtasan”… a deliberately written debate on some serious
topic.

- Argumentative verses were very few compared to the social commentaries published in An
Lantawan… these social commentaries took the form of light, humorous, but satirical verse…

- The most common object of satire was the non-conventional behavior of the young generation…
Other object of commentaries were corruption in politics, and hypocrisy of politicians and
government officials who have forgotten their promises after having been put into office.

- In general, very few satirical verses were directed at particular persons; most were criticisms of
common patterns of social behavior.

Leyte Shimbun and other Publications

- With the Japanese Occupation, An Lantawan was replaced by Leyte Shimbun in 1942. This was the
newspaper that became the people’s main medium of information in English and Waray.
Besides updating the poeple on the war news, it also published items of literary interest such as
poetry.

- From 1950 up to the present, Leyte-Samar publications have dwindled.

- Between the late 50s and early 60s only two periodicals of notable literary importance circulated:
Leyte-Samar Record (1956), and the bilingual English-Waray The Courier (1959).

- For a long time, Waray poetry has been available only in the limited issues of An Lantawan and The
Courier.
- With the decline of the periodicals in the early sixties, the poems have become less accessible to the
reading public than before. Writing Waray poetry seemed to have come to an abrupt end.

- The development of Waray poetry has, indeed, been like a slow-flowing current from 1900 up
to the 1950s. Within the years, very few poems have been published, and very few innovations in
poetry have been made. As a result, the contributions of the above-mentioned poets will be
considered the foundation of any future development in Waray poetry.

WARAY POETRY AND PARTICULAR POETS

- The lack of any literary vehicle sustaining the interest of the people in the publication of
poetry was apparently the greatest single factor retarding the literary genius of the Warays.

Norberto Romualdez Sr.

- The founder of the Academy of the Bisayan Language, Norberto Romualdez, Sr., while more of a
philologist and linguist that a professional poet became, nevertheless a trailbrazer in Waray
poetry.

- Romualdez wrote Spanish and Waray poems; his Waray poems dealt with praises to the Virgin, or
with subjects like nature… and everyday things.

- Romualdez’s most important contribution to Waray poetry, however, was his very brief but
informative notes in poetic forms in relation to the general characteristics of Waray poetry.
These notes, under the heading “Bisayan Rhetoric and Poetics,” were appended to his book Bisayan
Grammar, published in 1908 for the use of American soldiers stationed at Camp Bumpus in
Tacloban.

- With his brief notes on poetic forms… Romualdez essayed an early attempt at analysis of the formal
aspect of Waray poetry.

Casiano Trinchera

- The one writer who popularized himself with his social commentaries in verse was Casiano
Trinchera.

- In 1924 his volume of satirical verses came out under the title An Kolitog (The Ear Pincher) with
his pen name “Kalantas”.

- This volume was supposed to be a record of the social activities of the people, a mirror of the
follies and vices in 1924.

- Trinchera also wrote love poems and some occasional ones, but it was in satire where he gained
recognition as a poet.

Eduardo Makabenta

- [Makabenta] wrote both Spanish and Waray poems which were gathered together in two
unpublished volumes (c. 1956): Pinarugpong Nga Mga Siday Ug Mga Garaygaday (Collected Poems
and Verses) and Verses.
- Makabenta’s skill as a poet was not only in writing original Waray and Spanish poems but also in
translating Spanish and English poems into Waray. One of his famous translations was Rizal’s
“Ultimo Adios” as “Katapusan nga Panamilet” now found engraved on Rizal’s monument in the
Luneta Park.

- On September 11, 1965, he received the “Outstanding Public Service Award” from Daniel Z.
Romualdez Memorial Society, Inc. for “sustained and constructive contribution to the enrichment of
Leyte-Samar Literature. On October 15,1965, he was given a Karta of Award from the United Poets
Laureate International as “Outstanding Samar-Leyte Poet.”

Francisco Alvarado

- Having won the first prize for the poem “Sa May Lalawitan” otherwise known as “Kahimayaan…” (An
Eternity), in the poetry contest sponsored by the Sanhiran in 1927, Alvarado became the first Poet
Laureate of the Sanghiran in 1928.

- In the summer of 1933, Alvarado published his volume of poems entitled Paningog Han Kalag
(Outpourings of the Soul)… The 114-page volume of Paningog Han Kalag evoked both positive and
negative reactions… These positive and negative criticisms were indicative of Alvarado’s impact as a
poet.

Iluminado Lucente

- On August 6, 1957, [Lucente] was crowned “Poet Laureate in Bisaya” (Bisaya meaning Waray for
the beauty of the language and depth of emotions that his poems showed. Throughout his lifetime,
Lucente was writing Waray songs and pure lyrics, but he also tried his hand at satirical and
argumentative verses, which also gained recognition… he translated a few poems from Spanish to
Waray, and also a handful of original Spanish songs.

- It is the romantic character in both language and subject matter that clearly predominates in [his
poems]. The Warays take pride in Lucente for this particular characteristic.

- Ceferino Montejo: “If Pampanga boasts of a bard and writer like Crisostomo Soto or Ilocano
regions boast o their Bukaneg, and Iloilo prides of their Sumakuel, Leyte too can hold its own in
the vitality and force that was Lucente.”

Vicente I. de Veyra

- Vicente de Veyra’s profession as a dentist did not deter him from nourishing his love for literature
by collecting folk songs, proverbs, and riddles; making anthologies of poems written by his
contemporary poets; and writing his own poems.

- … he too was a romantic in his poetry… Like the other poets mentioned, de Veyra also wrote
occasional poems with religious overtones, and other lyrics which were highly descriptive especially
those dealing with nature.

Ceferino Montejo

- Little can be said of Ceferino Montejo’s poetry in Waray; he was primarily writing in English.
While his contemporaries were winning fame in Waray poetry, he was also establishing his identity
 as a poet in English, and in 1957, he became Poet Laureate in English with his collection of
poems, Voices.

- Though Montejo conceived of poetry as primarily an expression of emotion, he nevertheless,

seriously thought that a poem with a “moral philosophy” was still the best.

- As a poet, Montejo was romantic in the sense that he was primarily preoccupied with the
expression of emotions in his poetry.

Agustin O’ Mara

- Of the two living poets — Ceferino Montejo and Agustin O’Mara, it is the latter who is still active in
poetry writing. When Lucente, Makabenta and the rest of the poets were already enjoying fame,
O’Mara was only feeling his way through the publication of his poems in An Lantawan and Leyte
Shimbun, although he already started writing poetry in 1921.

- While the other poets tend to dwell more on the subject than on the form of their poems, O’Mara
attempts to strike a balance between subject and form.

- Awareness of craft foreshadows a new tendency in Waray poetry, that is, the preoccupation with
craft among poets… This new poetic tendency will marshall in a new crop of writers. The old poets
will recede to the past, but with their achievements they will remain the pillars of Waray poetry.