Episode 85 – Lazy Town – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 85 Show Notes

Source: Filipino Folklore

This week on MYTH, we’re headed to the Philippines for a less than loveable trickster. You’ll find that sand doesn’t kill fleas, that gravity makes a poor cook, and that you can’t cook rice in coins. Then, in Gods and Monsters, it’s a backwards-jointed creature with a strong maternal instinct. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 85, “Lazy Town”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
In Filipino folklore, you find a fantastic character known as Juan Tamad AKA Lazy John. He’s a favorite comedic punching bag, showing up in books, movies and TV shows over the years. Juan is the quintessential slacker kid, always trying to find a way to not do whatever it is he’s supposed to be doing so he can take a nap instead (and it usually comes back to bite him in the ass, though not always). One of the most famous incidents, which does a great job of illustrating the Juan archetype, is about him coming across a guava tree.
Juan had been out all day and was getting hungry. He’d pissed off his mom that morning (or, in some versions, he just didn’t want to walk all the way home in the heat) and so was looking for easy food. Looking around, he saw a guava tree bearing plenty of ripe fruit. It looked plump and juicy and delicious. It also looked very high up in the tree. Juan didn’t feel like climbing all the way up that tall, tall tree but he was hungry just the same. Thinking about the dilemma for a moment, Juan came upon a solution. Of a sort, anyway. He lay down next to the trunk of the tree and opened his mouth, waiting for a piece of fruit to fall off.
And that’s the whole story, which means it’s time for Gods and…nah, I’m just fucking with you. I wouldn’t do that. But it does give you a solid idea of just who Juan Tamad is and how he behaves for today’s actual story. This version of the story (of which there are many) comes from Laughing Together: Stories, Riddles, and Proverbs from Asia and the Pacific. One day, just like any other day, Juan’s mother sent her lazy-ass son to town to buy a new cooking pot. When he arrived, he discovered that the townsfolk were suffering from an infestation of fleas. Nobody knew where they had come from, but now they were everywhere and everyone was miserable. The little fuckers climbed up your legs when you weren’t paying attention and buried themselves in your hair until you were itching like mad and scratching yourself bloody. It was horrible, but it also wasn’t Juan’s problem. Shrugging in disregard, Juan bought a pot and headed for home.
The fleas had other ideas. They had climbed up his pants while he was in the shop buying his pot and not giving a single shit about how miserable everyone was. As he was leaving town, they all started biting at once – a hot, sharp, surprising pain. Juan yelped and jumped in sudden and terrible discomfort. Flapping his arms madly, Juan slapped and scratched and hopped around trying to make the burning itch stop. The pot, completely forgotten in the sudden flea attack, dropped to the ground and shattered into a dozen pieces.
The crash of shattering clay snapped Juan’s attention back to his task. He eyed the fragments in dismay. His mother would be furious with him if he came home not only without the pot he had been sent to buy but without the money he had been given to buy it with. His mom would suspect he had used the money to buy something for himself and lied about it (mostly because that was exactly the kind of thing he did all the time). He couldn’t go back empty handed, but he didn’t have any more money. What he needed was a scheme.
What he had was a broken pot. Juan considered it from every angle and then smiled a sneaky smile as he hit upon a clever plot. He heaped the shards into a pile and then grabbed some big flat rocks. He ground the clay into a fine white powder and wrapped it up into a bunch of small banana leaf packages. Picking it up and holding it as though it was precious instead of just so much worthless dust, Juan headed back into town. As he went, he called out ‘Flea-killer! Get your flea-killer here! Juan’s wondrous flea powder, guaranteed to rid you of your flea problems!’
The poor, suffering townspeople were thrilled to hear these miraculous promises. They sounded almost too good to be true, but they had been afflicted with these fleas from hell for so long that they didn’t stop to consider the source. They’d tried everything they could think of to get rid of the fleas, and nothing had worked. They were desperate. The townspeople all crowded around Juan and bought up all of the packages of his miracle flea-killer in minutes. Smiling and happy (though also trying desperately not to scratch until he was well out of sight), Juan headed home with his fat bag of coins. In all the excitement, he completely forgot to replace the broken pot before setting out.
His mother was happy to see her lazy son return with much more money than he had set out with that morning, but she did still actually need a pot. Rice couldn’t be cooked in coins. Thus, she sent Juan back to town the next morning to finish his errand. Being a habitual liar, Juan had forgotten all about his little ruse the day before. The townspeople, still very much afflicted by a plague of fleas, had not.
As soon as he was spotted heading jauntily into town, he was surrounded by a mob of angry men and women. Even if they would have been happy with a refund, Juan hadn’t brought all of their money with him today – just enough to buy a pot. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because they were well past the point where this was about money. It was about being swindled and lied to. Again. The mob closed in around him with much screaming and shaking of fists and very plausible threats of violence.
“You little piece of shit! You dare to show your face back here again after tricking us all yesterday? We’re going to kick your fucking teeth in, rip your arms off your body, and then beat you to death with your own goddamned arms!” Juan could see in their eyes that these were not idle threats. They really were just angry enough to actually murder him over this. He thought fast. He knew that he needed a very, very good story to save his hide today. “Good people, please! I swear I didn’t lie to you – my miracle powder works! Tell me, how did you use the flea-killer?”
The townspeople had expected Juan Tamad to lie through his teeth, but they had not expected him to double down. Caught flat-footed, the people’s anger was reduced to a low simmer. Not gone, definitely not gone, but pushed to the back burner by confusion. “What do you mean ‘how did we use the powder’? We dusted ourselves with it to coat the fleas with the supposed flea-killer of course.”
Juan shook his head sadly, tutting in disappointment. “Why would you do that? Do you have any of the powder left?” More confusion. The people conferred and it turned out that no, none of them had any of the powder left. Desperate for the promised relief, every last one of them had used up all of the powder they had bought. “That’s too bad. If you still had some, I could show you the proper way to use it and you would all feel better. It’s actually very simple. First, you have to catch a flea. Then, you open its eyes and put the powder directly in. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!”
The crowd was stunned by this absolutely ludicrous story and fell momentarily silent. After a tense moment, someone in the crowd laughed and then someone else. Awkward, angry laughter rippled through the crowd, turning dark and ugly as it grew. “That’s the story you’re going with? Really? You want us to catch each individual flea, which is an impossible task already, and then figure out how to open its tiny eyes and pour dust into it? I thought you were supposed to be good at lying.”
Juan realized that this was getting away from him. He kept talking louder and more desperately, trying to convince everyone, anyone to believe his cockamaney story, but no one did. His lies had gotten too outrageous for anyone to swallow anymore. They closed in slowly, menacingly. Looking around, Juan realized that, for the first time, there was no way out of the situation he had created for himself. He was up shit creek without a paddle. And he knew it.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, Juan did the unthinkable – he told the truth. He told them how he had broken the pot and, afraid of his mother’s wrath at his carelessness, had made up the whole flea-killer ruse and duped them all. The townspeople had suspected as much, but hearing it all out loud didn’t make them any less furious with Juan. Angry faces surrounded him and angry fists rose to beat him to within an inch of his life. Lucky for him (Juan was always luckier than he deserved), an old woman stepped between Juan and the mob. She told everyone that this wasn’t going to solve anything and might even make things worse. She urged them to let the young asshole go. This time. She whirled on Juan and warned him that if he ever tried anything like this ever again, she would end his miserable life herself. Once she was sure that he had heard every word and that the crowd wasn’t going to pummel the young man, she led them around him and towards his house to tell his mother. Juan was left there, alone, once again terrified of what his mother would do to him when he came home.
Juan is right back in the hot water he tried to trick his way out of (in the self-defeating way that is common to many trickster tales), which means it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is the alan.
The alan are creatures native to the tales of the Itneg people of the Philippines and are an unusual sort. They are mostly humanoid, though they have functional wings that allow them to soar overhead, and are universally described as female in stories. If the wings weren’t a dead giveaway (especially if you found them sleeping upside down hanging from a tree), they also have sharply-nailed fingers and toes that point backwards (a common trait in humanoid but decidedly not human creatures of folklore) with their fingers fastened at the wrist and their toes at the heel. They are said to live in houses of gold, usually near streams or springs, where they raise human children. Unlike the fey however, these mortal children are not stolen from their parents but created from menstrual blood and miscarried fetuses gathered from the pools where women go to wash their hair.
This blood is collected into a bowl or dish with an axe and covered until a human child emerges from the blood. This child is clothed and given a name before being returned to their biological families along with gifts (often great riches). The families are sometimes even gifted the golden houses the alan was living in (though some stories simply describe them as fine and opulent instead of actually made of gold), which will simply appear in the village overnight. Once the child is back with its family, the alan flies off and is never seen or heard from again.
The human children created and raised by the alan are touched by the supernatural as you might expect and are said to have extraordinary abilities. Tales are told of them winning great battles against deadly foes even as tiny children. As adults, they are often champions of the villages, defeating evil spirits troubling the people and many folk heroes are said to be children of the alan.
As we’ve seen, the alan are generally friendly and even helpful. Stories abound of them offering advice or aid to nearby villagers, even performing tasks for those they like. When not otherwise occupied, they tend to spend their time celebrating and dancing. If you did manage to piss them off however, you were in for a world of hurt as their vengeance was terrible. One of the easiest ways to do this was by threatening or actually harming children, who were under the alan’s protection.
Scholars have noted that the alan bear a striking resemblance to the large fruit bats native to the Philippines, especially as the alan begins to age and her skin wrinkles heavily as many stories describe. These bats may have been the original inspiration for some of these tales. One such tale comes from Philippine Folk Tales, collected in 1916 by Mabel Cook Cole.
Two men once went out into the mountains to hunt the wild pigs that lived there. After spending much of the day tracking a particularly big beastie, they finally speared and killed it, which was good. They did not have a fire handy or any easy way to make one, which was bad. Boar bristles are notoriously tough and need to be removed with flame. Dragging the boar all the way back with the sharp bristles in place was a most unpleasant prospect, so one of the hunters climbed a tall tree to look for smoke.
Sure enough, a little ways farther up the mountain, there was a column of smoke. Leaving his friend behind with the boar carcass to keep any wild animals from making off with it, the hunter headed out to look for the fire. It didn’t take long to find the source – a splendid golden house all alone in the woods. Shit, this was definitely the home of an alan. He was terrified of pissing her off but he did also need fire and she had it. She wouldn’t miss one burning brand, right? Moving on tiptoe, he crept into the house and saw that she and her baby were fast asleep. Heart hammering in terror, he snuck farther into the home as quietly as possible. It wasn’t good enough. The alan woke up anyway.
She asked what this strange man in her house wanted, and he told her that he only wanted a little fire for the wild pig he and his friend had killed. Being a helpful sort, the alan freely offered him use of her fire and, taking up her basket, she went with him to the pig. Using a burning brand from the fire, the trio singed the pig. With her long, sharp nails, the alan gutted the animal, rooted around in the entrails, and pulled out the liver. Handing it to the hunter who had, you know, trespassed in her house, she asked him to go and feed it to her baby while she butchered the carcass for easier transport. Seriously, she’s super helpful and friendly.
Figuring he couldn’t really say no after all she’d done (and was continuing to do with those sharp, sharp nails), he took the liver and headed back to the golden house. Unfortunately, he hadn’t eaten anything all day. The hunt had taken longer than expected and this hike was making him munchy, but all he had was the liver. The baby was small and probably wouldn’t miss just one bite, right? One bite turned into two turned into eating the whole damned thing. Oops.
He walked into the house empty handed and looked down at the baby in its crib with no idea what to do next. He panicked, bad. Picking up the baby, he carried it over to a cauldron of boiling water and tossed it in. The story doesn’t really explain how you go from eating a baby’s meal to straight up infanticide. I mean, the alan is not going to be less pissed about baby murder than about theft. I don’t know what the hunter was hoping for here. Having boiled the magical creature’s beloved child alive, the hunter went back to her and his buddy at the pig carcass.
“Did my baby eat well?” “Um, yes? Yes. The baby ate great.” Satisfied, she packed up a portion of the meat into the basket and headed home. As soon as she was out of earshot, the hunter whispered to his buddy what had happened up at the house. The second hunter was understandably terrified by this horror. He could see clearly that the alan was going to find out about the murdered baby very, very soon and they needed to not be here when she did. They began to run but didn’t get far before they heard the alan’s agonized shriek behind them followed by the sound of her enraged pursuit.
She was gaining on them. Worse, they skidded to a stop next to a large pond. They were trapped. Not sure what else to do, the two men climbed the tallest tree they could see, growing right next to the water. No sooner had they reached the upper branches than the alan broke through the undergrowth looking for them. Movement caught her eye and she raced to the water’s edge. She reached her long, backwards nails towards the two men – or rather, towards their reflections in the water. She couldn’t reach them, of course, but she heard them rustling in the branches overhead and looked up.
“You were just down there; how did you get up there?” The second hunter (who was definitely the brains of the operation) called back ‘we climbed feet first!’ Furious and unwilling to allow them to escape, the alan grabbed a vine dangling from the tree, turned upside down, and began to climb up feet first. It was a difficult climb but, being supernatural, she managed. She had almost reached the two men when the second hunter reached out and cut the vine. With a surprised scream, the alan fell to the rocks below, splattering her brains everywhere. She wasn’t supernatural enough to survive something like that. The alan was dead, which meant the two men could safely climb back down. Figuring that the dead didn’t need the shit in that nice house, they raided the dead alan’s home, taking jars of beads and gold back with them.
I’m very mixed on this story. It’s upsetting that the asshole first hunter was rewarded for everything terrible that he did. The second hunter was just reacting to the shitty, deadly situation he found himself in and the alan was entirely justified in her violent anger. It does show how helpful the alan could be and how protective of children as well, which is the main reason I included it here.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, on Vurbl, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff.
Next time, we’ll meet one of the most beloved yokai – the kitsune. You’ll see how to ruin your relationship with your stepdaughter, how to ruin a dinner party, and how to take a killer nap. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll discover what comes from kindness to animals. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.