The wine from the coconut

One day a man took his blow-gun and his dog and went to the forest to hunt. As he was making his way through the thick woods, he chanced upon a young seedling growing on the ground.

It was the first seedling of this kind that he had ever seen, and it seemed so peculiar to him that he stopped to look at it before going father.

When the man had gone some distance ahead, his attention was attracted by a noisy bird in a tree, and he shot it with his blow-gun. By and by he took aim at a large monkey, which mocked him from another treetop, and it, too, fell dead at his feet.

Then he heard his dog barking furiously in the distant bushes, and hastening to it he found it biting a wild pig. After a hard struggle he killed the pig, and then, feeling satisfied with his success, he took the three animals on his back and returned to the little plant.

“I have decided to take you home with me, little plant,” he said, “for I like you and you may be of some use to me.”

He uprooted the plant very carefully and started on his way back towards home. But before he could go far enough, he noticed that the leaves of the little plant had begun to wilt, and he did not know what to do. He had no water to sprinkle over the plant. Finally, in despair, he cut the throat of the bird and sprinkled the blood on the cocoanut. No sooner had he done this than the plant began to revive, and he continued on his journey.

And yet again, before he had gone far the leaves of the plant began to wilt. Learning from the previous experience, this time he revived it with the blood of the monkey. Then the man hastened on, but only to find the leaves wilting again for the third time, and he was compelled to stop and revive the plant with the blood of the pig. This was his last animal, so he made all the haste possible to reach home before his plant would die.

But the plant began to wilt again before he reached his house. Now there was nothing more he could do as he had no more animal whose blood to use to water the plant. He decided to just leave it on the ground. He dug a shallow hole and put the small plant in, to make it stay in place. As soon as he did that, the little plant quickly revived and then grew into a tall tree. He named it “coconut.”

The hunter discovered a lot more about the coconut tree. The most interesting thing he found was the wine from the tree which he called “tuba.” He took a sip and liked it. He took some more and later invited his friends to try it, too. Everybody liked it and became very fond of the drink.

As drinking “tuba” from the coconut tree became a habit among the men in the village, the hunter noticed something, which he always shared to every new member of their drinking group:

“The coconut tree is like the three animals whose blood gave it life when it would have died. The man who drinks three or four cups of ‘tuba’ becomes like the noisy bird that I shot with my blow-gun. One who drinks more than three or four cups becomes like the big monkey that acts silly; and one who becomes drunk is like the pig that sleeps even in a mud-hole.” (Reference: http://www.worldoftales.com/Filipino_folktales.html)