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.