How Man Turned into a Monkey

Long long ago, before the world was made like it appears now, the monkey looked like man and was called manobo. But after the world and people were made, the monkey was changed into the creature we see it as today.

It so happened that when people began to live in the world, they had many children. One of these children was Lumabat, a very nice young boy. His father had many children, and so Lumabat had many brothers and sisters.

One day a brother of Lumabat was climbing up over the roof of their house. He had in his hand a long ladle made of cocoanut-shell. He was playing with the ladle, when he saw a dog walking near their home.

"What a tail it has?" thought Lumabat's brother, "I wonder how it would have been if we also had tails like the dog?"

He held the ladle behind his back, at the base of his spine, and imagined that it was his tail. Suddenly a strange thing happened. The ladle turned into a tail and it got attached to his spine. By and by the tail began to grow and Lumabat's brother became a monkey.

When he grew up and had children, he was surprised to find that monkeys were born to him. Soon these monkeys gave birth to more monkeys and this went on till there were many monkeys in this world. All this came about before Lumabat went to heaven.