boy
stood close to him, and spoke these words:--

"Your wife got a baby, but it was a girl; and she hid it away from
you in the box."

When the Sun wakened from sleep, he was very angry at the Moon,
and the two fell to quarrelling about the baby. The Moon wanted the
child saved.

"You ought to keep it with you," she urged.

"No, no!" protested the Sun. "I cannot keep it, because my body is
so hot it would make your baby sick."

"And I cannot keep it," complained the Moon, "for my body is very dark;
and that would surely make the child sick."

Then the Sun fell into a passion of rage; and he seized his big
kampilan, [39] and slew the child. He cut its small body into
numberless little bits,--as many as the grains of sand that lie along
the seashore. Out of the window he tossed the pieces of the shining
little body; and, as the gleaming fragments sparkled to their places
in the sky, the stars came to birth.

Origin of the Stars

All the old Bagobo men say that the Sun and the Moon once had a
quarrel about the Moon's baby.

The Moon had a baby in her belly; and the Sun said, "If our baby is
a girl, we will kill it, because a girl could not be like me."

Then the Sun went on a journey to another town, and while he was gone,
the baby was born; but it was a girl. Now, the Moon felt very sorry to
think of her little child being killed, and she hid it in a box. In
a few days, the Sun came home to rest with his wife. Then he asked
her for the baby.

The Moon answered, "I killed it yesterday: it was a girl."

But the Sun did not believe what his wife said. Then he opened the
box to get his clothes, and there he saw a baby-girl. And the Sun
was very angry. He seized the baby and cut it into many pieces, and
threw the pieces out of the window. Then the pieces of the baby's
body became the stars.

Before the Sun and the Moon had their quarrel, they journeyed together
through the sky, and the sky was not far above the earth, as now,
but it lay low down.

The Fate of the Moon's Baby

The Sun wanted the Moon to have a boy-baby so that it would be like its
father. The Moon too hoped to give birth to a boy. But when the child
was born, it was a girl. Now, at that time, the Moon was very hungry,
and wanted to eat her own baby. Then the Sun killed the girl-child,
and ate it up himself.

The Black Men at the Door of the Sun

The men who live in that part of the world near to where the sun
rises are very black