SEARCH CAGAYAN...

 ANTHEMS

Cagayan Hymn

Ybanag Version

By Nicanor Carag

Cagayan, dabbun nga cacastan niacan

Egga ca lara nacuan ta piam,
Nu curug tu naparayu ca niacan
Ariata ca Bulubuga nga cattaman

Chorus

Cagayan, maquemmemmi ca nga innan

Cagayan, auan tu caguittam;
Nu ani paga casta na dabbun caruan
Egga ca la ta futu’ ñga ideducan.

 EMBLEMS

Provincial Flower

What is the “GARDENIA”?

Gardenia is a genus of ornamental trees and shrubs in the “madder” family “Rubiacea”, native to
subtropical regions of China, Japan and Africa. The solitary white or infrequently yellow flowers
of gardenias are showy, highly fragrant and have velvety petals.
Of the more than fifty species, the best known is “Gardenia Jasminoides”. Sometimes called
“caps jasmine”. Many horticultural varieties of this specie have been developed and are in great
demand as cut flowers for use in corsages or for seasonal gifts as potted plants. In the warmer
regions of North America, particularly in Southern United States, gardenias are used extensively
in outdoor landscape planting. In cooler regions, gardenias are popular as house plants.

Provincial Flag
The coat of arms shall nor be bound by an encircling band, but shall be drawn with bold outlines
of black to better define its form against the background. Neither shall be the words Province of
Cagayan: Official Seal”. (A flag is supposed to be an emblem, to portray a symbol; a pennant or
a banner does not).

Province of Cagayan Official Seal

The coat of arms shall nor be bound by an encircling band,

but shall be drawn with bold outlines of black to better
define its form against the background. Neither shall be the
words Province of Cagayan: Official Seal”. (A flag is
supposed to be an emblem, to portray a symbol; a pennant or
a banner does not).

 LITERATURE

People, Culture and the Arts

Due to the influx of Ilokano migrants in the last century, majority of the people of Cagayan
speak Iloko as their primary tongue. Aside from the Ilokanos, there are several smaller ethnic
groups that live in the province. The Ybanags are the dominant ethnic group in the vicinity of the
provincial capital of Cagayan-—Tuguegarao, now a city. The closely related Itawits inhabit the
Pinacanauan River valley as well as areas of Amulung and Tuao. The Malawegs are found
mainly in the municipality of Rizal . In the foothills and the mountains of the Sierra Madre
Range , several Negrito groups called the Agtas forage and hunt for food. The established lingua
franca of the province is Ybanag.

The Ybanags, Itawits and Malawegs are mainly lowland farmers whose agricultural practices are
similar to those of the Ilokanos. The Ybanags used to inhabit the area along the Cagayan coast
but migrated further inland. They conducted trade with neighboring areas using distinctive
seacrafts, and their commercial interests made their language the medium of commerce
throughout the region before the influx of Ilokano migrants. They are also excellent blacksmiths
and continue to make good bolos. The Ybanags are reputed to be the tallest of all the ethno-
linguistic groups in the Philippines.
The Itawits are almost indistinguishable from the Ybanags. They build their houses with separate
kitchens, connected by a narrow walkway that is used as washing area for hands and feet. The
Itawits are noted for their pottery and basket-weaving traditions.

The culture of Cagayan is showcased in museums, historical buildings and archeological sites
spread across the province. In Solana, the Neolithic archeological sites in Lanna have yielded
stone tools used as early as 20,000 years back. The Cabarruan jar burial site, also in the town,
features ancient Filipino traditions of taking care of their dead. The Cagayan Museum is a
repository of the province´s cultural heritage. Iron Age pottery, Chinese Ming and Sung dynasty
porcelain pieces as well as Church paraphernalia are on display together with Paleolithic fossils.
The oldest bell in the country, cast in 1592, still peals from the tower of the church in
Camalaniugan. The old brick works in Tuguegarao lie inside the city and speak of a time when
bricks were extensively used to build the beautiful churches of the Cagayan.

Ybanag Dialect: Potent Factor in Cagayan’s Evangelization

The Ybanag dialect was a very potent factor in the difficult and hazardous evangelization of the
pagan and hostile inhabitants of the Cagayan Valley.

The evangelization and pacification of the valley were difficult because the communities found
by the colonizers were far apart, separated by primeval spans of wild forests with crocodile-
infested rivers to cross or along which the missionaries and soldiers had to travel. There were
also the great calamities–epidemic, locust infestations, floods and earthquakes–which caused
great difficulties and sufferings to the people, and though to us today the calamities were natural
phenomena, the pagan natives blamed their occurences on the coming of the white people.

The early chronicles of Cagayan Valley , the natives, especially the Irrayas and Gaddangs, were
fierce and warlike. This was so, apparently because living in separate communities, independent
of each other, they cultivated fierce love for freedom. Thus, they resisted the abuses committed
by the officials and their encomienderos, to the extent of rising a revolt–the history of the
province tells of numerous and frequent insurrections in some of which the native rebels killed
all the Spanish officials.

It was always the missionaries who consoled the natives in time of the calamities and who
pacified them when they revolted, for the guns of the Spanish soldiers were futile against the
fury which the natives displayed in defense of their rights and sense of freedom.

How did the missionaries accomplish their difficult and hazardous tasks and pacification?
Mainly, because they and only they among the Spaniards, learned the Ybanag and, fired by their
zeal to spread the Catholic faith, unmindful of the difficulties and dangers, they penetrated even
the farthest native communities, and taught the Ybanag to the non-Ybanag speaking natives.

It should be remembered that at the time of the coming of the Spaniards, there were dialects
spoken in the Cagayan Valley as there were distinct tribes. The pure Ybanag was spoken only
from Masi or Pamplona to Gattaran.

In the Itawes district, composed of Piat, Tuao, Malaweg and Santa Cruz de gumpat, the Itawes
dialect was generally spoken, with Cammang, Bayambanan, Malaweg, Nabayugan, Apayao and
Aeta spoken by the respective tribes.

In the south district, the territory from Nassiping to Fural, a barrio of Gamu (Isabela), the spoken
dialects were the Irraya, Gaddang, Iyogad, Catalagan, Dadayag, Aripa and Aeta. In general,
Irraya was spoken from Tuguegarao, to Ilagan; the Gaddang from Reina Mercedes (Isabela) to
Bayombong (Nueva Vizcaya); the Iyogad was the dialect in the plains of Diffun (Quirino)
toward the Cagayan River; and in the towns of Dupax, Bambang and Aritao in Nueva Vizcaya,
the Isinay and Ilongote were spoken.

In 1581, after he drove away the Japanese marauding the communities on both sides of the
mouth of the Cagayan River, Captain Juan Pablo Carrion sailed to Lallo and founded there the
Mission of Nueva Segovia which became the springboard of the missionaries in their
evangelization of the valley and also the seat of the civil government was established in 1583.

The missionaries, on starting their evangelization work in the territory from Masi to Gattaran,
had to learn the spoken dialect, Ybanag, in which they had to preach. They wrote cartillas,
catechisms, and prayer books in this dialect. When they and the other missionaries were sent to
the non-Ybanag speaking communities, they taught the dialect far and wide.

For example, when Beato, Fr. Luis Flores and R.P. Fr. Francisco Manego were sent to Pilitan, a
place near Isabela, they were ordered to make their parishioners learn Ybanag.

In 1725, Fr. Jose Herrera extended the order to Bayombong. In this order, Fr. Herrera said, “I
also order that all religious missionaries of Paniqui study Ybanag and see to it that the boys and
girls recite all the prayers in Ybanag, and to those who come down from the mountains and who
will be converted to our Holy Catholic faith, they should know the mysteries to be able to receive
the waters of baptism, in the same language, so that in the course of time everybody will speak
the Ybanag dialect.”
Finally, toward 1876, the R.R. Fr. Ruperto Alarcon made it obligatory from Aparri to Carig. He
transferred to Buguey a priest who was opposed to the idea.

In the closing years of the nineteenth century, Ybanag was spoken from the coastal towns of
Cagayan to Bayombong, except among some tribes in the Itawes region and in Nueva Viscaya
who, through the centuries, successfully evaded being christianized. Up to the third decade of the
present century, only Ybanag was spoken in the problacions of Tuguegarao, Peñablanca and
Solana, in Cagayan, and in San Pablo , Cabagan, Tumauini, and Ilagan in Isabela.

In Tuguegarao, a bilingual (Spanish-Ybanag) weekly newspaper, the Verdad, was published by

Honorario Lasam, and later, another bilingual (English-Ybanag), La Sinseridad, was published
by Antonio Carag and edited by Jose Carag. Good writers in Ybanag wrote in these newspapers.
In the Verdad, Servando Liban maintained a lively, satirical column under his pen name,Allibut;
and in Sinderidad, Agustin Saquing serialized in epic poem form the story of “Charlemagne and
His Twelve Peers.” Ybanag zarsuelas, dramas, poems and essays were common.

It was thus that the Ybanag known and spoken only from Pamplona to Gattaran on the arrival of
the Spaniards late in the 16th century became the language generally spoken throughout the
Cagayan Valley . Thanks to the zeal of the Dominican and Agustinian missionaries. The Ybanag
was the potent instrument with which they successfully christianized the pagan natives through
the long, almost 400 years of Spanish colonial regime.

Ybanag Folk Literature

Ybanag folk literature, like any other literature, is the expression of Cagayano’s joys and
sorrows, hopes and fears, love and hatred, the very ingredients that whipped up all the literary
genre handed down to us.

The Ybanags, like any other groups of people, meet life in all its naked conflicts: man versus
man; man versus environment or society; man versus himself; man versus his conscience, nay,
man versus his God.

All these conflicts, since the glorious days of Ybanag legendary heroes, Biuag and Malana, and
since the heroic times of Magalad and Dayag, have brought enmity, disunity, divisiveness, lust
for wealth and self, and to use the words of a sociologist, ethnic violence and suicide.

This in the span of some five hundred years, Ybanag folk literary, and Ybanag balladeer,
verzista, the Ybanag minstrel, rural folk and countryside mystics composed and handed down
volumes of folk literature advocating love, peace, justice, honesty, unity, morality, reconciliation
and betterment of life style.
Ybanag folk literature is didactic, moralistic, predominantly sentimental, romantic, socialistic,
comic and spiritual–all aimed at uniting the Cagayanos, brave like the kasi or wild cock that
challenges them to greatness at sunrise; mission-oriented like the Bannag on whose banks their
forebears were rooted; graceful as the bamboo that bends in the winds of challenges; sturdy as
the Manga in the typhoons of controversies.

Cagayan Epic: Biuag and Malana

Biuag was from Enrile, the southern most part of Cagayan. When he was born, his mother was
visited by an exceptionally beautiful woman who silently admired the baby. When it dawned on
the child’s mother that her visitor was a goddess, she knelt and implored her child with long life.

The goddess made no reply. Instead, she placed three small stones around the neck of the baby
where one stone protected him from any bodily harm. When he was big enough to swim across
the wide river, the crocodiles created a path for him. The other two stones gave him supernatural
powers and prowess. He could go faster than the wind. He could throw easily a carabao across
the hills when he was only at the age of twelve. He could uproot a big beetle nut as if it were a
wood. On account of this display of extraordinary strength, people from far and wide places
came to see him.

Despite all these powers, Biuag seemed troubled and unhappy. In the town of Tuao , he fell in
love with a young lady with unsurpassed beauty. No one could tell where this lady came from
nor could anyone say who this lady was. Biuag wanted to find her. His waking hours were
thoughts of her.

There was another young man from Malaueg, called Malana who was gifted with powers similar
to that of Biuag. When Malana was eighteen, a devastating typhoon destroyed all the crops of
Malaueg. The people were in grip of appalling famine. Their only hope of starving off came
from a very distant place, Sto. Niño. It was very difficult and dangerous to journey the place,
because the river to cross was wide and full of crocodiles. Malana understood the hazards of the
journey but finally volunteered to take the journey. He loaded cavans of palay to seven bamboo
rafts.

Ybanag Folk Poetry

Despite all these powers, Biuag seemed troubled and unhappy. In the town of Tuao , he fell in
love with a young lady with unsurpassed beauty. No one could tell where this lady came from
nor could anyone say who this lady was. Biuag wanted to find her. His waking hours were
thoughts of her.
 There was another young man from Malaueg, called Malana who was gifted with powers similar
to that of Biuag. When Malana was eighteen, a devastating typhoon destroyed all the crops of
Malaueg. The people were in grip of appalling famine. Their only hope of starving off came
from a very distant place, Sto. Niño. It was very difficult and dangerous to journey the place,
because the river to cross was wide and full of crocodiles. Malana understood the hazards of the
journey but finally volunteered to take the journey. He loaded cavans of palay to seven bamboo
rafts.

 CONTENTS

Topogr
aphy


Resour
ces


Popula
tion


Locati
on


Literac
y Rate


Langua
ges


Land
Area and Political Subdivision


Labor
& Employment


History


Demog
raphy


Climat
e


City
and Towns


Cagaya
n Brief Profile


Arts &
Culture

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