Si Manang Polana

Interpretation by Benjamin A. Claveria "Si Manang Pulana" is supposed to be a comic song. Like some other Bikol songs, however, it has what might be called X-rated connotations. In the first stanza, the significance of the letters c and o, and c and areminds me of this anecdote from the American Civil War. Closely pursued by Confederate soldiers intent on killing him, a Union officer ran into a Southern mansion and asked the owner's daughter, a pretty young lady whom he found standing by the front door, to hide him. Although she knew from the uniform he was wearing that he was an "enemy", she took pity on him. She knew that his pursuers would ransack the house to find him; so she told him to get inside the floor-length hoop skirt she was wearing. The pursuers arrived in a moment and did search the house thoroughly but in vain. After the war, the man she had saved from certain death, being the officer and gentleman that he was, decided that the only honorable thing for him to do was to marry her - if she was willing. He had seen the letters of Manang Pulana. He was young and handsome and there was a dearth of eligible men for marriageable ladies. His offer was a godsend which she could not possibly refuse. If the first stanza deserves to be X-rated, the second stanza ought to get an XX rating. But of course it can also be read for its literal meaning only; and its censors might be lenient enough to rate it PG