May 25 | Calbiga, Samar

In the Western Samar town of Calbiga, tribal memory goes back to a time when this "humanoid" had saved village folk from imminent famine by driving off marauding waves of pestilential maya or ricebirds. While this memory may be partly legend, it had somehow formed a core of local practice revolving around the scarecrow or pahoy. Pahoy-Pahoy had been a ritual of propriation and invocation to the old animistic gods to protect and make fertile the tribe’s rice lands and its agricultural endeavor. Today, Calbiga’s Pahoy-Pahoy has been assimilated into the Christian tradition of the yearly town fiesta in the form of the Pahoy-Pahoy Farmers’ Festival.

Source:

Province of Samar