Ibong Adarna (also The Adarna Bird, Adarna)

Region/Culture: Southeast Asia
Mythos: Philippine Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: An enchanted bird whose seven songs can cure any sickness, lull any listener into a deathlike sleep, and whose droppings turn the sleeper to stone.
Role in Mythos: The wonder-bird at the heart of the Filipino metrical romance, the healing prize three princes cross the world to capture for their dying father.
Relation to Humans: To the desperate the Adarna is a cure worth a kingdom, since its voice can lift a sickness no medicine can touch. To the careless it is a slow trap, singing them asleep and leaving them petrified beneath its perch.

High on Mount Tabor there is a tree of silver called Piedras Platas, and at dusk a single bird settles into its branches and begins to sing. The song is beautiful in a way that makes people stop whatever they are doing to hear it, which is the first mistake. The Ibong Adarna sings seven times, and with each song its feathers change, sliding from one impossible color into the next, violet deepening to gold, gold cooling to something no one afterward can quite name. By the last note the listener’s eyes are heavy. He does not notice the droppings falling from the branch above him until he is already stone.

This is the bird that anchors one of the most beloved stories in the Philippines, a verse romance schoolchildren still memorize. It belongs to the kingdom of Berbania, or rather to the mountain the kingdom sends its princes to climb. Nobody agrees on exactly where the tale came from. Some hold it a pre-Spanish story native to the islands, dressed later in the medieval chivalry of European romance; others hear the borrowed echoes of the awit and corrido that Spain brought across the sea. The bird itself feels older than the argument. Filipino birdwatchers have gone looking for its living model and settled on the Philippine trogon, a real creature of scarlet and green, though no trogon ever sang a man to stone.

What the Adarna looks like depends on which of its songs you catch it in. The constant is the color and the change: a plumage that will not hold still, running through the spectrum the way the Sarimanok blazes or the phoenix burns. It is bird-sized, not monstrous, small enough to sit in a cupped pair of hands once it is caught, and that ordinariness of scale is part of the cruelty. Something so small should not be able to undo a grown man. The silver tree it favors gives off a cold shine in the dark, and the ground beneath it is not soft. It is crowded with the statues of everyone who came before and listened too long.

The story that made the bird famous begins with a sick king. Fernando of Berbania falls ill after a dream of his youngest son murdered, and no physician can name the cure. Word comes that only the song of the Ibong Adarna can heal him. The eldest prince, Don Pedro, rides out first. He finds the tree, he hears the seven songs, he sleeps, and the bird’s filth turns him to rock at the roots. Don Diego follows and meets the same silence. Three years pass. The youngest, Don Juan, sets out last and stops along the road to help a starving old hermit, who turns out to know exactly what waits on the mountain.

The hermit’s advice is the whole trick of the thing. He gives Don Juan a knife and dayap lemons, and tells him that when drowsiness comes he must cut small wounds into his own arm and squeeze the sour citrus into them. Pain and sting will keep him awake through all seven songs. He hands over a golden cord to bind the bird once it tires, and a vessel of water to pour over his brothers and bring them back from stone. Don Juan climbs, and he bleeds, and he stays awake, and when the Adarna has sung itself out and let its guard down he snares it and revives Pedro and Diego where they stand.

He should have watched his brothers more closely than the bird. Envy does the rest, and the road home is longer and worse than the mountain ever was, but that is the princes’ story. The Adarna’s part is the singing and the stone.

Its power runs in two directions from the same throat. The voice that petrifies is the voice that heals; the sleep it pours out is the same current that can carry sickness away and leave a dying king breathing easy. Held in a cage and made to sing on command, it becomes the most valuable object in the world, a cure that cannot be bought or grown. That is exactly why it is hunted rather than worshipped.

Its weakness is the mirror of its strength. The song only works on the sleeping, so anyone who can stay awake through all seven is immune to the worst of it, and a little self-inflicted pain is enough to manage that. Petrifaction can be undone with plain water. And the bird, for all its splendor, can be tied with a length of cord and carried down the mountain in a man’s two hands. The thing that turns princes to stone is caught, in the end, by one prince willing to cut himself and refuse to fall asleep.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Ibong Adarna?

The Ibong Adarna is an enchanted, color-changing bird from Philippine folklore and the metrical romance of the same name. It roosts on a silver tree called Piedras Platas on Mount Tabor and sings seven magical songs whose power can heal any illness but also lull listeners into a deep sleep.

What does the Ibong Adarna’s song do?

The Adarna’s song can cure any sickness, which is why the dying King Fernando sends his sons to capture it. The same seven songs also lull anyone who hears them into a helpless sleep, and while they sleep the bird’s droppings fall on them and turn them to stone.

How was the Ibong Adarna captured?

The youngest prince, Don Juan, captured the Adarna on the advice of an old hermit. He fought off the sleep the songs induced by cutting small wounds in his arm and squeezing sour dayap lemons into them, then bound the tired bird with a golden cord and revived his petrified brothers with water.

Who turned to stone because of the Ibong Adarna?

Don Pedro and Don Diego, the two older princes of Berbania, were both turned to stone. Each climbed Mount Tabor before their youngest brother, fell asleep during the bird’s seven songs, and was petrified by its droppings until Don Juan revived them.

Where does the Ibong Adarna come from?

The Ibong Adarna comes from the Philippines and is the central figure of an early nineteenth-century Filipino epic poem, though many consider the tale to have pre-Spanish, indigenous roots later shaped by European romance. The bird is often called the most colorful in Philippine folklore and is compared to the Sarimanok and the phoenix.