Monday, August 2, 2010

A Story to share with your students

The Runaway Princesses
(Mindanao)


Long long in the mist of the time, there lived a datu or a king who had three beautiful daughters, when the youngest of the daughters reached the age of seven years, their mother the queen passed away. The Datu and his daughters were heart brokens at the death of the queen. The datu soon became a very lonely and depressed Man who longed to find a new mother for his three daughters whom he loved dearly. Eventually, the datu found a new wife whom he thought would a good mother to his daughters and leave him time to run his kingdom, which he neglected of late. Unfortunately, the new queen turned out to be a scheaming, mean and evil woman whos only reason for marrying the datu, was to gain control of his kingdom. While the datu was busy running his empire, his new queen made the lives of his three daughters pure mystery. She withdrew all their royal privrledges and they were force to become nothing more than her maids- in- waiting.she made them scrub the floors of the palace, cook her food and washed her c;lothes. If any of the daughters disobeyed the queen, she would beat them and lock them in the dungeon for hours on and without food and without water. The three princesses were very, very unhappy with their new  step mother but said nothing to their father, the kin g in case he did not believe them, or in case they hurt his feelings. When the harsh treatmrnt and abused by the wicked queen became too much for the three princesses to take anymore, they decided to run away from the palce. So, one night, without telling anyone even their father the three daughters silently escaped from the palace under the light of  the full moon they boarded a large kumpit, or sailboat and sailed away from the palace across a peaceful and calm sea. But back at the palace, the queen used the magic powers of her third eye and in her mind, was able to see the three girls escaping across the sea in their boat. This was the perfect time to put her evil plans into action and seize control of the kingdom. First she would use her magic powers to kill the three daughters and then she would kill the father, the king. Then the kingdom would belong to her. Using the concentration of her evil mind and the powers of a magic and, the evil queen summoned up the dark forces of nature over the calm sea. Dark clouds appear out of nowhere and obscured the bright moon. The three princesses become frightened and clung to one another for comfort. A mighty storm raged around the sailboat. Huge waves swelled out of the sea, tossing the helpless wooden boat to and fro. A mighty crash of thunder filled the dark night sky and lightning fleshed from the angry clouds. A strong wind gusted across the undulating sea, venting its anger boats and its three terrified occupants. Then a mighty, fiery thunderbolt roared down from the heavens, hitting the boat which exploded into three pieces. The three helpless princesses were tossed into the raging sea and disappeared beneath the violent waves. When the king returned to the palace that night and saw that his new queen was using her evil power to destroy his three daughters, he became angry. The king snatched an ax from one of the palace guards and with one powerful blow, cut off the queen’s head. The queen fell dead on the floor and her evil powers were no more. The had no idea whether he would ever see his daughters alive again and fell to his knees and with head in his hands. Meanwhile, in the night sea, the storm subsided and the waters once more became calm and peaceful. The three princesses had each manage to cling to one piece of the boat wreckage and were still alive. But they were drifting far, far apart from each other. the eldest princess drifted toward the north, the youngest princess was drifting toward the south, meanwhile the third princess remained in the same place where the the boat was wrecked. All three princesses were exhausted fro their terrifying ordeal and they all closed their eyes as they clung to the drifting pieces of their wrecked boat. When the sun rose in the sky the next morning, the fishermen who had set out to see the daybreak, were amazed to see that three new islands had risen out of the sea during the the night. The island that appeared in the north, they named “Luzon”. The island that had appeared in the south, they named “Mindanao”. And the island that had appeared in the middle they called “Visayas”. Now the king was never really sure of course, but he believed that the three new, beautiful islands that grew from the sea during the night, were created for his three beautiful daughters to live. That made him very, very happy.

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