A folk epic depicts the values, characteristics and beliefs of the people where they came from. They also describe the positive and negative characteristics of the youth, of their gods, heroes, of women, of their ancestors and everyone else in the community. A folk epic is very significant in cultural legacy as it embodies and immortalizes the original values of the tribes. By these epics, the modern readers could understand the traditions and cultural character of these tribes, it is not only the readers that could decipher them but also the descendants and the youth of that certain tribe. Without this it would be hard for the modern members of the tribe to look back to their abcestors.

Sabong would give the readers an idea the ethnic group loves the enjoyments in life. On the other hand, Ulahingan, The Dream of Begyasan depicts the courage of the tribe and their love and great respect to their elders. Also, the excerpt gives a glimpse of some of the tribe member’s negative characteristics like being boastful of their courage and their tribe as the bravest of all tribes. Darangen, The Abduction of Tawaten The Kapmabaning is another epic that gives us the ability of people from this tribe to fight for love, love for the opposite sex. This epic also shows the rituals of the tribe like the betel nut chewing. The Darangen Epic of the Maranao People of Lake Lanao is considered one of the greatest epic in the country.

Ag Tobig Nog Keboklogan is an epic that shows the love of a mother to a lost child. Love mixed with longing and then this epic has also a characteristic of being judgmental, judging from the outer appearance.

Citing the ideals, characteristics of the heroes in a folk epic and why are they exalted, even worshiped by their tribe.

One example for a hero would be Bantugan, one character from Darangen, a warrior and a womanizer. Even though the heroes in these epics are not that perfect, they all are usually courageous and usually, they save the tribe from other tribe or groups that would want their territory.

Most of these heroes are good by nature so they are usually worshiped and was loved by the tribe. When they die they usually have their heroes burial and then, their women would come there. These heroes usually fights for their life, for their tribe, or for a woman.

Contemporary poems that reflects the sentiments, ideals, passion, conflict and the experiences of the Mindanaoans.

The poems “Palitan, Marawi City”, “ Lungsod Pagmata”, “Ang Pito Ka Panghinapos nga Pulong ni Bong Fulong”, “Bangsamoro”, “Costa Maruna”, “Metamorposis” are contemporary poems that depicts the life of each Mindanaoans. There are poems that talks a about the nature and later on the life of longing for a love, like the poem Costa Maruna. There are also poems that reflects the wants of the author for the people to wake up from issues of the society. There are poems about war and of happiness. Here we can say that a writer could do many things in his readers, to persuade, to stir revolutionary thoughts, to entertain and to make the readers appreciate things through their eyes.

The folk epics/ poetry are long enough that the one’s tackled in class are just excerpts. Contemporary poems are usually shorter than epics. These epics are longer because they have this style of rep[eating themselves, not only for clarity or for accenting, but this is also embodies their poetic prowess. These epics also involves heroes and magical beings and happenings that are concerned with spirits or magic powers.

On the other hand, the contemporary poems are very true to life and reveals the reality experienced in the localities. The nature depicting emotions is still there, and clarity mixed with the simplicity in words are present.

The contemporary poetry embodies this characteristics as the contemporary readers and writers are fanatics of shorter art, rather than the super long epics. These is because the competency in attention to these arts are high, some contemporary writers prefer writing in  shorter passages. Also, as these epics gives the readers of today an idea that there exists magical beings and powers in their time, being superstitious is also reflected in the epics. But on the contemporary works, we could say that there are almost no magical creatures or super humans.