Some features of our riddles call for comment. Filipino riddles, in
whatever language, are likely to be in poetical form. The commonest
type is in two well-balanced, rhyming lines. Filipino versification is
less exacting in its demand in rhyme than our own; it is sufficient if
the final syllables contain the same vowel; thus Rizal says--_ayup_
and _pagud_, _aval_ and _alam_, rhyme. The commonest riddle verse
contains five or seven, or six, syllables, thus:


Daluang balon
hindi malingon

or

Bahay ni San Gabriel
punong puno nang barel.


Just as in European riddles certain set phrases or sentences are
found frequently at the beginning or end of the riddle. In Ilocano
and Pangasinan a common introductory form is "What creature of
God" or "What thing made by Lord God," the expression in reality
being equivalent to a simple "what." These pious forms do not at all
necessarily refer either to animals or natural objects; thus, a boat or
a house is just as good a "creature of God" as a fowl is. A common form
of ending is "Tell it and I am yours," "Guess it and I am your man."

Quite analogous to calling inanimate or artificial things "creatures
of God" is the personification of all sorts of things, animate and
inanimate; thus, a rat is "an old man," a dipper is "a boy." Not