A STORY FOR ALL SISONS
By Luis "Liit" Bernabe"" Tizon, Jr.
Some time toward the mid-19th Century, three brothers, Bernabe, Segundo, and Pablo, Sisons of Pangasinan, being young and out to seek their fortunes in the big wide world, set forth from their hometown, sailing south in their own boat with a cargo of cloths, slippers, salt, flour, and other merchandise they meant to trade in the Visayan Islands, calling at port after strange port, boys keen on commerce but also avid of adventure.
They touched at Catbalogan, sold their goods and bought local products to sell on their return home, then repeated the trade over many voyages, they were making such profits.
Until the day they put in and a typhoon struck and wrecked their boat, after they had wisely abandoned it for the safety of Catbalogan's shore, where in the aftermath they stood stranded, at the end of their adventures together.
They went their separate ways, never again to see each other, each thriving where he settled -- Pablo in Iloilo, Segundo in Carigara, Bernabe in Catbalogan; each founding a family that has flourished to this day -- the Sisons of Iloilo, the Sisons of Leyte, the Sisons of Samar.
So goes the story passed down the generation of Bernabe's posperity. An oral tradition that graduates into documented history with his marriage to Victoria Zabala. In family memory, Bernabe was then a made man of business, Victoria was a Catbalogan belle. The wedding is a matter of record: May 22, 1852, St. Bartholomew's Church, Catbalogan.
Thereafter the story may be told as a biblical roll of certified begats, as in: Bernabe had Amboy,Guitay,Yoyo,Cobay,Kikoy,Ninang,Idang, and Ramon by Victoria Zabala. Better yet, as a genealogical list, as in the foldout of this program, though it's far from complete.
And no wonder, for we descendants of Bernabe have become a tribe so numerous and scattered that the annual Sison reunion has been the only means for most of us to meet and acknowledge our common roots, besides having a good time together.
HOW HAGURONG CAME TO SIGNIFY SISON
Hagurong at first referred solely to Basilio (pronounced Ba-si-LI-yo), second son and third child of Bernabe, that stranger who about 150 years ago came to trade, stayed, married Victoria Zabala and founded his house in Catbalogan as the first of the Samar Sisons.
Among the children--Pablo(Amboy),Margarita(Guitay),Jacoba(Cobay), Francisco(Kikoy),Catalina(Ninang),Trinidad(Idang), and Ramon were the others --Basilio, a.k.a. Yoyo, stuck out like a sore thumb, his temper was so terrible.
Amboy, also called Hamurawon from his carpenter's trade, had Yoyo help build a house once. They were setting up the posts. "This hole's not deep enough", Amboy told Yoyo. Yoyo dug deeper, they sank the post in, and Amboy said, "Now it's too deep, fill it in a bit." But Yoyo had had it. "Why don't you make up your mind?" he snapped, and left in a huff.
Yoyo was forever complaining, falling into a rage giving off a droning sound as of bees on the attack: naghahagurong. People took to calling him Hagurong.
When he spoke of marrying Ramona Eufracio, his mother dreaded the shame her unmannerly boy would surely bring down on the Sisons. "Do you mean to take your ways into that girl's family?" she demanded. "Well, you can go ask for her hand by yourself."
Ramona became Yoyo's wife, fishing his livelihood, and as the children came along he showed something of his father's head for business, he prospered: a hardworking man, up early in the day and off with longlegged strides that took him so fast the cigarette he lighted as he set out from Catbalogan was unconsumed when he reached Guinsurungan, about a kilometer of rough road away, off whose shore stood his fish corrals, swarming with the night's catch.
He sat for his portrait, dark-suited, hair cropped close as if to keep his head cool, decorous before the camera: a man in his prime, father of many children and everyone of them a Hagurong, hot-head or not, for that teasing tag distinguished them from their Sison cousins.
Ramona bore him Bernabe, who died young; Constancia who married Paricio Tizon, and Dolores, who married Alejandro Cinco, both men of Catbalogan; Concepcion, Felicidad and Ceferina, who never married; Ramon, who married Segunda Makabasag of Guiuan; Dionisio, who married Honorata Cabubas of Jiabong; and Arsenio, who married Concepcion Rojas of Catbalogan.
After Ramona's death Yoyo took Anacoreta Arteche for his second wife and had by her yet another Bernabe, who married Soledad of Gandara, and Merced, who died young.
Yoyo's descendants have since been numerous enough, yet their count is exceeded by the number of Sisons who answer to what used to be a nickname only for him and his line, Hagurong. It could as well have been Hamurawon; but Yoyo was a character so publicly outrageous the taunt of Hagurong he drew implicated every Sison of his time, before that, and ever since; so that the family is stuck with it, and to their credit, most Sisons have had the grace or good humor to take the old taunt as a distinguishing title. Which it is. In Samar, anyone who is a Sison at all people take to be a Hagurong and no mistake; conversely, anyone called a Hagurong can only be a Sison of Samar.
So, from being Yoyo's personal epithet and then his branch's lineal label, Hagurong has become all of the Samar Sison's tribal title, setting them apart from the country's every other Sison family.
And in becoming a hive of Hagurongs, the house of Bernabe Sison acquires, by way of a heraldic device, the totem figure of the bee, a creature fabled for its sting and its industry and its powers of multiplication, attributes of the original Hagurong which, surely no Sison worthy of the name will disclaim.
SISON HYMN
Words-Luis "Liit" Bernabe Tizon Jr.Music-Amparo"Paring" Cinco-Tizon
May tulo nga magburugto
nga hadto nadsakayon
ngan dapit nanhipatidpid
Magueda nga baybayon.
Ha bunto han Catbalogan
sa nakapatigayon
adton Bernabe nga giamayi
ta ha Samar nga Sison.
Nasugad hadton tigurang
nga ha bibliya kuno
kanan Diyos ginpaurg,
tulin niya nagdamo.
kun ha baybay dapit baras,
kun ha langit bituon
sasrang kundi magurupod
kun pagtuliiulon.
Kan hat Amboy ngan hat Yoyo,
kat hat Guitay ug Naning,
Kan hat Cobay ngan hat Ramon,
an waray la Kikoy ug Idang.
Sanglit man daw kun titirok,
maribhong nga hiringyon,
daw putyokan nadampuog,
nahagurong mga Sisoin.
Ha ginikanan pagduaw,
adlaw hin pagkalipay,
hinarampang, kinaranta,
sarayaw ug taragay.
SISON REUNION
Kamakaruruyag Pagkitaon
adlaw pagtaragpon han mga Sison
tulin ni Ninang, Ramon,
Guitay, Cobay, ug Hagurong.
Tan awa kami yana
Dios nga makagara..um
lamrague ug tague
han imo bendisyon
ini nga packatiti..rok
yana nga resurec..tion
magmalipayon unta ine
nga at' Sison reunion.
Hala na Ramon, hala na Cobay
ipakita an iyo ka dugay
hala na Ninang hala na Guitay
an mga hawak iglubay lubay
hala na Amboy halana Yoyo
segue an tagay basi marisyo
kabulahan gud yana nga panahon
han pagkaorosa han mga Sison
Ramon, Inkoy, Cobay, Idang,
Amboy, Guitay, Yoyo ug Ninang
mga sanga ng fuerte
han Sison Family Tree.
"HAGURONG GRAND REUNION"
Stirring Committee
Coordinators
Orange Avisado Click emailLarissa Lomuntad Click email
Maruja Honrado Click email