PANDEMIC, RESILIENCE, AND THE ARTS The 14th De La Salle University Arts Congress March 11-12, 2021 DLSU ARTS CONGRESS PROCEEDINGS Volume 5 | ISSN 2012-0311 Pisting Yawa: The Devil who was once a Bisayan Deity Christian Jeo N. Talaguit De La Salle University Abstract: After the sudden announcement of the quarantine protocols last March, one of the proponent’s closest colleagues (one of Bisayan descent) uttered the in/famous curse word “Ay Pisting Yawa!” With how life would be after that, who could blame him? The proponent had long since attempted to investigate the historical roots of this evidently indigenous Bisayan term, prior to its usage for the Devil, as far as late 2017 although he had no full opportunity to do so. The pandemic had caused a thousand sufferings and inconvenience to all, but a spark of light during these trying times came through the form of ample free time to return to this research. The paper will primarily examine pre-Hispanic oral literature and early Spanish documents until the 17th century in an attempt to reconstruct a pre-16th image of the enigmatic Yawa prior to its eventual amalgamation with Satan of Judeo-Christian lore. Many aspiring folklorists theorize that the Yawa was derived from the Panay epic character Nagmalitong Yawa who was supposedly demonized after the introduction of the Roman Catholic religion however, a thorough investigation of our available sources leans to another direction: that the epic character was named after the Yawa, not the other way around. The proponent will utilize the historical method, alternatively called the descriptive-narrative-analytic method. Keywords: Yawa, Panay-Bukidnon Epics, Diwata, Forest Spirits, Bisaya Folklore Introduction Sometime around 2017 and 2018, a new bizarre linguistic phenomenon started to gain a wider traction within the student community of De La Salle University: a new word of Bisayan origin was being adopted within the colloquial Tagalog vocabulary as a new source of oral profanity; or to put it simply, a new curse word. The researcher of course is referring to the term Yawa which is attested by informants of Bisayan descent to refer to a localized name for Satan or the Devil. Oftentimes it is also paired with another Bisayan term pisti (pest) for the more iconic Pisting Yawa (pestering demon or pesky demon). By usage and expression, it is similar to the English fuck and the Tagalog putang ina that could either be used for jesting, expressing frustrations, and/or shock. It is unknown if the term, as a curse word, has a wide range of usage outside Metro Manila and it is still unknown hen exactly Manileños started using it as a new curse word outside DLSU. Stranger still, informants of Bisayan descent are as confused as the researcher by the sudden popularity of the term since many say that Yawa is not a traditional everyday curse word but rather a taboo word to be avoided as much as possible due to its link to the Devil. One Hiligaynon informant for instance narrates that she began to use “Yawa” as a new domestic curse word after learning it from her Tagalog peers, however she was reprimanded by her religious mother for supposedly invoking Satan’s name. Although the Tagalog adoption of Yawa is still not clear - if it happened before or only during 2017 - the researcher speculates that the popularity of the term increased in Tagalog pop culture after the positive reception of two short facebook clips of the Japanese anime Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders with a Bisaya fan dubbing. From the said clips, Kujo Jotaro, a protagonist of the