The town of Buhi, so goes the local lore, was a prosperous community even in olden times. Nestled at the feet of the verdant mountains surrounding it, the town was a haven for a free and peace-loving people that thrived by the blue waters of the lake that bears its name. While lumber, fruits and wild game abounded in the highlands, the fields yielded an inexhaustible supply of vegetables, tubers and grain. The lake, too, thrived with clams, fish and its unique marine gift: the tabios or sinarapan. Practically infinitesimal in width and less than a sixth of an inch in length, this wonder - both delicious and nutritious – was a delicacy savored in the townsfolk’s' daily fare and special feasts.
Such was the bounty of the town that Buhi-nons were able to afford a golden bell which they installed, with great pride, in their belfry. Both near and far, the precious metal with which it was cast made it a bell like no other. The hint of a gust of wind would cause it to reverberate in a melodious symphony of tintinnabulations. At dawn, its joyous chimes that traveled resonant across vast distances roused the people from their sleep and beckoned the faithful to congress with their Great Maker. At dusk, it tolled plaintively and signaled the end of the day's toil, a welcome exhortation for their surrender to relaxation and rest. Like the tabios or sinarapan, it blessed their lives' various occasions; from momentous births, through happy marital unions and to the poignant, inevitable deaths of loved ones.
The town's riches and good fortune, spread wide by word of mouth, soon reached the ears of a wily Moro Sultan. Ancillary to a planned pillage, this Sultan sent a band of marauding pirates to Buhi on an errand of strategy and reconnaissance. From their remote shores, across waters rendered perilous by typhoons in the season of the monsoon, the pirates set sail on their swift vintas for a week until they sighted the coastal town of Tabacco. From there, three scouts trekked, come rain or shine, to the mountains of Tiwi until, off Horoan, they crossed into the Buhi hinterlands.
Fealty to the nefarious ends of their Sultan's impending campaign spurred the scouts to start their covert inquiries at the Sitio of Kaubasan. Correctly sensing them to be spies and divining their mission, however, the inhabitants of the place advised the scouts to be afraid and to go immediately back to the place from whence they came. Warned that the people of Buhi were strong, giant-like beings that consumed hundreds of fish by the mouthful, the scouts hastily retreated and reported the folly and futility of the intended plunder to their Sultan.
Alas, the town's reprieve did not last for long. The tale the scouts were told was eventually discovered to be the clever ruse that it was, an oft-repeated yarn which simply alluded to the Buhi-nons' fondness for tabios or sinarapan. Upon learning how his plans were thus foiled, the Sultan angrily organized his armed troops and plotted a pillage more arrant and decisive than their usual wont. The clang of their weapons and the din of their blood-curdling war cries struck instant fear into the hearts of the people caught in the malevolent swath they cut over land and sea.
Alarmed by news of the foes' approach, the Buhi-nons were summoned by the frenetic pealing of their golden bell to an emergency assembly. To the twin hills of Busay and Malangkaw the children and the elderly were dispatched, along with cherished family possessions. To save the town's most precious asset from pelf and plunder, the elders decided to remove the bell from its lofty perch and to pitch it temporarily into an outlying mountain lake. With a long abaca rope the size of a baby’s leg, two rows of ten men laboriously tugged the golden bell through rough and perilous terrain until, exhausted yet elated, they reached the mossy banks of said tributary lake.
Unbeknown to the townfolks, however, the mountain lake was an enchanted one, the habitat of fearsome faeries as beautiful as they were powerful. From the deepest recesses of their glassy lair, their long tresses floating in the water like silken strands of ebony thread, they expectantly watched the undulating figures of town’s menfolk huffing and puffing as they swam to the middle lake with the golden bell in tow. When the men finally decided to release it, the bell was gladly received by the faeries who, in silent consensus, irrevocably claimed it for their own.
His quest for the golden bell thus foiled, the Sultan and his minions left to futher their plunder elsewhere. Enveloped in layer after layer of sprightly spell, it is said that that the golden bell remains in the faeries' custody to this very day. Through the years, various means to retrieve the bell, upon news of sightings of its abaca cord during clear days, have been attempted by brave and enterprising bands, all to no avail. These men uniformly report that the skies around the lake would suddenly darken and heavy rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning, all but made their enterprise impossible. It is from the verb bontog in the local vernacular, meaning to cast, pitch or drop into, that the mountain lake earned its present name, Pamuntugan.
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