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THE ORIGINAL IS “Tígmò, Tígmò, Tigmúkoy”
Not “Tígmò, Tígmò, Agúkoy”
By Jes Tirol

Proem
One of the most popular Sugboanon Bisayan riddle is “Tígmò, tígmò, agúkoy úgmà ra ta mag-ásoy (Riddle, riddle, fiddler crab, we will tell each other on the morrow). The answer to this riddle is a dámgo (dream). If you analyze the riddle carefully, you will wonder how the fiddler crab (agúkoy) came into the equation.

Do you know that the original riddle was actually “Tígmò,tígmò, tigmúkoy úgmà ra ta mag-ásoy?”
In the 1850 Bisayan-Spanish dictionary of Fr. Juan Felix de la Encarnacion the Bisayan word tigmúkoy is defined as “enigma.” So the original riddle in English should be “Riddle, riddle, it is an enigma, we will tell each other on the morrow.”

How The Words Shifted

In your whole life, how many times have you used the word enigma? You are a good English conversationalist if you have ever used it ten times. So we can expect that the Bisayan equivalent would be also seldom used. During Spanish times and during the American era, only very few books were written using the Bisayan language. After a lapse of 150 years, the word tigmúkoy was forgotten and got replaced by agúkoy. It is a perfect rhyme and the connotation of being mysterious and humorous is still present.

The agúkoy or fiddler crab in English has a scientific name uca minax. It is a small crab found in seashores and marshy areas. Its body is from one to two inches wide and has a strange configuration. In the male of the species, one of its claws is very much larger than the other. When the smaller claw puts food to the mouth of the crab the act seems to imitate a man playing the fiddle, hence the name “fiddler crab.”

Which Claw is Bigger?

In humans, the most dominant is a right handed person. How about the agúkoy, which do you think is the dominant larger claw, the left or the right?

The answer is the left claw. However, here is the catch. The large claw is used by the male crab for amorous signaling to the female and for fighting other male crabs. If and when the large claw becomes detached, the other claw will grow larger during the next molting season and a new smaller claw will grow where the previous large claw had been.

So the former left-handed crab becomes a right-handed crab. So if you discover that most of the fiddler crabs in your beach has majority of left-handers, it means that your beach has plenty of food and well balanced ecology. If the fiddler crabs are mixed left-handers and right-handers, it means that food is scarce in your beach because the crabs had been quarreling with each other.
Accurate Time Clock

Do you know that the agúkoy has an accurate internal time clock? The agúkoy or fiddler crab will change its color in response to the low and high tide. When the tide is low, the carapace or shell of the crab will turn dark and during high tide the color of the shell becomes light. In Cordova, Cebu, I noticed that some will turn bright red or bright blue during low tide.

Even if you kidnap agúkoy and put them in your room away from shore, the color will change in response to the 12 ½ hour cycle of the tide. So if you are from an interior town in Bohol and loves to bathe at the sea during high tide, just kidnap an agúkoy and you will know when will be the high tide. The darkest color of the crab will always correspond to the lowest tide. The lightest color will correspond to the highest tide.

Back To The Riddle
I have already given you enough reasons how easy it was to shift from tigmúkoy to agúkoy. Whereas the word tigmúkoy means enigma, the agúkoy itself is an enigma. Just the same, in the context of the rhyme of the riddle, the word tigmúkoy should be the logical word because the answer to the riddle is a “dream.” It does not have a relation to the queerness of the agúkoy.

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