His own love for his people’s folklore began when he was a small child. His mother would lull his brothers and sister to sleep, chanting an episode in time to the gentle swaying of the hammock. Sometimes it was his great-great-grandmother, his Anggoy Omil, who would chant the epics. Nong Pedring remembers how he would press against them as they cuddled his younger siblings, his imagination recreating the heroes and beautiful maidens of their tales. In his mind, Labaw Dunggon and Humadapnon grew into mythical proportions, heroes as real as the earth on which their hut stood and the river that nourished it. Each night, he learned more about where their adventures brought them, be it to enchanted caves peopled by charmed folk or the underworld to rescue an unwitting prisoner from the clutches of an evil being. And the more he learned, the greater his fascination became. When his mother or his Anggoy would inadvertently nod off, he would beg them to stay awake and finish the tale.

His fascination naturally grew into a desire to learn to chant the epics himself. Spurred on by this, he showed an almost enterprising facet: when asked by his Anggoy to fetch water from the river, pound rice, or pull grass from the kaingin, he would agree to do so on the condition that he be taught to chant an epic. Such audacity could very well have earned him a scolding. But it was his earnestness that clearly shone through. Not long after, he conquered all ten epics and other forms of oral literature, besides.