Showing interest in your crush wasn’t always as easy as liking their Tweets, making sweet Instagram posts, or inviting them to your favorite coffee shops. Traditional courtship practices in the Philippines often required more patience and effort, varying between different regional groups.

More than just the harana gesture that’s been popularized over the decades, these customary practices would probably come off as peculiar to anyone unfamiliar with them. However, they exhibit the kind of values these communities lived by. Here’s a venture into a few notable traditional courtship practices carried on throughout Philippine history.

Bulacan

Bulaqueños upheld a courtship practice called naninilong. When the clock strikes midnight, the admirer would go underneath the elevated nipa hut of the coveted woman. From below the bamboo branches that hold the hut together, the man then prickles her with a sharp object to catch her attention. Once the lady wakes up, a conversation ensues in whispers between the two that signify their mutual interest.

Leyte

Folks from Leyte practiced the pangagad or “servitude” in the period of courtship. Here, the suitor takes part in accomplishing household and farm chores for the family of the admired woman. This period of service usually lasts for about a year, and often tested as a trial period for the suitor before he and his admired can finally marry.

Pangasinan

One of the Pangasinenses’ courtship practices include making use of the taga-amo, or their version of love potions. The taga-amo can either be in the form of oil immersed in herbs that are rubbed on the skin of the admired, or a drinkable potion given by the suitor to the admired.

Mindanao

The Tausugs practiced a dauntless form of courtship known as the palabas, wherein the suitor would threaten to stab his own heart in front of the courted woman’s father, with his life depending on the father’s answer. If the father accepts the man’s plea, the courtship is deemed successful. Otherwise, the father strikes the suitor with the knife, resulting in a rather bitter ending.