called in his youth, was enrolled in a grammar school attached to the local seminary run by Augustinians; their harsh discipline made him a lifelong critic of friars. De los Reyes was a free spirit and chafed against seminary life. Once, he led a student strike against the friars to protest the maltreatment of students. His stay in the Vigan Seminary helped him develop a fascination for legends, music, songs, and Ilocano traditions. In 1880 at age 16, de los Reyes went to Manila without his uncle's consent, where he finished the Bachiller en Artes at the Colegio de San Juan de Letran. After that, he studied the Civil Code, Penal Code, the Mercantile Code, judicial proceedings and drafting documents, palaeography and anthropology at the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas. Early career and journalism While studying in the Colegio de San Juan de Letran, he supplemented his allowance by taking to journalism, setting type for La Oceana Española as well as writing for periodicals such as Diario de Manila, El Comercio, La Revista Popular, and La Opinion. In November 1882, his work, La expedicion de Li-Ma-Hong contra Filipinas was published in Diario de Manila and garnered him a prize. In 1886, de los Reyes worked as Manila correspondent for El Eco de Panay, a newspaper in Iloilo, but was replaced by Wenceslao Retana when his reports began to appear too liberal. His reputation as an independent-minded writer was such that in 1887, La Opinion hired him as a foil for their ultra-conservative staff writer, Camilo Millan. As a teenager, de los Reyes had been intrigued by the growing interest in the "new science" of El saber popular (folklore). On March 25, 1884, Jose Felipe Del Pan wrote an article in La Oceania Filipina calling readers to contribute folklore articles, inspired by interest in the subject in the peninsula. De los Reyes was urged by del Pan to contribute and gave him books on the subject that piqued his interest. Two months later, de los Reyes submitted his articles concerning the folklore of Ilocos, Malabon, and Zambales. In 1887, at the age of 23, del Pan compiled de los Reyes' articles and submitted them to the Exposición General de las Islas Filipinas in Madrid, where he won a silver medal. These articles would eventually become one of his most important contributions to Philippine studies, El Folk-lore Filipino. Folk-Lore was