Latin American Folktales (40 page)

97.
Black Chickens, tr. from Mason 1914, no. 17. AT type 1380 The Faithless Wife (Mexico, Europe, India, Middle East).

Widely known in the Old World but apparently recorded for Spanish America only in this Tepecano variant from Mexico. It is remarkably close to peninsular Spanish versions, in which the faithless wife, seeking to make her husband blind, consults the statue either of St. Anthony or of Christ. Her husband, speaking from behind the statue, advises her to feed him ham, chops, and wine; or, in another version, black chickens and red wine. Somewhat different but still recognizable is an ancient Indic version recorded in the
Panchatantra:
A woman spends all her time making biscuits, which she secretly feeds to her lover with butter and sugar. Her husband asks why she makes biscuits, and she says she offers them to the local goddess. When she goes off to bathe, her husband follows and hides behind the statue of the goddess. Hearing his wife ask the statue, “What can I give my husband to make him blind?” he answers, “Biscuits with butter and sugar!” She returns home and feeds him accordingly. He pretends to be blind, using the opportunity to catch the wife with the lover, whom he thrashes soundly (A. M. Espinosa, vol. 1, nos. 33 and 34; vol. 2, pp. 160–2).

98.
Doublehead, tr. from the Pipil-German text in Schultze Jena, pp. 23–6.

The witch wife who leaves the house at night, having removed her head or her skin, is the subject of tales reported from El Salvador, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. The husband uses ashes, or more often salt, to prevent her from getting back into her skin or to keep her head from rejoining her body; and in some versions the head is carried off by an animal. This much is perhaps of Hispanic origin, though the folklorist Elsie Parsons suspected African influence. The El Salvador versions, in a decidedly Indian touch, have the widowed husband becoming the father of innumerable children; and from this flow further tales, forming a mythological cycle in which the children’s adventures lead to the origin of corn.

Similar Witch Wife stories of possible Hispanic origin are in Hartman pp. 144–6; Laughlin 1977, pp. 65–6, 72–3, 179–82; Mason 1926 (summarized in Hansen, pp. 82–5); Parsons 1936, p. 364; Preuss 2000; Redfield and Villa Rojas, p. 334; and J. E. S. Thompson, p. 158. Further variants are cited in Laughlin 1977, p. 66. For African-American versions see Dorson, p. 246. Two other subtypes of the Witch Wife tale are represented by nos. 9 and 30 in the present collection.

Observe that the widower’s myriad children are not average-sized humans. Like the Aztec rain dwarfs and the diminutive war gods of Zuni mythology, they are little people. And in fact, the whole mythology (of which the tale at hand is merely a portion) reveals that the widower’s children are none other than the mischievous “rain boys,” who will eventually bring corn into the world (Schultze Jena).

99.
Littlebit, tr. from Laval 1968, pp. 187–93. AT type 700 Tom Thumb (Chile, Dominican Republic, New Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Europe, India, Middle East).

Known everywhere in Europe, including Spain, the tale of the thumbling first appears in European literature in R. Johnson’s
The History of Tom Thumbe
(1621) and in a subsequent treatment in verse, also published in England, the anonymous
Tom Thumbe, His Life and Death
(1631). In the latter version a married couple wishes for a child, and with the aid of Merlin a boy, the size of a thumb, is born. His adventures begin when he falls into a food dish and is eaten by a beggar. Passed as waste, he is recovered by his mother, who ties him to a leaf. Eaten by a cow, he is again passed as waste. His mother cleans him up, and he goes off to plow a field. He is swallowed by a giant. Passed into the sea, he is swallowed by a fish. The fish is caught, Tom is rescued, and he lives out the rest of his days at King Arthur’s court.

Valdiviano:
stew made from jerked meat (a Chilean dish).

100. Rosalie, adapted from J. E. S. Thompson, pp. 167–71. AT type 313 The Girl as Helper in the Hero’s Flight (Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Mexico, New Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Europe, India, Middle East).

The name Rosalie is an unusual feature of this Yucatec Maya version. In Spain as in Latin America the heroine is usually Blancaflor. She is Rosella in the variant given by Basile in the
Pentamerone
(ninth story of the third day).

101.
A Day Laborer Goes to Work, adapted from Bernard and Salinas 1976, pp. 1–17.

Life portrayed as a descent into hell. Though the story echoes folkloric motifs, it cannot be reduced to a handful of formulas. The plantation owner, encountered in so many of these Hispano-Indian tales, has become the Devil. The Virgin, now in the role of a dutiful wife, sends food to the fields, enabling the laborer to carry out his penance. The stereotypical witch wife, identified by her transformation into a mule, has become simply the woman next door, as the homely, folkloric moral articulated by the Virgin—“Don’t always believe what people tell you”—is buried beneath the larger reality of hardship and crisis.

Though it has not been indexed, the tale evidently has variants. In a similar story from the Ixil Maya of Guatemala, a poor man leaves his wife in search of money and is led into hell. There the patrón, identified as a
ladino,
instructs him to perform labor with the aid of a stubborn mule. The poor man beats the mule, who turns out to be his own comadre, sentenced to hell for a sin she had committed. When the man returns home, he learns from his wife that the comadre is in her own house, all black and blue from the wounds the man had given her in the afterworld (Colby and Colby 1981, pp. 188–94).

102.
The Moth, tr. from Arguedas and Carrillo, pp. 78–9.

The redemption earned by the distraught husband in the preceding tale is not in store for his counterpart in this typically harsh Peruvian story. Again, there are no type or motif numbers by which the tale can be pigeonholed.

103.
The Earth Ate Them, tr. from Jijena Sánchez, no. 30.

Finally, in a less serious vein, another original tale, original at least so far as European lore is concerned. A variant of this Argentine story has been recorded from neighboring Paraguay: A rich widow tells her niece to put all her jewels in her coffin when she dies. After the burial, following an entertaining and well-attended wake, a rogue sneaks into the cemetery to steal the jewels. While he is yanking at one of the combs, he unintentionally pulls the dead woman’s hair, and the corpse opens its eyes. Terrified, the thief tries to get away, snags his poncho on the coffin, and thinks the corpse is reaching for him. When he finally runs off, he has lost his mind, and his hair has turned white (Carvalho-Neto 1961, p. 195).

Epilogue:
Twentieth-Century
Myths

[Epigraph]:
Hay que temer a los espíritus, a los dioses, a los antepasados, pero no
a los hombres vivos
(Otero, p. 233; the English translation is in Fox, p. 289).

104.
Why Tobacco Grows Close to Houses, tr. from Reichel-Dolmatoff 1951, p. 60.

The Mother: The creative spirit in Kogi religious belief, said to be “mother of the world.” See also no. 108.

105.
The Buzzard Husband, a composite drawn from three versions translated from the Tzotzil Maya by Robert Laughlin, in Laughlin 1977, pp. 50–1, 246–51, 342–3.

The story is widely told in Mexico and Guatemala, especially among Maya groups but also among the Nahua and as far north as the Yaqui of Sonora and Arizona (Laughlin 1977, p. 51; Bierhorst 1990, pp. 119, 217; Peñalosa 1996, pp. 87–8).

106.
The Dead Wife, adapted from Conzemius, 159–60. Motif F81.1 Orpheus.

Here in a variant from the Mískito of Nicaragua is the so-called Orpheus myth of native America, widely told throughout the hemisphere (Hultkranz; Bierhorst 1990, pp. 119, 217; Wilbert and Simoneau, p. 565). The four-hundred-year-old version from Peru, no. 2/III, “The Vanishing Bride,” is more in keeping with the general type in that it has the hero breaking a prohibition and thus losing the wife or bride he is attempting to bring back from the afterworld—as in the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In the opinion of folklorists the parallel between Old and New World versions is coincidental.

A motif index fully attuned to native America might include the following additional items characteristic of Mexican and Central American Indian lore: Souls of the dead as moths or butterflies; Dog as ferryman to the afterworld; Tree of breasts suckles infants in the afterworld (Bierhorst 1991, pp. 155–6). The first two are similar to Stith Thompson’s motifs E734.1 Soul in form of butterfly (Europe, Asia); and A673 Hound of hell (Europe, India, Middle East). Yet the various American tales in which these motifs appear, including the Mískito “Dead Wife,” suggest an independent origin.

107.
Romi Kumu Makes the World, Hugh-Jones, p. 263. Motifs A1010 Deluge and A1030 World-fire.

Though freely distributed in both hemispheres, the idea of a world fire belongs particularly to South American Indian mythology. The Revolt of the Utensils, discussed in the introductory note, p. 303, is an American Indian specialty, cropping up here in the fourth paragraph of the story.

Pirá-paraná: river in southeastern Colombia, part of the Amazon basin.

108.
She Was Thought and Memory, tr. from Reichel-Dolmatoff 1951, p. 9.

There are nine preliminary worlds, one above the other; the Mother resides in the first and lowest, with human life gradually taking shape in the second through ninth worlds (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1951, pp. 9–18, 60).

109. Was It Not an Illusion?, tr. from the Witoto-German text in K. T. Preuss 1921, pp. 166–7.

Had he no staff?: Note that in the myth that follows, no. 110, the Creator has a “staff of authority.”

Iseike
(EE-say-ee-kay): a mysterious adhesive described by one of Preuss’s native informants as something “like tobacco smoke, like cotton flocking.”

110.
The Beginning Life of the Hummingbird, tr. from the Mbyá Guaraní and Spanish text in Cadogan, pp. 13–15.

The first in a cycle of creation myths known by the general name
ayvu
rapyta
(origin of human speech). The manner in which Cadogan came to record these stories is of interest, since for a number of years he had been able to obtain only the non-esoteric lore of the Mbyá and had no inkling of any further, secret lore. His relationship to the tribe changed, however, after he secured the release of an important tribal member who had been incarcerated by Paraguayan authorities on a murder charge. When the tribal cacique came to the city of Villarrica to receive the prisoner, the freed man turned to the cacique and asked if he had ever discussed with Cadogan the
ayvu rapyta.
The chief said no. Then the freed man proposed that Cadogan be regarded as “a true member of the seat of our hearthfires,” and following that pronouncement interviews were set up with knowledgeable elders, including the freed man and the cacique himself, who dictated the myths (Cadogan, pp. 9–11).

Ñamanduí: another name for the First Father.

Hummingbird: synonymous with the First Father.

The primal time-space: winter.

A new space in time: spring.

111.
Ibis Story, tr. from the German in Gusinde, pp. 1232–3 (with help from the English version in Wilbert, pp. 25–6).

An unusual myth, told among the Yamana of Tierra del Fuego and apparently nowhere else. The underlying thought, typically Indian, is that the cataclysms of the formative era might yet be revisited. Reason enough to “hush up the little children” when the ibis woman appears.

112.
The Condor Seeks a Wife, tr. from M. R. Paredes, pp. 65–7. Motif B600.2 Animal husband provides characteristic animal food.

The unpleasantly realistic setting of the condor colony with its daily fare of carrion identifies the tale as a typical native American myth, concerned with the fine distinctions between nature and culture. The sentimentalizing tone and the mention of sheep may be regarded as modern growths. The key motif, B600.2, is registered by Thompson only for Greenland and Canada; and for Argentina, Colombia, and Paraguay by Wilbert and Simoneau. Many other New World locations could be added—including Honduras (see “The Bear’s Son,” no. 85). Compare the similar treatment of food in “The Buzzard Husband,” no. 105.

113.
The Priest’s Son Becomes an Eagle, tr. from the Zuni by Ruth Benedict, in Benedict, vol. 1, pp. 179–82. The first sentence of the fourth paragraph carries out Benedict’s instruction, “Repeat for two more of four sisters.”

The compulsive use of the number 4, typical of Indian storytelling north of Mexico, contrasts with the obligatory number 3 of European lore. Thus four girls come courting. Notice that the girl climbs up a ladder, then climbs down; this would have been necessary since old-style Pueblo dwellings were entered from the roof. The guest is greeted with the customary expression “So you’ve come?” here translated “You’re coming, aren’t you?” The rough equivalent is “Welcome.” Benedict comments that the Zuni distrust of demonstrativeness is given extreme expression in this tale. At the time the story was recorded Benedict was compiling an index of Southwest Indian mythology (never completed), which would have included the motif “Death sought by summoning the Apaches.” Note that the “priest” is an officiant of the native religion, not a Catholic priest.

And all this takes place in Hawiku, a long-abandoned village twelve miles southwest of a present-day Zuni pueblo. It was in Hawiku that the explorer Coronado first encountered Zuni warriors in the year 1540.

114.
The Revolt of the Utensils, tr. from the German in Hissink and Hahn, no. 230.

A recurring theme in American Indian mythology. Usually the story is set in the time of Creation, especially as part of the world flood, as in no. 107. Here the Tacana storyteller is merely playing with the old familiar tale. In another, somewhat more alarming Tacana version it is said that the utensils all began to knock about when the moon was eclipsed; when it reappeared, they fell lifeless. Harking back to the ancient days, a third Tacana story recalls that utensils rebelled against the people during an eclipse of the sun. More typically, still another of the Tacana myths states, “Before the great Flood inundated the earth and destroyed it, the pots, grating boards, weapons, and other utensils rebelled against the people and devoured them” (Hissink and Hahn, nos. 4, 39, and 40). See the discussion in the introductory note, p. 303.