Latin American Folktales

by John Bierhorst

  How glad you were, Lady Magdalena, that our lord, the true God, the true man, Jesucristo, spoke first to you where the sepulcher was! Alleluia.

  When the apostles San Pedro and San Juan heard that he was revived, they were excited and came running to the sepulcher in the garden. Because of it their hearts were glad.

  Forty days passed, and our lord gave orders to the apostles that in all the world the gospel would resound. Then he ascended to the sky.

  Mexico (Nahua) / Francisco Plácido

  FOLKTALES

  A TWENTIETH-CENTURY WAKE

  The dead to the grave and the living to their business.

  proverb / Texas

  Stories are told at wakes in order to pass the time, or, more to the point, to prevent people from falling asleep. Although it is widely accepted that the soul of the deceased has set off for the afterworld by the time the wake begins, another, more sobering tradition has it that the soul is prepared to slip inside of anyone in the room who drowses off. For the mere sake of sociability, if not for the deeper reason, food, drink, games, and stories help to keep the wake in progress.

  There are old reports of wakes being held in church in front of the main altar. The more usual setting is the home of the deceased, where the body is laid out in a room cleared of furniture or with the chairs placed along the walls. This would ordinarily be the room that contains a small altar, with the coffin placed on a bench or table with the head toward the altar. Prayers are recited in this room, while storytelling takes place in an adjoining room, perhaps the kitchen, or out in the yard around a fire.

  The fast-paced twentieth century did not enrich the custom, and it has even fallen into disuse in areas like New Mexico that have entered the era of the funeral parlor. Times have changed in Oaxaca, where card-playing increasingly has replaced storytelling at wakes. And everywhere the old practices must confront modern sensibilities that frown on any form of diversion in time of crisis. Nevertheless, old-style wakes have been abundantly reported, at least for the early and middle years of the century. In areas where the custom survives people known to be good storytellers continue to be notified when the occasion arises, in order to ensure their attendance.

  The usual pattern is for the wake to begin at the first nightfall after death has occurred, with burial the following morning. Then, frequently, the wake continues for another eight days and nights. Between the first and ninth nights of the nine-day cycle, or novena, participation is reduced, and fewer candles are kept burning. In parts of Guatemala storytelling is required especially during the wake, or velorio, proper— that is, the first night—and during the ninth night, or acabo de novena, the end of the novena. In Colombia, in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, there may be visiting, with storytelling, on each of the nine nights, though guests do not stay past midnight except during the first and final nights.

  Various foods are served at intermissions, as well as black coffee and, especially in southern South America, the herb tea mate, or, in Central America, cups of chocolate. Cigars and hard liquor may also be available.

  Since the wake, either in its one-night or nine-night form, is the most typical occasion for formal storytelling, the selections that follow, instead of being grouped thematically, have been arranged as if told in this most natural of settings. That is, each tale suggests the next one, either picking up its theme or offering a contrast. The only group that has been tightly structured is Part Six, which has the folk-Bible cycle in the traditional order beginning with the Creation and ending with the Resurrection. Each of the other groups gravitates toward a particular theme but without observing a strict program. Part One centers on courtship and marriage, Part Two on the afterlife. A selection of folk prayers follows the last tale in Part Two, which itself is a prayer in the form of a narrative.

  Part Three (romantic intrigue) and Part Four (wit) are followed by riddles. Riddles, too, are told at wakes, though they are reported in this context much less regularly than folktales. Manuel J. Andrade, describing his folklore-gathering tour of the Dominican countryside, writes, “Twice I heard riddles in what seems to be their natural setting. One of the occasions was at a wake on a farm near Higüey, where no one expected a stranger, nor did any one know as yet that I was interested in riddles.” Two of the riddles Andrade obtained, XVIII and XX, are reproduced here.

  Tales of salvation and rescue, mostly without religious overtones, are in Part Five, leading into the Bible stories of Part Six. As noted in the introduction to this book, the Mazatec episodes given here were actually heard at a wake by the anthropologist Robert Laughlin.

  For contrast, Part Seven turns to nonsense, with the final tale in this group exhibiting one of the most excessive of the storytellers’ opening formulas:

  If I tell it to know it you’ll know

  how to tell it and put it in

  ships for John, Rock, and Rick

  with dust and sawdust, ginger

  paste, and marzipan, triki-triki

  triki-tran.

  At least some of these strange storytellers’ formulas derive from patter-chants used in parlor games. The example shown above, from Chile, can be compared with an old Spanish rhyme chanted while dandling a child on one’s knee:

  Ah serene, ah Sir Ron,

  Ah the ships of St. John;

  And what’s with John’s? Eats a roll.

  And Peter’s? Eats the cheese.

  And Rick’s? It eats the ginger paste.

  Niki-niki {and so forth}

  Patter-chants often take the form of endless nonsense quizzes, or chain riddles as they might be called, that also escape into storytelling, either as closing formulas or as odd little tales complete in themselves. Several examples are given following Part Seven.

  Part Eight then turns to the subject of greed, a necessary element everywhere in international folklore, with or without the moralizing that helps to wipe the curse away. Part Nine, finally, focuses on marriage and family, now in a darker key and with stories mostly from Indian narrators. These, strangely, suggest the ambiguity of the modernist short story rather than the transparent morality of the medieval folktale, even though the plots are basically Old World. Some are startlingly open-ended, transporting the reader or listener into another, untold story rather than winding up with a neat conclusion. The best examples are “The Bad Compadre,” “Black Chickens,” “Doublehead,” and “A Day Laborer Goes to Work.”

  PART ONE

  4. In the City of Benjamin

  The king of a certain city admired women for the stories they told. He ordered his vassals to collect all the loveliest women in the outlying districts and bring them in to be his wives. That way he would be able to hear good stories constantly.

  None of the wives lasted more than three nights. They would run out of stories, and the king would toss them into a keep. Soon he had hundreds of women locked up like nuns in a cloister.

  In the same city there were three sisters who had no marriage prospects. They were poor as could be. But they thought, “We’ll go to the palace, and if we can just get an audience with the king, perhaps he’ll marry us.” The first of the three went off to try her luck and met with the same fate as the king’s other women. It wasn’t long until the second sister joined her.

  Before the youngest set out she gave the matter some thought and decided to become the king’s permanent wife by telling him a story that would have no end. The king married her without a moment’s hesitation, and on their wedding night she began to recite. When morning came the story was not finished. Tired after hours of storytelling, she said to the king, “Allow me to rest, Sacred Crown. Tonight I’ll continue.” She had broken off at the most interesting part.

  And that’s how it went for an entire week, on and on with the story that never ended. After a while the king said, “This is my true wife. Such stories!” It was a marriage that lasted, the king always wanting to hear more. He never lost interest.

  Tale followed tale but the story was never c
omplete. Meanwhile the young wife was about to have a child, and one day she announced, finally, that the stories would come to an end.

  For some time before this, since after all she was the queen, she had been performing her duties, keeping the palace in order, looking into every nook and cranny. Once, while making her rounds, she had come upon an enormous vault in the cellar beneath the palace. Inside it were thousands upon thousands of women. She was puzzled, because the word in town and throughout the country was that the king always beheaded his wives after the first three nights. She wondered what to make of her discovery but refrained from speaking openly.

  Instead, as she went on with her nightly telling, she mentioned to the king that she didn’t know, really, whether it would be right to finish. The story’s end, she warned him, might be too shocking for him, because she knew what a tender-hearted man he was. She could tell, she said, that he wished no harm to anyone and that it was for this that the people of his country loved him. “Sacred Crown, I can’t bring myself to let you hear how it all turns out. It would be too upsetting for you.”

  With his love for stories, the king’s interest was now keener than ever. He ordered her to tell the ending. “I will,” she said, “if you grant me one favor.”

  “What is that, my queen?”

  “All those poor women you have in the vault, let them go.”

  The king was terrified. “What? If I turned those women loose, there would be an uprising. The people would drag me off the throne.”

  “Then the story is not going to end.”

  The king could barely contain his curiosity. “My dear, let me think about it.” The days passed, and still no answer. At last the queen said, “I’d better tell you the ending, because I’ll soon be going into labor. What if I should die in childbirth?”

  “Oh no, my dear queen! Can’t you put it off a few more days?”

  In the meantime the queen was consulting with the women in the vault. After dark she was releasing them quietly, one by one, without causing a stir. The women were returning to their homes with made-up excuses. They’d been away traveling, they said.

  When all were free, the queen declared she could no longer postpone the end of her story. She brought the tale quickly to a close, the child was born without mishap, and the king took notice that the women he had imprisoned were no longer in the keep. The dreaded revolution had not taken place, nor had the citizens pulled him from his throne. “Thank you, my queen.”

  With those words the king changed his ways, and the royal family lived happily from that time on. And that’s the tale of the monarch named Benjamin, king of a far-distant city, and the city, too, was called Benjamin.

  Ecuador / Rosa Salas

  5. Antuco’s Luck

  If you ask to hear it you’ll listen and learn it, and any who can’t will have to drink tea; for sleepy wits it’s a mother’s remedy.

  There was an orphan boy, his name was Antuco, though country people called him the Little Blade, since he always liked to be sharply dressed. And this Antuco was a cowherd at a ranch in the mountains. His foreman was an old tippler they called Master Anselmo.

  One day the overseer said to Anselmo, “Cut out the drinking or I’ll replace you with somebody younger.” Master Anselmo immediately thought, “Antuco!” who was a great favorite of the overseer, very reliable, and never touched a drop. So from then on the old foreman took a dislike to Antuco and tried to get him fired.

  One night a cow was missing from the paddock, and the foreman told everybody Antuco was in partnership with the thief. Antuco denied it, but no matter; he was sent away from the ranch without his pay, and the overseer threatened to call the law against him if he didn’t leave immediately.

  So he bundled up what few clothes he had, and without a cent in his pocket he headed for Santiago to join the army, because without a recommendation how could he get a job at another ranch? Since he had never been to Santiago and wasn’t sure which road to take, he lost time getting started. Before he knew it, it was dark.

  He took shelter at an abandoned farm, picked up a few sticks to make a fire, and ate some bread. Then he wrapped himself in his blanket and fell asleep. He had a strange dream: an old woman was sitting there, warming herself by the fire. When he asked her who she was, she said, “I’m your luck.”

  “If you’re my luck, how could you let me suffer for so long without helping me?”

  “Because I’ve been lying asleep at this little farm where you were born, and to wake up I had to have the warmth of a fire only you could light. Now I won’t sleep anymore, and I’ll help you whenever you need me. You’re going to be rich, and you’ll make your mark on the world.”

  “How could I be rich when I don’t have a pittance in my pocket?”

  “You’ll have the answer from the first Christian you meet on the road, if you don’t fail to do him a favor.” With these words the old woman vanished, and Antuco slept on.

  At daybreak he set out again for Santiago. After walking awhile he came to a crossroads. Just then a man came by on horseback, and Antuco asked for directions. The man said, “It’s the road on the right.” Then he invited Antuco to ride behind him on his horse, since he was taking the same road himself.

  As they went along, Antuco explained that he was going to Santiago to be a soldier, and the man said he had left home the day before and was just coming back from a distant ranch where he’d gone to get his brother-in-law. “And what bad luck! My wife’s had a baby, and today there’s a priest coming to our ranch to bless the new warehouse. So we thought we’d have the baptism at the same time. My brother-in-law and my wife’s old aunt were supposed to be the godparents. But it turns out my brother-in-law is in bed with an injury. So what do we do now? It’s a rough crowd at our place, and my wife wouldn’t have any of them for a godfather. Are you in a hurry to get to Santiago? Would you mind being godfather to my little son? I’m sure my wife would be glad to have you as our compadre.”

  Antuco agreed to stay over until the next day, and when they got to the house he was introduced to the wife. Then the husband explained about the brother-in-law. Mena, for that was the woman’s name, took a liking to Antuco and thanked him from the bottom of her heart.

  “Don’t mention it,” said Antuco. “It’s an honor to be godfather to your little son and compadre to such a fine woman as yourself.”

  The priest arrived and the baptism was performed. Then everybody sat down for chicken stew and some deep draughts of chicha, drinking to the health of the new baby.

  During the meal Antuco told his dream of the night before and said with a laugh that it had come true, since already he had been asked to do a favor.

  “Bah!” said Mena. “Such silliness! If dreams came true my husband would have found a pile of gold coins and precious stones by now.”

  “Is that so!” said Antuco.

  “Oh yes,” said the husband. “Just think! For three days I dreamed every night that a genie came to me and told me there was a spur on the side of the mountain where I’d find a dead hawthorn with three branches in the form of a cross, and buried at the foot of this tree would be a ball of red yarn. And if I’d tie the yarn to the tree and throw the ball over my shoulder it would lead me to an underground passage where I’d find a chest full of gold and jewels. Imagine, compadre! Where in the world would you find this famous hawthorn? Mena is right. It’s silliness.”

  Antuco sat listening. He knew exactly the place in the mountains where there was a hawthorn shaped like a cross. And what had the old woman promised him? He made up his mind to leave as soon as possible. No need to explain to the compadres. They would only make fun of him. He simply told them he had decided not to join the military after all and would be looking for work at another ranch, and it would be better for him to start that afternoon instead of spending the night. He asked to borrow their horse. “I’ll bring it back tomorrow.”

  Then he left the house and rode full speed toward the spot in the mountains wher
e the hawthorn grew.

  It was night when he got there. But the moon was shining and he had no trouble finding the tree. He hitched the horse to a boulder and unsheathed his knife, then he began to dig. He lifted out a piece of leather. Wrapped inside it was a ball of red yarn that looked as if it had been soaked in blood. He tied the yarn to the tree, just as his compadre had said, and gave the ball a toss. As it bounced and rolled, he ran after it until it stopped beside three stones.

  He picked up the ball, which was still quite hefty, and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he began to pull at the stones. As he moved the first stone he heard rumbling inside the earth. He moved the second, and the ground shook. Then he moved the third, and a genie rose up surrounded by flames. The genie sprang toward him, nearly scaring him out of his wits, and to defend himself he threw the first thing that came to hand, which was nothing more than the ball of yarn.

  The genie fell to the ground as if he had been hit with a hammer, and in that moment Antuco knew the yarn had power. As he was about to tie him up, the genie said, “Little master, don’t tie me with that yarn. Let me be your servant. I am the guardian of the treasure, which I must hand over to the owner of the ball of yarn.”

  “Then get up,” said Antuco, “and take me to the treasure.”

  The genie stood up. The two of them walked down a staircase into the earth, and there was a chest full of jewels and gold pieces. Antuco started to fill his pockets, but the genie said, “Little master, don’t exert yourself. I’ll carry the chest wherever you want it. As long as you hold the red yarn, I am your servant. Whatever you wish, command me.”

  “I command that we be transported to a palace in Santiago. And I command that this horse be returned to my compadres with a bag full of gold.” In that instant Antuco and the genie were in a palace on the Alameda in Santiago. Such furnishings you’ve never seen, and in one of the bedrooms Antuco found a wardrobe fit for a lord. He shook a little bell and servants brought chocolate.