Latin American Folktales (41 page)

115.
The Origin of Permanent Death, tr. from the Shuar-Spanish text in Pellizzaro, pp. 86–92.

The narrator, Píkiur, is a fifty-seven-year-old man, married, monolingual in the language of the Shuar.

REGISTER OF TALE TYPES AND SELECTED MOTIFS

The register, or list, of tale types offers the folklorist a quick summary of contents more meaningful than the table of contents itself. But even the nonfolklorist, who has a nodding acquaintance with folktales, will recognize a few of the types by their catchwords: Cinderella, The Grateful Dead, The Tarbaby and the Rabbit, Tom Thumb, and others. The sequence of type numbers, established in 1910 by the Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne, has achieved canonical status over the years. No one has attempted to change it, though many have added to it, including Thompson, Boggs, Hansen, Robe, and Peñalosa (whose works will be found entered in the bibliography), simply by attaching letters or asterisks to the basic numbers. Thus the series is both immutable and, to some extent, flexible. For the Latin Americanist its chief limitation, the Euro-Indic straitjacket, is its greatest virtue, offering a ready means of distinguishing the imported from the native, since stories of purely American Indian origin do not have generally acknowledged type numbers.

The “type” is a more or less complex arrangement of “motifs.” Thus the recurrence of a “type” strongly indicates borrowing rather than independent invention.

Some stories, even within the Old World tradition, are sufficiently original to elude the type list. Most of these, however, have one or more motifs that can be usefully noted, though the identification of a motif is no guarantee of Old World origin. Stith Thompson’s standard
Motif-Index,
unlike the tale-type sequence, incorporates a sprinkling of American Indian references.

In the lists that follow, the corresponding story numbers are appended in square brackets. All types are accounted for, insofar as possible. But motifs are here recognized only for stories or parts of stories that cannot be typed (though if a listed motif recurs in typed stories, the numbers of those are here given in addition to the number of the untyped story). The abbreviation AT stands for Aarne and Thompson.

TYPES

Animal
Tales

AT 34 The Wolf Dives into the Water for Reflected Cheese [37]

AT 38 Claw in Split Tree [86]

AT 155 The Ungrateful Serpent Returned to Captivity [53]

AT 157 Learning to Fear Men [86]

AT 175 The Tarbaby and the Rabbit [82]

Ordinary
Folktales

AT 300 The Dragon Slayer [77]

AT 301A Quest for a Vanished Princess [52]

AT 310 The Maiden in the Tower [20]

AT 313 The Girl as Helper in the Hero’s Flight [Blancaflor] [100]

AT 326 The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What Fear Is [86]

AT 327 The Children and the Ogre [17]

AT 330 The Smith Outwits the Devil [16, 18/IV]

AT 330D Bonhomme Misère [16]

AT 332 Godfather Death [14]

AT 332B Death and Luck [44]

AT 403 The Black and White Bride [7]

AT 425A Cupid and Psyche [54]

AT 432 The Prince as Bird [84]

AT 462 The Outcast Queens and the Ogress Queen [46]

AT 470 Friends in Life and Death [19]

AT 480 The Spinning-Women by the Spring [91]

AT 505 The Grateful Dead [21]

AT 510 Cinderella [35]

AT 510A Cinderella [28, 77]

AT 510B The Dress of Gold, of Silver, and of Stars [11]

AT 530 The Princess on the Glass Mountain [12]

AT 531 Ferdinand the True and Ferdinand the False [96]

Robe 545G [The Mouse as Helper] [88]

AT 551 The Sons on a Quest for a Wonderful Remedy for Their Father [21]

AT 554 The Grateful Animals [96]

AT 555 The Fisher and His Wife [90]

Robe 559 Dung Beetle [24]

AT 566 The Three Magic Objects and the Wonderful Fruits [80]

AT 612 The Three Snake-Leaves [10]

AT 613 The Two Travelers [15]

Hansen 613 [Hero Overhears Secrets and Cures Illness] [15]

AT 621 The Louse Skin [41]

AT 653A The Rarest Thing in the World [79]

AT 700 Tom Thumb [99]

AT 707 The Three Golden Sons [32]

Hansen 748H [Witch Wife Who Visits Cemetery Changes Spying Husband into Dog] [30]

AT 750F The Old Man’s Blessing [94]

AT 752C* The Discourteous Sower [60]

AT 756 The Three Green Twigs [49]

AT 756B The Devil’s Contract [49]

AT 759 God’s Justice Vindicated [8, 27]

AT 780 The Flower of Lily-Lo [81]

AT 841 One Beggar Trusts God, the Other the King [87]

AT 851 The Princess Who Cannot Solve the Riddle [74]

AT 879 The Basil Maiden [43]

AT 883A The Innocent Slandered Maiden [25]

AT 891 The Man Who Deserts His Wife and Sets Her the Task of Bearing Him a Child [34]

AT 910B The Servant’s Good Counsels [45]

AT 923 Love Like Salt [35]

Hansen 930B [Noble Daughter and Coal Seller’s Son] [50]

AT 945 Luck and Intelligence [6]

AT 981 Wisdom of Hidden Old Man Saves Kingdom [47]

AT 1004 Hogs in the Mud [18/II]

Jokes
and Anecdotes

Robe 1341E [The Money in the Coffin] [75]

AT 1354 Death for the Old Couple [22]

AT 1364 The Blood-Brother’s Wife [26]

AT 1380 The Faithless Wife [97]

AT 1381B The Sausage Rain [75]

AT 1415 Lucky Hans [13]

AT 1418 The Equivocal Oath [33]

AT 1529 Thief Claims to Have Been Transformed into a Horse [89]

AT 1530 Holding Up the Rock [37]

AT 1536B The Three Hunchback Brothers Drowned [28]

AT 1540 The Student from Paradise [18/I]

Hansen 1545** [The Reluctant Hosts] [92]

AT 1626 Dream Bread [42]

AT 1641 Doctor Know-All [76]

AT 1654 The Robbers in the Death Chamber [95]

Hansen 1704** [The Fool as Babysitter] [83]

AT 1737 The Parson in the Sack to Heaven [18/III]

AT 1792 The Stingy Parson and the Slaughtered Pig [93]

Boggs 1940E [The Widow’s Dog Named World] [31]

SELECTED MOTIFS

Mythological
Motifs

A673 Hound of hell [106]

A1010 Deluge [3, 61, 107, 111]

A1030 World-fire [107]

A1650.1 The various children of Eve [58]

Animals

B401 Helpful horse [12]

B411 Helpful cow [51]

B600.2 Animal husband provides characteristic animal food [86, 112]

B635.1 The Bear’s Son [86]

Tabu

C12 Devil invoked appears unexpectedly [48]

Magic

D1234 Magic guitar [12]

D1505.8.1 Blood from Christ’s wounds restores sight [71]

The
Dead

E30 Resuscitation by arrangement of members [51]

E235 Return from dead to punish indignities to corpse [85]

E734.1 Soul in form of butterfly [106]

E751.1 Souls weighed at Judgment Day [56]

Marvels

F81.1 Orpheus [106]

F251.4 Underworld people from children which Eve hid from God [58]

F841 Extraordinary boat [51]

Ogres

G211 Witch in animal form [9, 80, 84]

G211.1.2 Witch in form of horse [30, cf. 101]

G266 Witches steal [9]

G271.2.2 Witch exorcised by holy water [9]

G271.4.5 Breaking spell by beating the person or object bewitched [9]

Tests

H71.1 Star on forehead as a sign of royalty [64]

H121 Identification by cup [28]

H602.1.1 Symbolic meaning of numbers one to [ . . . ] twelve [23]

H1091.1 Task: sorting grains: performed by helpful ants [28, 96]

H1091.2 Task: sorting grains: performed by helpful birds [28]

H1125 Task: traveling until iron shoes are worn out [84]

H1226.4 Pursuit of rolling ball of yarn leads to quest [5]

The
Wise
and
the
Foolish

J1185.1 Sheherezade [4]

J1758 Tiger mistaken for domestic animal [86]

J2461.1 Literal following of instructions about actions [39]

Deceptions

K841 Substitute for execution obtained by trickery [37]

Reversal
of fortune

L13 Compassionate youngest son [12, 21]

Ordaining
the
Future

M21 King Lear judgment [35]

Chance
and
Fate

N452 Secret remedy overheard in conversation of animals [12, 15, 84, cf. 80]

N512 Treasure in underground chamber [5, 51]

N531 Treasure discovered through dream [5]

N813 Helpful genie [5]

Rewards
and
Punishments

Q2 Kind and unkind [12, 21, 28, 60, 91, 94]

Unnatural
Cruelty

S165 Mutilation: putting out eyes [12]

S224 Child promised to Devil for acting as godfather [23]

S241 Child unwittingly promised: “first thing you meet” [54]

Traits
of
Character

W151.9 Greedy animal gets head stuck in food jar [37]

GLOSSARY OF NATIVE CULTURES

The population figures, which are very rough approximations, have
been gathered from different sources, principally the Summer Insti-
tute of Linguistics.

Aymara.
A major ethnic group of the central Andes, numbering more than three million in northwestern Bolivia, southern Peru, and northern Chile.

Aztec.
See
Nahua.

Barasana.
A small Amazonian tribe of southeastern Colombia with fewer than 500 members.

Cakchiquel Maya.
One of the Mayan groups of the Guatemalan highlands west of Guatemala City, numbering more than 300,000.

Cashinawa.
Also
Cashinahua.
A forest tribe of about 2,000 on the Peru-Brazil border, mostly in Peru.

Cora.
A Uto-Aztecan tribe of about 15,000 in the Western Sierra Madre of Nayarit State, Mexico.

Guaraní.
One of the two national languages of Paraguay, with Spanish; spoken by nearly five million Paraguayans (95 percent of the population) and by hundreds of thousands of native people in neighboring areas of Argentina.

Inca.
A small tribe that conquered the Valley of Cuzco in the southern Peruvian highlands and became the ruling elite of a vast empire; the king, or emperor, was called
the
Inca.
See
Quechua.

Isleta.
One of the Rio Grande pueblos of northern New Mexico, with a population of about 2,500.

Kekchi Maya.
A Mayan group of more than 300,000 in eastern Guatemala with about 9,000 in Belize.

Kogi.
Also
Kogui
or
Cagaba.
A Chibchan people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, northeastern Colombia, with an estimated population of 4,000 to 6,000.

Lenca.
An ethnic group of 50,000 in Honduras, now Spanish-speaking with a only a few speakers of the Lenca language now remaining.

Maya.
See
Yucatec Maya.

Mayan.
A language family of southern Mexico and Guatemala, including Cakchiquel, Kekchi, Quiché, Tzotzil, Yucatec, and many others.

Mazatec.
A people of Oaxaca State, Mexico, with a population of about 35,000 native speakers.

Mbyá Guaraní.
A people of eastern Paraguay with 7,000 native speakers and an additional 5,000 in adjacent areas of Brazil.

Mískito.
The principal native group in Nicaragua, with a population of about 150,000.

Mixe.
A people of northeastern Oaxaca State, Mexico, numbering over 30,000.

Nahua.
A term now used by scholars to designate the Nahuatl-speaking peoples of Mexico, past and present, including the pre-Columbian Aztecs. There are over a million Nahuatl speakers today, mostly in central Mexico.

Otomi.
Called
Ñähñu
by the Otomi themselves. A central Mexican group numbering more than 200,000.

Pipil.
An ethnic group of 200,000 in El Salvador, now mostly Spanish-speaking, related to the Nahua of Mexico.

Popoluca.
A people of southeastern Veracruz State, Mexico, numbering over 50,000.

Quechua.
The language of the Incas of Cuzco, imposed upon most of the native tribes of the central Andes, now spoken throughout the Peruvian highlands. Additional Quechua peoples are in Bolivia and Argentina.
See
also
Quichua.

Quiché Maya.
A Mayan group of the Guatemalan highlands with a population of 600,000.

Quichua.
The Ecuadorean variety of Quechua, spoken by more than four million people.

Shuar.
Formerly called
Jívaro.
A native group of over 30,000 in eastern Ecuador.

Tacana.
A forest tribe of the eastern slopes of the Andes in Bolivia, numbering 3,500.

Tepecano.
An ethnic group of the Western Sierra Madre of Jalisco State, Mexico, formerly speaking a Uto-Aztecan language, now Spanish-speaking.

Tzotzil Maya.
A Mayan group of Chiapas State, southern Mexico, population 300,000.

Witoto.
Also
Huitoto.
An Amazonian tribe of 2,000 in southeastern Colombia with an additional 1,000 in neighboring Peru.

Yamana.
Also
Yahgan.
A small native group of Tierra del Fuego, southern Argentina, now culturally extinct.

Yucatec Maya.
Also
Yucateco
or
Maya.
The Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula, numbering three-quarters of a million.

Zapotec.
A group of closely related peoples of Oaxaca State, Mexico, with a total population of about 600,000.

Zuni.
A Pueblo group of western New Mexico, numbering 10,000.