Indian vocables are regular phonetic developments of the first three words of the Catholic ceremony in question: Por la señal. In New-Mexican Spanish, and also in Andalusian Spanish, the current familiar pronunciation of these three words is po la señal or po la señá. This is exactly the Zuñi polasenyá. Mrs. Parsons does not write it with a final accented, but I presume that is the correct accentuation. The Laguna form, porasiniá, is also a perfectly normal Spanish dialectal development. The assimilation here has favored the r and eliminated the l; and we have the dialectal form siñal, current in all Spanish dialects, for the regular form señal, just as we have siñor for señor. Again the accentuation must be porasiniá. In the note on p. 496 Mrs. Parsons gives the Indian words, and also the Spanish formula, but fails to tell us that each and every word which the Indian mumbles is a direct continuation of its Spanish source; and two words of the Spanish formula are omitted, although the Indian formula repeats them also. I give below the Indian words as given by Mrs. Parsons, and I add under each one the Spanish equivalents from which the Indian words are certainly derived. Mrs. Parsons finds it difficult to explain the Indian words Tsalemo (Acoma and Zuñi), Saremo (Laguna), which the Indian children repeat from house to house as they go forth begging for food on All-Souls Day. This also is a purely Spanish custom, as I have already explained in my note to Miss Marreco's article above mentioned, pp. 538-539, and in my "Romancero Nuevomejicano" (Revue Hispanique, April, 1915, No. 137). The complete version of the New-Mexican Spanish invocation is,· Oremos, oremos, puertas y ventanas The Zuñi and Acoma form Tsalemo, and the Laguna form Salemo, are Indian developments of the first word of the invocation. Curiously enough, these Pueblo Indians have preserved only the first word of the Catholic invocation, evidently taught to them by the old padres. In the current familiar Spanish pronunciation the first two words of the invocation are thus divided into syllables: Oremo, soremo. The initial verse is frequently repeated before passing to the second; and hence, Oremo, soremo, soremo, soremo. Soremo is the Spanish word that is now pronounced Tsalemo and Saremo by the Zuñi, Acoma, and Laguna Indians. STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA. FOLK-TALES FROM MEXICO. El Lagarto. AURELIO M. ESPINOSA. Había una vez un lagarto que se estaba muriendo porque estaba en un charco de lodo que casi no tenía agua. Así estaba cuando un día pasó un leñador por ahí y cuando lo vió el lagarto le dijo:— Oye buen hombre hazme la caridad de sacarme de este charco y llevarme al río. Ya ves que está cerca, y que me estoy muriendo. El hombre se compadeció de él y jalando y arrastrando se lo llevó y lo echó al río. El lagarto se hechó de cabeza se zambulló y se revolcó en el agua y después que estuvo muy contento volvió a la orilla a donde estaba el hombre y le dijo: - Oye ahora te voy a comer. Hombre le contestó ¿pero, porqué? no ves que te he traído del charco de donde te estabas muriendo y ahora ya estás bueno. No seas malo. Y el cocodrilo le dijo: - No, yo te como. ¿No sabes que un bien con un mal se paga? Pero hombre no seas malo, no me Mira vamos a hacer una cosa, a los animales que pasen les preguntamos que opinan ellos y si dicen que sí entonces me dejaré comer. comas. Entonces pasó un caballo ya muy viejo que venía arrastrando las patas y muy flaco y el hombre le dijo: — Mira acabo de sacar a este lagarto del charco y lo traje al río y ahora me quiere comer. ¿Tú dices que está esto bueno? Y el caballo que estaba muy flaco y muy viejo le dijo: Sí porque un bien con un mal se paga yo le serví durante muchos años a mi amo y ya que estuve viejo y flaco me mandó fuera de su casa porque ya no podía trabajarle. Ya ves que un bien con un mal se paga y tiene razón el lagarto. Entonces el lagarto le dijo: -Yo te como ya ves lo que dice el caballo; pero el hombre le rogó que lo esperaran a otro animal y el lagarto aceptó. A poco rato pasó un buey también muy viejo y muy flaco con unos cuernos muy largos y le dijo:- Oye, acabo de sacar a este lagarto de un charco y lo traje al río y por pago me quiere comer. ¿Tú que dices? - Que hace bien, porque un bien con un mal se paga. Yo mientras estuve gordito y fuerte me trabajaron y me dieron de comer. Ahora que estoy flaco y viejo me han hechado y me estoy muriendo de hambre. Y el lagarto le dijo: - Ya ves ahora si te como sin remedio. Pero el hombre le volvió a suplicar y le dijo que a la tercera era la vencida. En eso vieron venir una zorra que iba a tomar agua. Y el hombre le dijo: - Mira, buena zorra, pasaba yo por un charco de lodo cuando este lagarto que se estaba muriendo me dijo que lo salvara trayéndolo al río y compadecido de él le dije que sí me lo traje arrastrando y ahora que está bueno me quiere comer porque dice que un bien con un mal se paga. Y el lagarto le dijo si el caballo y el buey dicen que tengo razón y ahora me lo como. ¿Que opinas? y el zorro dijo yo necesito para poder dar mi opinión que vea como sucedieron las cosas. Y se las volvieron a explicar; pero la zorra les dijo no necesito ver personalmente tal como pasó. Y entonces el hombre cogió de nuevo al lagarto y se lo llevó al charco. Como no había agua luego que estuvo el lagarto ahí se comenzaba a morir y entonces le dijo la zorra al hombre. Ahora que él está de nuevo aquí, buen tonto serás si te dejas comer. Y el lagarto por más que suplicó se quedó ahí y el hombre se fué. El Chivo. Una vez un chivo fué a tomar agua a un río y cuando se agachó vió su cara con sus barbas y le pareció muy bonita y dijo:- Yo soy muy bonito tengo unas barbas muy largas y me deben nombrar a mí rey de los animales, porque soy muy respetable. Y se fué y reunió a los animales y les dijo:-Ya ven que tengo yo mis barbas y mi cara es imponente a mí me deben nombrar rey de Uds. en lugar del león, porque yo soy mejor que él y más bonito. Y los animales le dijeron que sí pero algunos fueron a ver al león y le contaron que el chivo hablaba mal de él, diciéndo, que él no debería ser rey, porque el tenía una cara muy imponente y el león no. Entonces el león fué a ver al chivo y le dijo que que andaba diciendo de él. Pero entonces el chivo le dió miedo la figura del león se le apeó por las orejas y le dijo: No hermanito yo no he dicho nada, ya sabes te quiero; pero es que todos los cabrones somos habladores. MÉXICO, D.F. PAUL SILICEO PAUER. LEGENDS OF CHAPPAQUIDDICK. The island of Chappaquiddick, lying to the east of Edgartown, on Martha's Vineyard, is one of the least accessible spots on the New England coast. It is reached from Edgartown by ferry (a row-boat); and the ferry-bell on Chappaquiddick point has been for many years the delight of summer-visitor artists, while the non-artistic have also experienced a certain æsthetic thrill as they tugged at its frayed rope and murmured, "Frightfully quaint!" The excellent bathing-beach, a little to the east of the point, is also well known to all summer visitors. Some of them have even gone so far as to climb the little look-out tower on the hill above the beach, and to gaze out over the miles of wind-swept dunes that lie between Cape Poge Light and Washqua Bluff. But that is all. Save for such a fleeting survey, the island is terra incognita. We may imagine the summer visitor's effusive raptures if he could know that Chappaquiddick has its local legends of the supernatural; that many a spot along the windy shore, many a lonely island thicket of hazel or ragged clump of scrub-oak, is haunted. Such is indeed the case, but the summer visitor will never know it. These stories belong to the category of things too precious to be exhibited to the casual stranger: "'twere profanation To tell the laity our love." But in the island farm-house at dead of winter, before the open fire, that is another matter. On such an occasion tongues are unsealed, and one may hear of the Phantom Ship, of the treasure buried beneath the Blue Rock, and even, if his host be uncommonly communicative, of the Haunted Hollow and of the Little Man. These last two stories are of quite superior quality, and seem worth setting down here. In the Haunted Hollow, over a century ago, stood a house where a somewhat mysterious woman lived alone with her three children. She does not appear to have been precisely an estimable character, but de mortuis nil nisi bonum. At all events, she was in the habit of locking the children in the house at night and going down to the point, and across the ferry to Edgartown. She did this once too often. The children, it is supposed, somehow set the house on fire, and, being unable to get out, were burned to death. Of their mother's emotions and of her subsequent history, nothing is told. But and here is the strange part of the story every spring, along in May and June, just about dusk, the voices of the three children may be heard crying down in the Haunted Hollow. Superstition! Nonsense! No doubt, but let him scoff who, knowing the legend, has sauntered by the Haunted Hollow of a May evening and felt no quickening pulse. The Little Man is something more than a voice. He can be seen; and some time, when you are walking alone across the Chappaquiddick moors, you may encounter him. He is very small and very strange-looking. Those who have seen him are unable to say more of his physical appearance. But you may know him by his manner. He never speaks: he approaches you, looks at you oddly, and then points off across the sea. You will naturally look in the direction in which he points, people always do, -and when you look back, he will be gone. Vanished, absolutely! No trace of him anywhere. The story is told of a certain Edgartown man, a lover of practical jokes, that he once asked a Chappaquiddick farmer, "Who was that little man that I saw down in your field?"—"I don't know. Why?" was the rather indifferent answer. "Well, I just wondered. He was sort of queer-looking. I thought I knew everybody in town, but I never saw him before." - "What did he say to you?" asked the farmer, showing a little more interest. "Why, that was the queer part of it. He didn't say a word; he just pointed. Of course, I looked to see what he was pointing at, and then"—"Yes, yes, what then?"-"Why, he was gone. I don't know what became of him. He must have gone off pretty quick."-"There now!" cried the farmer, excitedly. "You've seen it! Now maybe folks won't say there's no such thing! I've seen it, and my father saw it, and now you've seen it!" I myself have never heard the strange cries in the Haunted Hollow; I have never seen the "little man;" but I have heard the noise of frogs on a still night in spring, and I have heard the mournful cry of the owl. At night, in the Haunted Hollow, such sounds might well prove disturbing. As for the "little man," I have a notion as to the particular family of elves to which he belongs. An old Scottish ballad (No. 38 in the Child collection) begins thus: "As I was walking all alone, Between a water and a wa, And there I spy'd a wee wee man, And he was the least that ere I saw." The narrator has some conversation with the wee wee man, and follows him to a fairy palace which has a roof of beaten gold. But, note the denouement! "When we came to the stair-foot, Ladies were dancing, jimp and sma, But in the twinkling of an eye, My wee wee man was clean awa." Can it be that this Scottish spirit is now acclimated in the lonely fields of Chappaquiddick? It may be so, for time and space mean little to these unsubstantial beings. And I confess to a kind of hope that some day (as I am not a summer visitor) I may stumble upon that gold-roofed fairy palace on Chappaquiddick. READVILLE, MASS. BEN C. CLOUGH. AN OLD-WORLD TALE FROM MINNESOTA. The following tale has been communicated to me by Professor C. N. Gould, who heard it in southern Minnesota about 1885 from Julian Christensen, a Dane from the island of Laaland. The latter learned it from an Irishman when he was working on one of the wheat-farms of North Dakota. The story is as follows: Once there was an old Irish tramp. He came to a farmer's and asked for some dinner. The farmer told him to come in and sit down to dinner. There were a German and a Frenchman there too. The farmer said: "Well, you are the last man to come, you shall cut and serve the chicken." The Irishman agreed, and they brought him a whole chicken. He cut off the head and gave it to the farmer, and said, "You are the head man here, you shall have the head." He cut off the neck and gave it to the farmer's wife, and said, "You are next to the head, so you shall have the neck." He cut off the wings and gave one to each of the two daughters of the farmer, and said, "You will soon fly away from the home nest, and you shall each have a wing." He said to the Frenchman and the German, "You two poor fellows have a long way to go to get home," and gave each of them a foot. Then he said, "I am just a poor old Irish tramp, I'll eat what is left." This tale had a long history behind it when it was related in Minnesota. The earliest versions which have been noted are Oriental: it is found in the "Midrash Echa Rabati" of the seventh century, and is told in Arabia in the next century of the court-fool of Haroun al-Rashid. Its next appearances are in the Icelandic "Magussaga," a translation and adaptation of the "Quatre Fils d'Aymon" of about 1300; and a little later in the "Scala celi," a collection of exempla written down by a Frenchman. Hans Sachs, who tells the story twice, found it in Pauli's "Schimpf und Ernst," a sixteenth-century thesaurus of anecdotes; and from this time on it appears more or less regularly in the jest-books. During the nineteenth century it has been collected in dozens of oral variants. Several scholars have brought together the references to the story or have written about it. Reinhold Köhler found it in combination with a riddling tale about a murdered lover. Wünsche has studied it rather hastily with special reference to Sachs's "Meistergesang" of 1541. The story is of course a proof of the hero's cleverness. According to the "Midrash Echa Rabati," for example, a son who arrives in the city after his father's death shows himself to be a legitimate descendant of his clever father by his success in this and similar tests, and so wins a share in the estate. The story finds, therefore, an appropriate place among the episodes belonging to the cycle of "Die kluge Bauerntochter" (Grimm, "Kinder- und Hausmärchen," No. 94). This cycle is discussed by Bolte and Polívka in the "An1 Kleinere Schriften (Weimar, 1898), 1 : 350 ff.; cf. pp. 499-502 (on the version in Camerloher and Prelog, Nasreddins Schwänke) and the addenda, p. 582. 2 "Zwei Dichtungen von Hans Sachs nach ihren Quellen” (Zeitschrift für vergleichende Literaturgeschichte, 11 (1897): 36-48. He gives a translation of the passage from the Midrash Echa Rabati; a digest of the Arabic story; and reprints the tale as it is found in the Scala celi, Widebram's Delitiae poetarum Germanorum, and Harsdörffer's Nathan und Jotham. Sachs versified the story again in 1558, but this version was not known to Wünsche. |