Jim C. Tatum, A Motif-Index of Luis Rosado Vega’s Mayan Legends.
Folklore Fellows’ Communications No. 271. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia (Academia Scientiarum Fennica), 2000. xxxviii + 117 pp.
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Jim Tatum has presented us with a valuable insight into the work of a little known Mexican author, Luis Rosado Vega (1876_1958). As a native of Yucután, Rosado Vega was understandably interested in the folktales of his patria chica. The two volumes he published on the subject are El alma misteriosa del Mayab (1934) _ pre-Columbian material, and Amerindmaya (1938) _ post conquest material. It might have been useful if Tatum had given the full titles of the two works and the number of pages. El alma misteriosa del Mayab. Tradiciones, leyendas y consejas (269 pp.). The subtitle says that the author intended to include traditions, legends, and folk beliefs. Amerindmaya. Proyecciones de la vieja tierra del mayab, de aquella que fue en su día tierra encantada de maravilla, de amor, de ensueño, de fé (448 pp.) is a title that speaks to Rosado Vega’s intention to portray an enchanted land full of marvels, love, fantasy and faith. Although Rosado Vega had planned a third volume that dealt with folk songs, there is no way of knowing if he had compiled his field work since it has never been published. From the viewpoint of ballad scholars this loss is a sad one.
In the course of traveling through the rural districts of Yucután, as the founder and director of a new Museum of Archeology in Mérida, “he began collecting oral traditions and legends which he found in abundance in the small rural settlements” (p. xiii). What we do not know is how he went about collecting this material. What questions did he ask? Did no one tell him a comic tale? Did he censor his results, eliminating tales that he considered unsuitable? Had he limited his query to legends or belief tales? Judging by his subtitles, and the use of the word “leyendas” I suspect that his inquiry might have guided the responses of his informants, by asking for legends and folk beliefs.
Citing Stanley Robe’s outline of the typical legend, Tatum writes that many of the tales follow a recognizable pattern: a human “engaged in routine activity” comes upon a manifestation of the supernatural; the mortal reacts to the superior power of the supernatural with either awe or fear; he then copes with the appearance with “amulets, charms, and prayers, or he may consult brujos, and brujas, médicas, or with a priest” (xv). These didactic tales may result in either rewards (special privileges), or punishments (death by drowning, by knife), or they may be etiological (why the deer’s tail is cropped). For rewards, see Q0_Q199, for punishments, see Q200_Q599, and for etiological tales, see A2200_A2848.
Tatum casts light on Rosado Vega’s cultural orientation: “It is very apparent … that he is always an emotional champion of the Maya; he venerates the past glories of the pre-Columbian culture and sympathizes with the twentieth century Indian. Further, his fierce nationalism and condemnation of the Spanish conquest bring to mind the question of his objectivity” (xiii). Taking the next logical step, he wonders whether an educated writer might not have unintentionally fictionalized some of the tales he collected (xiv). He cites Barbara Woods (The Devil in Dog Form: A Partial Type-Index of Devil Legends [Folklore Studies 11: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959]) who says that Rosado Vega’s work was plagued by “inaccuracies, inadequate data and legends based on literary sources”(xiii n. 3).
Dealing with the question of identifying those tales that are indigenous and those that derive from Spanish traditional culture, Tatum mentions the early work of Franz Boas and Aurelio Espinosa, both of whom had said that Spanish American folklore was principally from Spain. Other folklorists, Ralph Boggs and George Foster, viewed the tales that have persisted as blends of the two cultures (xiv). Rosado Vega minimizes Hispanic influence when he writes that the tales he collected are Mayan in origin, ideology, form of expression and philosophy, a statement that Tatum questions because nowhere are these terms defined adequately (xiii). The problem is further complicated by the early presence of Spanish missionaries some of whose stories most certainly had entered the cultural repertoire.
Some of these blends are easily identifiable by their specific content: A2221.12 Chibilú bird saves Jesus and Mary from enemies, as reward allowed to fly high and make nest in tree top to avoid predators (also classified under B450 Helpful birds, Q20 Piety rewarded, Q190 Rewards _ miscellaneous, and V250 The Virgin Mary). Another motif that reveals a Spanish Christian intrusion is in a transitional state _ M218 “Contract with devil destroyed.” M211.9 “Person sells soul to devil in return for the granting of wishes.” In the process of de-Christianization, the Virgin has disappeared, but the demonic transaction remains. A familiar medieval tale is M211 “Bargain with devil (hermit).Virgin Mary brings man pact he signed with devil and frees him from devil’s power.”
Other devil motifs are less clear as to their origin. Tatum explains that there are indigenous demonic figures “the feared xtabay, an evil demon in the form of a beautiful woman … the kakazbal the most evil of all demons” (xv_xvi n. 12). The motif of a demon in the form of a beautiful woman intent on seducing her victims is familiar in the Spanish Christian tradition. Tatum classified this motif as D42.2.2 “Devil takes form of beautiful woman to seduce and kill man”, F402.1.4 “Demons assume human form in order to deceive”, and G303.3.1.12.2 “Devil as beautiful woman seduces man”. In the Spanish medieval Christian tradition it was G303.3.1.12.2 “Devil as beautiful woman tries to seduce bishop (hermit)”. It survives in such current legends as the Colombian tale “La Muelona” (José Antonio León Rey, El pueblo relata. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1980. 60.147_149), and in a Costa Rican story of “La tsegua”. Of course, when a motif enters an oral traditional culture, it is assimilated most easily if similar motifs al ready exist.
So, we suppose that the idea of a demon disguised as a beautiful woman must have been already a familiar one when it arrived with the conquistadores.
Two intriguing entries report a local creation myth: A1241.6 “Man made from red earth and grass” and A1281.8 “First men without well developed faculties”. They reflect the difficulties involved in assigning a European or an indigenous origin to some motifs. Although there is no denying the universal nature of these motifs, is it a coincidence that they appear in the Quiché Maya creation myths of Popol wuj: antiguas historias de los indios quichés de Guatemala (Sepan Cuantos No. 36, México: Porrúa, 1986) where the first humans failed because they were made of clay and were soluble in water? In the European tradition, the color of the earth used to form the first man was red, perhaps because it explained the redness of blood (Theodor Gaster, Myth, Legend and Custom in the Old Testament, New York: Peter Smith, 1969: 18_19), and, of course, the first humans were a failure and were eliminated in the Flood. If this is not a case of polygenesis, then maybe both the Quiché Maya and the Yucután traditions had accepted the Western Christian creation myth at roughly the same time.
A number of other entries coincide with traditional Hispanic motifs: A2611.0.1 “Plants from grave of dead person or animal.” This motif is reported in Hispanic ballads about tragic love as E631.0.1 “Twining branches grow from graves of lovers”, and E631.0.1.3 “Rosebush grows on grave of dead woman, generated by rose petals given her by her love.” The motif also appears in medieval Marian narratives: V254.7.3 ” `Ave’ appears on leaves of tree planted over grave of person who said the prayer everyday.”
Some entries are not informative enough, for instance, A2848 “Origin of stalactites” II 389. Without a topical index, the user must rely on memory to find related entries that also coincide with Book II page 389. For instance Q551.3.4 II 389 “Transformation to stone as punishment” includes cross references to C961.2.1 II 389 “Transformation to stalactite for breaking tabu” and D231.2.2 II 389 “Transformation woman to stalactite” and D661.7 II 389 “Transformation as punishment: adulterous woman turned into stalactite.”
B210 “Speaking animals” alludes to twenty-one different animals all of whom said something. The fact that they all enjoyed the same unusual ability is interesting, but what they said would have been of even more interest. Similarly a series of unreliable relatives are listed without saying what they did: K2211 “Treacherous brother”, K2213 “Treacherous wife”, K2214.1 “Treacherous daughter”, K2219 “Treacherous father”. Surely the various acts of treachery would have been useful to students of narrative. My appetite for more information was also piqued by A2824 “Origin of drum”, F842.1.6 “Bridge made of spider web” and F991.1 “Cactus bleeds”.
An examination of the cross references to other motif-indexes yields neither evidence of indigenous nor Spanish influence. There are only two entries cross-indexed with Robe Index of Mexican Folktales _ A2261.5.1 “Wizard with keen sense of smell” and F561.9 “Idler lies under tree, eats fallen fruit”. The rest are associated with a disparate list of indexes: one with MacDonald, The Storyteller’s Sourcebook, A2378.4.10 “Why deer has short tail”; one with Haring, Malagasy Tale Index, A2491.1.2 “Why bat hangs upside down”; three with Neuland, Motif Index of Latvian Folktales, B211.2.19 “Speaking squirrel”, B211.3.12 “Speaking owl”, B211.4.4 “Speaking fly”; three with Kittley, A Motif-Index of Traditional Polynesian Narratives, B211.3.12 “Speaking owl”, B211.4.4 “Speaking fly”, D2177.5 “Imprisonment in tree”; one with Baughman, Type and Motif-Index of the Folktales of England and North America, F405.11.1 “Lesser demon leaves when gift of cooked beans are left” and two with Bordman, Motif-Index of the English Metrical Romances, K2214.3.2 “Treacherous son slays father [for inheritance]” and F531.7.3 “Red giant”.
As would be expected in a repertory of tales of a rural population, animal tales are frequent, as are stories about plants, and other physical features of the informants’ world. For example, in a region with few lakes and no rivers, a principal water source is the cenote `sinkhole’, and a local tree, the ceiba is a part of the Maya creation myth. Although trickster tales are less frequent than in most European folktale compilations, there is one prank-playing creature, the czin who is “a lesser demon with a sense of humor who loves to play tricks, causes minor problems, is hairy, horned with a long tail, poor and dresses in black”. This creature is perhaps a congener of the West Indian “Anansi” (xvi).
The contents of this index deviates from the European indexes the author cites. For instance, he notes the absence of demigods, culture heroes (A), and quest tales (H). He also notes the paucity of stories dealing with tabus (C), tests of cleverness and truth-telling (H), and reversal of fortune (L) (xvii). He speculates about the “extraordinarily large percentage of motif variations not previously recorded.” The unspoken premise is that motifs of Western Christian origin have a low percentage of new motif variations, while Amerindian tales tend to have higher percentages (xvii). My understanding is that within a traditional culture, indigenous tales have a greater vitality; the storytellers feel free to enlarge and change them, while the relative stability of imported items suggests that storytellers are less likely to deviate much from what they had heard previously. He stops short of speculating further when he writes: “It would seem, at best, to interpret these numbers only as indicators, nothing more” (xvii). Perhaps no conclusion is possible because this index is based only on Rosado Vega’s two volumes. The sample is small, and quite possibly skewed because of the biases, and idiosyncrasies of the Mexican compiler.
Tatum explains how he has used the Stith Thompson classification system, acknowledging the particular difficulties that arise when one adapts a European system to a non-European corpus. He marks with an asterisk entries not listed by Thompson and also indicates those that coincide with entries in other indexes. A very useful feature of this index are the internal cross-references in which he lists other entries related to the principal one, a practice best illustrated with an example in which the same tale serves an etiological function and also classifies a kind of punishment:
A2766.2. Why dzuedzue tree weeps: sorrowful goddess searching for lost child. I.86
Q502.4. Punishment: goddess must wander earth searching for lost daughter. I.86
Incidentally, are these motifs related to the Mexican tale of “La llorona”?
I am puzzled by the author’s choice of such unlikely parallel indexes as Bordman’s English Metrical Romances, and Neuland’s Latvian Folktales and Legends. Equally puzzling is the inclusion in the Bibliography of Armistead’s El Romancero judeo-español, a catalogue of ballads. If there were a reason to seek Judeo-Spanish folk narrative, a more appropriate source would have been Reginetta Haboucha, Types and Motifs of the Judeo-Spanish Folktales, New York: Garland, 1992. The reader is guided through the entries by a list of Abbreviations Used for Cross-reference (xx) and a Bibliography (xxi_xxiii). A General Synopsis of the Index provides an overview of the categories into which the entries fall (xxiv_xxviii). A serious flaw is the absence of an alphabetical topical index.
In sum, Jim Tatum has created a thought-provoking index that will add to the general fund of information about oral traditional tales. He has called attention to a little-known author and scholar who had created a record of his personal traditional cultural world, a world that began in 1876 and ended in 1958. It would be fascinating if current fieldworkers might be willing to try to renew interest in Yucután’s oral tradition, using Tatum’s index as a starting point. Will they find more tales about sex? About political structures? About tests? About religion? Will they be able to elicit humorous tales from their informants?
Harriet Goldberg
Villanova University
FF Network No. 21
(March): 16-18