Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/252

 THE FOLK-LORE OF YUCATAN. , M.D.

YUCATAN presents a strange spectacle to the ethnologist. The native race, which in nearly every other part of the American continent has disappeared before the white invaders or else become their acknowledged inferiors, has there gained the upper hand. The native language has ousted the Spanish to that extent that whole villages of whites speak Maya only, and the fortunes of war in the last generation have sided so much with the native braves that they have regained undisputed possession of by far the larger part of the peninsula.

Is there to be recognised in this a revival of that inherent energy which prompted their ancestors to the construction of the most remarkable specimens of native architecture on the continent, and to the development of a ripe social and political fabric?

It can scarcely be doubted; but, however that may be, such considerations cannot fail to excite our interest in all that relates to a race of such plucky persistence.

As throwing a side-light on their mental constitution, their superstitions and folk-lore merit attention. I happen to have some material on this which has never been published, and some more which has only appeared in mediums quite inaccessible even to diligent students. Of the former are a manuscript by the Licentiate Zetina of Tabasco, a native of Tihosuco, and some notes on the subject by Don Jose Maria Lopez, of Merida, and the late Dr. Carl Hermann Berendt; while of the latter a report by Don Bartolome Granado de Baeza, cura of Yaxcaba, written in 1813, and an article of later date by the learned cura, Estanislao Carrillo. are particularly noteworthy. From