Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/264

256 moves to the woods, where the amorous pursuer meets like disappointment and a similar sad fate as the victim of the X tabai.

As may be supposed, many superstitions cling around the animal world. Each species of brute has its king, who rules and protects it. Even the timid native hare may thus assert its rights. An Indian told Dr. Berendt that once upon a time a hunter with two dogs followed a hare into a cave. There he found a large hole leading under the earth. He descended, and came to the town of the hares. They seized him and his dogs and brought him before their king, and it was no easy matter for him to get off by dint of protests and promises.

There are also tales of the Straw Bird or Phantom Bird. The hunter unexpectedly sees a handsome bird on a branch before him. He fires and misses. He repeats his shot in vain. After a while it falls of itself, and proves to be nothing but a coloured feather. Then he knows that he has been fooled by the Zohol chich.

An object of much dread is the Black Tail, Ekoneil, an imaginary snake with a black, broad, and forked tail. He glides into houses at night where a nursing mother is asleep; and, covering her nostrils with his tail, sucks the milk from her breasts.

These are probably but a small portion of the superstitions of the modern Mayas. They are too reticent to speak of these subjects other than by accident to the white man. He is quite certain either to ridicule or to reprove such confidences. But what is above collected is a moderately complete, and certainly, as far as it goes, an accurate notion of their folk-lore.

HE following folk-tale I took down from the mouth of an old Irish woman about twelve years ago. She had heard it, she told me, from an old schoolmaster when she was a girl [i. e. about 1810—1820], but her memory was evidently at fault here and there. I give it as nearly as possible in her own words.