Today I continue the blog series titled Following folktales around the world! If you would like to know what the series is all about, you can find the introduction post here. You can find all posts under the Following Folktales label, or you can follow the series on Facebook!
Cuentos y Leyendas de Honduras
Jorge Montenegro
Litografía López, 1976.
One hundred and fifty ghost stories, urban legends, folk beliefs, and other tales from Honduras, representing some of the most popular spooky tropes around the world - from tormented souls to vanishing hitchhikers, from witchcraft to demonic possession. It is real, living-breathing 20th century folklore, peppered with motifs from more ancient traditions.
This extremely popular collection was gathered by author and journalist
Jorge Montenegro, who has been sharing them in a radio program since 1964, and published the first volume in 1972. The book now has a 50th anniversary edition. Most of the stories can be found all over the Internet (including the La Prensa newspaper's archive
here); since I don't have access to ILL anymore, I read them online.
And the cherry on top: Some of these stories were turned into a
horror movie in 2014!
Highlights
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| Ocote, or Montezuma pine |
My favorite story in the book (and one of the few non-spooky ones) was that of the
Ocote Tree, in which a young boy learned from his grandma that people should talk to trees, and invited a giant pine to their house for Christmas.
My little feminist heart also loved the
Old Man in Love, who was not in love at all, but rather a notorious cat-caller, at least until a pretty young girl seemed to give in to his propositions, and asked him to meet by the river at night. Of course she was not a girl at all, but rather the
La Sucia female demon, there to teach the old lech a lesson about "compliments"... A similar lesson was taught to the
Mocking Girl, who liked to scare people at night, hiding behind a window and pretending to be a ghost or the devil. One day, she accidentally scared someone to death, so the
real Devil showed up, and turned her into an old woman as punishment. And while we are on the topic of morals: the legend of the
Grumpy Gravedigger (heh) told the story of how a mean old man was taught a lesson about the spirit of Christmas by being scared half to death by the souls of the dead (Christmas Carol much?).
The story of
The Worms was an interesting reverse take on Bluebeard or Mr. Fox: This time, the young wife found hidden treasure in the basement of her husband, and decided to kill him for it... but when she succeeded, the Devil turned all the money into worms in front of her. Similarly, there was an interesting variant of the Vanishing Hitchhiker (the
Moramulca cliffs) where someone rescued a girl from a car wreck, only to find out later that the wreck had happened ten years earlier...
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| Tegucigalpa, site of most stories |
Some stories were dark, but also meaningful. In the tale of the
Cruel father, a young man was abused physically and verbally. When he fell in love, the father killed his girlfriend to keep her from taking the boy away. Of course her ghost returned - she beheaded the father, and took her lover with her. Similarly, in the story of the
Girl from Catacamas, a child was beaten regularly by both parents, until she subconsciously cursed their home, and turned it into a place full of terrifying occurrences.
Some ghosts, however, were nicer than others. For example, there was the
Nurse that kept visiting and treating patients in the hospital where she worked, long after her death; and also the
Girl with the flowers, who befriended a lonely woman who visited the cemetery every day.
Connections
There are few "real folktales" (magic tales) in the book, but several stories contained recognizable motifs from older traditions - for example, that of the
Serpent Bride, where a young pianist fell in love with a woman, just to see her turn into a serpent on their wedding night (reminiscent of Melusine, and other serpent bride tales). There were several versions of classic urban legends and ghost stories, such as
The Ring (where grave robbers try to cut off a dead woman's ring with her finger, just to find out she was not actually dead); grateful ghosts pointing out the place of buried treasure;
Vanishing Hitchhikers (several of them); and even a
ghost bus, this time filled with nuns for some reason...
I have already encountered stories about loyal dogs that protected their owners even after death;
Angelina's Dog was one of them, attacking and mangling men who had killed it to get close to the defenseless girl.
Where to next?
El Salvador!
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