Ants digging up folktales (Following folktales around the world 44. - El Salvador)

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!

Leyendas, cuentos y adivinanzas de El Salvador
Victoria Díaz de Marroquín
BANCASA, 1995.

The volume contains five legends and six folktales, along with several riddles and rhymes. Most stories have been re-told by the author, but she makes sure to note the original tellers and sources as well. It was a short, but entertaining read, with most legends taken from indigenous traditions, and most folktales showing motifs from European and African sources alike.

 Highlights

I immediately liked the opening story of the volume, in which the gods decided to hide corn from the people who were not respectful to them anymore. Luckily, the zompopo ants (giant winged leaf-cutter ants) dug up the corn, for which the gods tried to punish them by trying them to a tree. The insects broke free, but during the struggle their ties cinched their waists tiny. I liked how the introduction to the book compared the ants digging up life-giving corn to storytellers digging up stories.
I also found the tale of two best friends of supernatural descent, Ifraín and Mausimolú, very exciting. They set out together to find a princess, but then had to go through all kinds of adventures, shipwrecks, and strange islands, to finally find her.

Connections

The legend of the Siguanaba had much in common both with La Llorona, and La Sucia from Honduras. She was a careless mother who left her child alone to admire herself in the water; Tlaloc, god of the waters, cursed her into a demon that haunts riversides and seduces careless men.
The story of Money and Luck was another common one - this time with the twist that the two powers competing by making or breaking a man's life were actually husband and wife. There was, of course, a variant of the Singing Bones, called Flor de Olivar - except this time the youngest prince was not actually killed by his brothers - rather, beaten senseless, and he learned about his own past from the song of the magic bush.
The local trickster is Tío Conejo, Rabbit, who managed to trick Coyote with the age-old tar baby move while stealing some watermelons.

Where to next?
Guatemala!