Guardians of Nature (Following folktales around the world 46. - Belize)

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!

If Di Pin Neva Ben
Folktales and legends of Belize
Timothy Hagerty & Mary Gomez Parham
Cubola Productions, 2000.

The stories in this book have been collected in the 1970s, mostly by the two editors, in Spanish and Creole, and then translated to English. The volume has two parts: legends and folktales, grouped into smaller sections by topic. They mention in the Introduction that they considered grouping them by culture, but too many motifs reach across cultural groups to make that distinction. In the ten folktales included in the second part they left the dialogues in Creole, to show the flavor of the original language; once again, I had to read aloud to understand what was being said... Every story came with a source, as well as the place of collection, and the age of the storyteller.

Highlights

There are many legends in the book about guardians of nature, beings responsible for keeping people from torturing animals, or killing more than what they need. One of them was Tata Balam, the "owner" of nature; Burucat, his helper (a donkey with a man's face) watched out for animals specifically. Warri Massa was responsible for wild pigs (and whipped a hunter for shooting all over the place). Nohochtat, the Lord of the Forest, chastised a hunter for wounding animals without killing them - but was also willing to show him a grow of valuable gum trees. Coconut groves also had their guardian, but the most important of all was Tata Duende, the guardian of the forest, who watched over all of nature (and sometimes kidnapped children).
Another, chilling and beautiful legend was that of the Day of the Dead (Los Finados), when people lay a table full of food for the returning souls of their deceased relatives (and a separate place for the forgotten souls). In this story, a sick little girl saw the ghost-women come to the feast, even though no one else could see them.

Out of all the folktales, one of the best was that of the Bird of Seven Colors, a Belizean variant of Cinderfella (yes, there is a male Cinderella tale type). In this story, a a farmer's peanut-field was being eaten up by a magic bird, until the youngest son managed to catch it - and then the bird talked him into letting it go, and they stuffed a parrot with peanuts instead, to trick the father. The bird helped the boy through various adventures - including a test where people riding a horse at full speed had to slip a ring onto a princess' finger (but she only held the finger straight for the one suitor she liked).
There was also an amusing pourquoi tale about Why mosquitoes buzz in people's ears (there are various story-answers for this question around the world). In this story, Mosquito lent money to his friend, Wax, but Wax never paid it back; it hid in people's ears instead, and Mosquito has been demanding his money ever since... Ew.

Connections

Belize also has beliefs of female demons haunting the riversides. Here they are known as Xtabay, and they don't only punish men, they also have a protective role: One of them scared a little boy away from shooting randomly at birds. There were also witches that could take off their skin and fly around at night (here called Heg).
The Sisimite monster that kidnapped people reminded me of the Sisimiquí story from Costa Rica; and so did the story of Rabbit and the Giant, which was a local variant of the same Costa Rican tale. There were also several Anansi stories among the folktales; I suspect that we have seen the last of Anansi until we cross over into Africa...

Bonus: If you'd like to know more about the Beliezan oral tradition, and how it can be used in education, I highly recommend storyteller Kristin Pedemonti's book on the subject!

Where to next?
With Mexico, we officially arrive to North America!