Folklore+of+Mexico

The "Tale of the Rabbit" is summarized in the wiki author’s own words and this is a purely Mexican story. This story was from a book made up of a collection of folktales from North and South America, thus there is an editor of the book itself, Thomas A. Green, and before each story is a citation of where that story was received from. Thus the source of this tale is from an author named Franz Boas, but he is not the author of the book from which these collections of folktales are in. This tale illustrates the life of a mischievous rabbit who seeks to torment all of his other animal friends. Rabbit plays tricks on Coyote and eventually convinces him to dance and sing while Rabbit hides away, aims fireworks at him, and ends up killing Coyote. Rabbit goes and betrays his friend Hen by giving her to Dog who eats her, then betrays Dog by giving him to Lion, who in turn eats him. In the end, a hunter ends up killing the Rabbit, showing that his misdeeds caught up with him in the end.

One more folktale, called "How the Elves put a Holy Father and his Sacristan to Flight", is a rather humorous one, and it is again derived from the book without an author made up of many folktales, but the author of this specific tale is Mary Blake. This Mexican tale is about how many houses are infested with raucous elves which cause disorder and chaos wherever they go. The owner of one house asks a priest to come and banish the elves from the house and the priest agrees to come. The priest and his sacristan are having dinner at the house with the host family, when the priest hears a tiny malevolent voice whisper that they are going to chop off the priest’s head. The priest and his sacristan ride their horses far away from the house, leaving the poor family to deal with the //duendes//.

Citation: Green, Thomas A. ed. //The Greenwood Library of World Folktales, Stories from Great//

//Collections //. 4th vol. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2008. Print.

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