A man discovered his wife was a sorceress who transformed into a mule every Friday. One night, he witnessed her remove her head to transform and rubbed ashes on the severed neck. Unable to reattach her head, she remained a mule, eventually turning into an owl with her head. This explains the owl’s human-like cries and laughter in folklore.
Source
Ethnology of the Mayas of
Southern and Central British Honduras
by John Eric Thompson
Field Museum of Natural History
Anthropological Series, Pub.274, Vol.17.2
Chicago, 1930
► Themes of the story
Cunning and Deception: The wife deceives her husband by secretly transforming into a mule.
Forbidden Knowledge: The husband’s discovery of his wife’s secret sorcery practices.
Illusion vs. Reality: The wife’s outward appearance as a human contrasts with her hidden supernatural activities.
► From the same Region or People
A man had a wife who was a sorceress and used to turn herself into a mule. Every Friday she would sit up late spinning cotton, and she used to put a fire under her husband’s hammock so that he wouldn’t wake up with the cold.
The man suspected his wife, so one Friday he kept awake. At midnight his wife put away the cotton she was spinning, and throwing herself on the ground, after first having taken off her head and placed it on the ground, she turned into a mule; then she went off with a number of other mules. The man took some ashes and rubbed them on the severed neck of her head.
► Continue reading…
Just before dawn the mules returned. The woman threw herself onto the ground and changed back into human shape, but she could not fix her head on again because of the ashes. Accordingly she changed back into a mule again and, carrying the head, she followed the man wherever he went. He tried to shake her off, but could not. One day he went into a very thick part of the forest, and there succeeded in losing the mule and her head. The mule and head turned into an owl (buh). That is why the owl hoots, cries, and laughs like a woman.
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Dreamtime Whispers 