A man, frustrated by his wife’s laziness, left her cotton to spin while he was away. Instead, she wasted time, burned the cotton, and discovered gold under their fire. Misunderstanding instructions, she foolishly carried their door into the forest while following her husband. After an encounter with tabais, they escaped with wealth stolen from the tree, despite her blunders. Their misadventures reflect humor and luck amidst folly.
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
Trickster: The tale features the tabai, a cunning figure who plays a role in the unfolding events.
Cunning and Deception: The wife attempts to deceive her husband about the cotton and later uses cunning to deal with the tabai.
Conflict with Nature: The couple’s journey into the forest and their interactions with the tabai highlight a struggle against natural and supernatural elements.
► From the same Region or People
A man had a wife who was always wasting her time, and visiting her neighbors, and consequently did not attend to her work. He was going away on a long journey, and to keep her busy during his absence gave her some cotton to spin. While he was away, his wife did nothing but waste her time. The day before her husband was to return, she realized that the cotton had not been spun. She threw it into the fire saying, “Fire, spin this cotton for me.”
But the fire only burnt it up. Then she took a machete and began to dig in the ground under the fire. She found a heap of gold which the tabai had placed there.
► Continue reading…
The tabai was standing at the back of the house. As there was no wood in the house, she called him, and giving him money told him to go out and cut her some wood. A few minutes after the tabai had gone off her husband arrived. He asked her what she had done with the cotton, and she replied that she had sold it, showing the money she had found. Her husband said that that was not enough, and then she explained that she had given the rest to a man to cut wood.
“I’ll go after him, and get the money back. You stay here and mind the door,” said the husband.
He went away to find the man. After a while the woman said to herself, “I want to see what he is doing, but he told me to mind the door. Oh, I know what I’ll do. I’ll take the door along with me, and in that way I can look after it all right.”
After a while she overtook her husband.
“Why are you carrying that door on your back?” he asked her.
“Well, you told me to look after it, and I thought the best way was to bring it along with me.”
“You are a silly woman,” replied the husband. “When I told you to mind the door, I meant you to see that no one came into the hut to steal anything. Now you have taken away the door, and anyone can go in.”
They wandered through the forest in search of the man until nightfall. When it was dark, they climbed up into a big ceiba tree, and placed the door across the boughs. Soon the tabais, the owners of the ceiba tree, arrived and began to make music. The woman heard the noise and began to dance. Her husband told her not to be so foolish, as the tabais would hear her and come up and kill them. His foolish wife took no notice of what he said until at last the door fell out of the tree onto the heads of the tabais below. They all ran away except one. The man and his wife climbed down from the tree, and the woman called out to the tabai that had remained, “Come here. I have something good for you to eat. Open your mouth,” she said to him. The tabai did so, and the woman thrust a knife into his mouth and cut off his tongue. The tabai ran off. Then the man and his wife went into the ceiba tree, and taking all the clothes and money they wanted, went off home.
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