Folk Tales of Honduras opens with the tale Charles J. Finger heard told in Honduras itself, at Pueblo de Chamelecón — a one-street town of straw-roofed houses on a little river, where he rode in on a donkey, watched the children swim, and spent the evening making music with the townsfolk. When the singing turned to the old song of the parrot and its refrain — "When the rat had a tail like a horse" — a very old woman, who wore a broken piece of carved jade showing a deer with a tail like a sheep dog's, told the tale that explains it, and Finger set it down just as she told it. It stands here complete, frame and all, in Finger's own English, exactly as he printed it in 1924.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
A Tale of Three Tails. In the days of Hunbatz, the wizard who lived in the dark of the great forest, the rat had a beautiful tail like a horse, the rabbit's tail was long and furry like a cat's, and the deer's was plumed like a dog's. Two brothers — the swiftest runners and the mightiest workers of their land — are sent to clear the vast forest in seven days. Hunbatz, fearing his hiding place will vanish, flies to their father with a lying report: "They sing and they play for half of the day," and the task is doubled, and doubled again, until no strength can meet it. Then the wise old iguana teaches the brothers a charm — rings of black, white, red and green painted round their tool handles, and a working song: "I must do what I can, is the thought of a man" — and the birds of the forest take up the chorus while the axes work by themselves. But Hunbatz and the animals undo the clearing by night, and the brothers set three traps and keep watch. What the traps caught, why the rat, the rabbit and the deer carry the tails they carry today, and how old Hunbatz himself became the armadillo — that is the old woman's tale.
Tales from Silver Lands is, for the most part, a South American collection; this opening tale is its Honduran one — told in Honduras, and collected there by Charles J. Finger. No other claim is made for it, and none is needed.
From Tales from Silver Lands (1924) by Charles J. Finger — public domain. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
