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he himself made no connection between the two
media, there was no question of their interrelation.
The reverse movement, dream influencing myth,
is easy to demonstrate, for dreams are the source of
much religious innovation. If, for instance, a man
dreams repeatedly of an encounter with a venerable
man who requests a shrine, the town authorities will
be notified and, after consultation with the community,
a cross will be erected. This event will, in turn,
become part of history, commemorated in myth.
The very flatness of history permits an old man to
reminisce about his life in the same manner that he
would tell stories about the gods. Even gossip about
the deviations of one's neighbors is a fitting subject
for discourse, for "today's gossip may be tomorrow's
traditional narrative" (Gossen, pers. comm.).
BEING WHAT IT WOULD SEEM TO BE
Since the past is viewed as a moral lesson for the
future, the folktales provide an entertaining moral
history. No sharp division is made between the
"truth" and simple entertainment, either in content
or in the context of story-telling. Just as Stith
Thompson found in North America that myths,
legends, and tales are one (Thompson, 1955:
484-485), so, in Zinacantan the traditional European
classification has no relation to reality. The unity of
intent of the oral literature of Zinacantan contrasts
sharply with previous interpretations of Mexican
folktales. Robert Redfield and Alfonso Villa Rojas
believed they could discern in Chan Kom the traditional
European categories (Redfield and Villa
Rojas, 1934:328). Margaret Redfield, studying the
Yucatec of Dzitas, and Ruth Giddings, studying the
Yaqui of Sonora, discovered a distinction between
stories designed for moral instruction and those that
served as pure entertainment (Redfield, 1937:4-6;
Giddings, 1959:12). Perhaps Zinacantan is more conservative,
because it appears that less credence is
given now by the younger generation to the stories
learned from Ladinos while sharing roadwork. In a
few years it may be possible to state that Zinacantecs
have an idle art form distinct from traditional narrative.
But to say that folktales are the "truth" does not
mean that everyone is uniformly in agreement.
Though each storyteller may swear that his or her
tale is the authentic version, there is lively discussion
and disputation.
If the sum of folk narratives constitutes a "manual
of information" (Williams Garcia, 1972:126-128),
what reality does a single tale have? I had thought
originally that, "Behind the story which a man tells
SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY
NUMBER 23
lies the original whole, a sort of Platonic ideal of the
story, from which he draws according to the emphasis
of his immediate interest, his memory, his learning
and his gifts. . . . We seem not to have fixed tales,
but an enormous reservoir of mythical and legendary
material . . ." (La Farge, 1947:48). After poring
through texts collected in Zinacantan by other students
in recent years I am more impressed than ever
by the depth of the reservoir, but the "Platonic
ideal" of a story appears ever more elusive, chimeric.
"Pure" tales are as rare as "pure" cultures. In his
initial contribution to the study of myth Levi-Strauss
recognized the futility of searching for the "true" or
the "earlier" version: "There is no single 'true'
version of which all the others are but copies or
distortions. Every version belongs to the myth"
(Levi-Strauss, 1963:218). But to a degree that far
exceeded my expectations and that would inveigle
even the shiftiest structuralist, not only may a
Zinacantec tale change shape drastically from teller
to teller, but the same narrator on separate occasions
may switch the protagonists around, rearrange the
plot, and reverse the moral!
A raconteur never repeats a tale verbatim; fluidity
of vocabulary is characteristic. Nevertheless, certain
key events usually follow each other in regular
order. Zinacantec narrators, like the Mixe and Popoluca,
emphasize that they are merely repeating the
ancient words handed down by their parents, grandparents,
and, rarely, great-grandparents (Miller,
1956:189: Foster, 1945a: 190). Innovations are frequent,
but they are never acknowledged (unless, of
course, the narrator is recounting personal experience).
A tale speaks time-honored truths; conscious
alterations are deemed lies.
I had hoped that there would be a way of defining
tales linguistically. While a great many tales are
introduced with the phrase 7A ti vo7ne, "Once . . .,"
often this opening is omitted. A second diagnostic
feature for all but reminiscences might be the use of
the particle, la, a cue which signals that the action
has been apprehended indirectly; but a raconteur like
Xun Vaskis, who estimates highly his place in history,
will not hesitate to drop this cue so as to give the
impression that he has personally viewed events
from time immemorial. The presence or absence of
dialogue is also not significant. Just as neither the
beginning nor the middle of a tale is distinctive, so
the conclusion may be marked by a concise yech laj
7o k'op, "so the word is ended," or by a mere trailing
off of thought. In one case a narrative evolved from
a lengthy account of the origin of a saint's home to a
description of the annual fiesta dedicated to that
saint, with not the slightest pause to signal a change.
While many tales show a well-defined structure,