El conejo que quería ser grande, cuento en totonaco de Papantla

Resumen

This Totonac story from Papantla, Veracruz, wasnarrated by Natalio Eligio García. Paulette Levy presents the text with briefintroductory comments about the nature of the glosses in relation to Totonacsemantic and morphological structure. Rabbit is the chief character in thenarration. On observing bigger animals, he asks God why he is not a largeanimal too. God promises to make him big if he will bring back both elephantand alligator tears. Rabbit immediately goes off and secures the tears bytricking the alligator and the elephant into crying when he tells them that oneof their grandparents have died. When he returns with the requested tears, Godis surprised that such a small creature could make the big animals cry, andasks "What would you have done to them if you had been big?". At that point, hedecides that what Rabbit really needs is to have his ears pulled, and that iswhy a rabbit's ears are long to this day.