Cuentos y cantos de Tlaxcalancingo, Puebla

Resumen

The six Nahuatl texts were collected in Tlaxcalancingo, Puebla, and chosen to show the variety of genres in the modem oral literature. "The Charcoalmaker" is a moral tale about a rich man and a poor charcoalmaker. The second story, "The Witch", deals with the supernatural. In it, a man kills his wife when he discovers that she is a witch who sucks the blood of children. In "The Spaniard and the Mexican", a Spaniard gives away his horse and gets stung by bees because he misunderstood the warning in Nahuatl that an Indian gives him. In the story "The Possum with the Cactus Fruit", the possum deceives the coyote in a series of episodes. The words of three songs are given. One song is for the month-naming, another for the second-day memorial service for the dead, and the third for Lent. Finally, the music for two other songs without words is included.