From Cuentos Populares en Chile (Chilean Folktales) – by Ramón A. Laval
Part 1 – Magnificent Stories, Stories of Animals, Anecdotes (Cuentos maravillosos, Cuentos de animales, Anécdotas)
025. Salir Con Su Domingo Siete (Lit. To Go Away With His Sunday Seven)
Once upon a time there was a hunchback, a nice lad, who bore his misfortune with patience, and was neither resentful nor partial to the jokes from his fellow men, as are almost all of those without a spine; and one day this good man went out to a neighboring town on an errand and could not return until nightfall. On passing through an out-of-the-way place, he saw, from a thicket, a ring of witches, who, linking hands, were dancing and singing:
Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday make them three
without changing this refrain. The young hunchback, who was high-strung and full of imagination, and seeing that the witches did not deviate from that old line
Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday make them three,
could not contain himself and shouted out from his hideout:
Thursday and Friday, Saturday, six they’d be.
[Nguyen: original text is “como son casi todos los que tienen el espinazo quebrado”, which could also be translated to “as are almost all of those having no backbone”?]
The dancers could not contain their happiness on hearing their song so beautifully completed and gratefully resolved to reward the person who had given them such joyful inspirations. The young man was brought to the middle of the ring where one proposed to give him a palace; another, all the gold that he wanted; the next, to make him king; but the young hunchback, who delightedly listened to the discussion, told them thus: -“I would be content and it’d give me great pleasure if you’d make my hump disappear and provide me with enough to be well off”, -both, thankfully, were immediately accorded to him.
The following day, our no-longer-a-hunchback ran into a friend on the street who suffered from the same misfortune as he who had been so happily cured by the witches. The friend was surprised to see him greatly changed and almost did not recognize him, as the absence of the hump had transformed the old hunchback into a lively young man. When asked by his friend, who was eaten away by deep envy, how such a metamorphosis had occurred, the lad told him of his adventure, and the [current] hunchback told himself to go that very night to the site where the witches met; and this he did, hiding himself in the very same thicket from which our friend had witnessed the dance [earlier]. Moments later the witches arrived and began the dance, singing thus:
Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday make them three,
Thursday and Friday, Saturday, six they’d be.
The second hunchback, who also wished to see his hump disappear, and imitating what his friend had done, he wanted to add something to the verses that the witches were singing, and when for the fourth or fifth time they repeated
Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday make them three,
Thursday and Friday, Saturday, six they’d be,
he very smugly sang out:
Sunday seven.
The witches immediately stopped the dance and looked at one another with great annoyance.
Who is the fool that had come to disturb our beautiful singing? -said one.
Let’s search for him -replied another.
And without much effort they located the poor hunchback, who was trembling from fear at the wrath of those women, and they dragged him to the middle of the ring.
What punishment will we hand out to this wretch? -asked she who was the group leader.
Let us have horns and a tail grow out of him -said one.
When he speaks, let us have toads and snakes come out of his mouth -replied another.
No -exclaimed a third,- for his imprudence he deserves to be given a second hump.
That’s it! That’s it! -they all shouted.
And with pushes and kicks they sent the hunchback away, who returned to the village with two beautiful humps on him: one on his chest and the other on his back.
—– VOCABULARY —–
Jorobado – (hunchbacked person) hunchback; (complicated) tricky
Prójimo – (fellow human being) fellow man, neighbor; (individual) fellow; (old-fashioned) (spouse) (Spain) better half
Extraviado – lost, missing, stray (an animal)
Corro – (group of people) ring, circle; (game) ring-around-the-rosy; (economy) pit, ring; (land) plot
Estribillo – (music) chorus (stanza), refrain (line); (literature) refrain; (repeated utterance) pet word (single word); pet phrase (expression), stock phrase (expression)
Cantinela – old story
Danzantes – (person who dances) dancer; (nosy person) busybody; (active person) live wire; dancing, dancer, swirl
Caber – (to have enough space) to fit, to be room for; (to pass through; used with “por”) to fit, to go; (to be conceivable) to be possible; (to be able to eat); (mathematics) to go; (to be an option) to be room for
Tropezar con – (to hit by accident) to trip on, to bump into, to stumble over; (to come up against) to run into, to encounter
Corcovado – (humpbacked) hunchbacked
Roer – (to chew) to gnaw on, to nibble at; (to wear away) to eat away at; (to torment) to eat away at
Entrañas – (anatomy) entrails, guts, insides, bowels; (inner depths) bowels, entrails; (emotions) heart
Giboso – que tiene giba (joroba)
Giba – (animal anatomy) hump; (protuberance) hump, hunchback, hunch
Presenciar – (to view) to witness, to see; (to go to) to attend, to be present at
Ufano – (pleased) proud; (vain) smug, boastful, conceited, self-satisfied, pleased with oneself
Contrariado – (pissed) upset, annoyed, put out
Rabo – (animal anatomy) tail; (buttocks) (Latin America) butt, arse; (botany) stem
Sapo – (animal) toad
Impertinencia – (insolence) impertinence; (imprudent comment) impertinent remark
Obsequiar – (to make a gift of) to present, to give
Empellón – (jostle) shove
Puntapiés – kicks