Histories of Witches – Historias de Brujos
From Cuentos Populares en Chile (Chilean Folktales) – by Ramón A. Laval
Part 2 – Myths, Traditions, Things (Mitos, Tradiciones, Casos)
068. The Man Who Wanted To Learn To Be A Sorcerer (El Caballero Que Quiso Aprender A Brujo)
(Told by D. Francisco Vásquez.)
A man went to visit a friend of his and stayed until 11 o’clock. When tea was served, the friend took a tray, went to a corner of the dining room and began to say: -“Come cookies! Come toasts!” and although he repeated these phrases various times, the tray remained empty. Then he went to the courtyard and the man, from where he was seating, saw the friend moved his lips as if he was murmuring a few words. After this he went back [inside] and again approached the corner with the tray and began to repeat the same phrases: -“Come cookies! come toasts!”, and the tray, in an instant, was filled with delicious cookies and toasts; but many of the visitors who were at the house did not even want to taste them, for fear that some misfortune might befall them.
After the visitors all left, the man said to his friend: -“I would like you to show me how to obtain the food when I ask for them.”
-“Not only the food” -replied the friend- “but everything that you’d want. Come tomorrow, in the evening, and I will show you [how to do this]”.
The man returned the next day, when it was already dark, and the friend took him to a room isolated from the house and there the two of them undressed themselves. The man had a detente hanging on his neck; the friend ordered him to remove it and to throw it out the window, which the man did. They waited until midnight and went to a nearby hill and when they were at the top, the friend mumbled some words that the man did not understand and immediately they saw themselves being surrounded by a large number of ferocious animals and terrible vermin. The friend began to pet a culebrón, which wrapped itself around his neck, and he said to the man: -“Take an animal that you like best”. The man trembled in fear and said to his friend that he’d better not teach him the art of becoming a sorcerer because he’d never dare to practice it. Then the friend murmured a few words and the man found himself dressed again, standing at the door of his house.
[Nguyen’s note: “detente” is a cloth cutting with the image of the heart of Jesus.]
—– VOCABULARY —–
Té – (beverage) tea; (get-together) (Latin America) tea party; (botany) tea
Bandeja – (platter) tray; (median strip) (Southern Cone) median; central reservation
Galleta – (culinary) cookie (sweet), biscuit (sweet), cracker (savory); (blow) crash, slap; (confusion) mess; (strength) strong
Tostada – (toasted bread) toast, piece of toast; (maize pancake) tortilla, tostada; (beverage) dark beer, amber beer, brown beer
Oscuro – (with little light) dark; (complexion) dark; (suspicious) shady; (sinister) dark
Detente – Recorte de tela con la imagen del Corazón de Jesús y la leyenda Detente, bala, que se usó en las guerras españolas de los siglos XIX y XX, prendido en la ropa sobre el pecho.
Balbucear – (to falter) to stammer, to stutter; (to prattle) to babble, to mumble; (to falter) to stammer, to stutter, to stumble over; (to slur) to babble
Alimaña – (agriculture) pest; (despicable person) scoundrel
Alimañas – (agriculture) vermin
Enrollar – (to wrap) to roll up, to coil up, to wind up; (to implicate) to get involved; (to attract) to be into
Enrollarse – (to wrap up) to become coiled up, to roll up; (to be nice) to be cool, to get on; (to go off on a tangent, often used with “en”) to go on and on, to waffle, to get into; (to have intimate relations) to make out, to get it on, to get off together; (to worry) to get worked up
Tiritar – to shiver, to tremble