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)
029. The Three Brothers Who Left Home To Learn To Speak [Properly] (029. Los Tres Hermanos Que Salieron A Aprender A Hablar)
(Recounted by the 12-year old boy M. I. Oportot in 1912.)
There was a well-off farmer who had three sons of very low intelligence, and thus the father wanted them to learn to speak like educated people do. He gave them money and ordered them to leave home and go see the world, to pay attention to how decent people speak and to not return until they were capable of conversing like gentlemen do.
The three brothers left home and in a restaurant in which they entered to eat, they sat near a table where there were some men playing dominoes.
The oldest of the fools really liked the phrase We all have, which one of the players replied to a curious person who asked him who had won the game; and he kept on repeating it until it was imprinted in his memory. The second [of the fools] had his attention drawn to what another of the players said to an onlooker, who asked why he was playing, and he responded To get money, and he went on with this short phrase until it seemed that he wouldn’t [be able to] forget it. And to the third [of the fools], what he liked most was the expression For a just cause, which another of the bystanders uttered, and he said it no less than one hundred times in his heart, until it was perfectly engraved in his mind.
And it happened that as they were returning home, being very happy with the beautiful words that they had learned, they crossed a field through which they had to pass through and ran into the corpse of a man who had just been murdered and whose wounds were gushing blood.
The three brothers were scared [out of their wits]. With mouths [wide] open they were examining the dead man when a guard on horseback passed by and asked them:
Who had killed this man?
We all have -replied the oldest.
And why did you kill him?
To get money -responded the second.
Then the three of you are under arrest -said the guard.
For a very just cause -replied the youngest fool.
And they were taken to the presence of the judge, who, luckily for them, recognized them and knew that they were born dimwits, for otherwise he would have them shot.
—– VOCABULARY —–
Huaso – (agricultural worker) (Chile) peasant; (cowhand) (Chile) cowboy, cowgirl; (yokel) (Chile) country bumpkin, hick; (ill-mannered person) (Southern Cone) uncouth person; uncouth, coarse, crude; (timid) (Chile) shy
Fijarse – (to concentrate) to pay attention; (to become aware of) to notice
Capaz – (having the ability to) able, capable; (potential to contain)capacity; (legal) competent
Dale que dale – carrying on; giving yourself to; goes on; drags on
Frase – (group of words) sentence; (part of a sentence) phrase; (saying) expression
Circunstantes – bystanders; surrounding
Grabar – (to make a recording) to record, to film (film, television); (computing) to save; (to inscribe) to engrave (in stone or metal), to carve (in wood)
Contemplar – (to observe) to gaze at, to contemplate, to study; (to examine) to consider, to contemplate, to look at; (to allow for) to make provision for, to provide for, to envisage; (to pamper) (Spain) to indulge, to spoil; (religion) to meditate