The name of the hero-god Xbalanque is explained by the Abbé Brasseur as a compound of the diminutive prefix x, balam, a tiger, and the plural termination que.[[158]] Like so many of his derivations, this is quite incorrect. There is no plural termination que, either in the Quiche or in any related dialect; and the signification “tiger” (jaguar, Felix unca Lin. in Mexican ocelotl), which he assigns to the word balam, is only one of several which belong to it.
The name is compounded of the prefix, either feminine or diminutive, x; balam, or, as given by Guzman, balan;[[159]] and queh, deer. This is the composition given by Ximenez, who translates it literally as “a diminutive form of tiger and deer.”[[160]]
The name balam, was also that of a class of warriors: of a congregation of priests or diviners; and of one of the inferior orders of deities. In composition it was applied to a spotted butterfly, as it is in our tongue to the “tiger-lily;” to the king-bee; to certain rapacious birds of prey, etc.
None of the significations concerns us here; but we do see our way when we learn that both balam and queh are names of days in the Quiche-Cakchiquel calendar. The former stood for the twelfth, the latter for the seventh in their week of twenty days.[[161]] Each of the days was sacred to a particular divinity, but owing to the inadequate material preserved for the study of the ancient calendars of Guatemala, we are much in the dark as to the relationship of these divinities.
Suffice it to say that the hero-god whose name is thus compounded of two signs in the calendar, who is born of a virgin, who performs many surprising feats of prowess on the earth, who descends into the world of darkness and sets free the sun, moon and stars to perform their daily and nightly journeys through the heavens, presents in these and other traits such numerous resemblances to the Divinity of Light, reappearing in so many American myths, the Day-maker of the northern hunting tribes, that I do not hesitate to identify the narrative of Xbalanque and his deeds as one of the presentations of this widespread, this well-nigh universal myth—guarding my words by the distinct statement, however, that the identity may be solely a psychological, not a historical one.
THE HERO-GOD OF THE ALGONKINS AS A CHEAT AND LIAR.[[162]]
In the pleasant volume which Mr. Charles G. Leland has written on the surviving aboriginal folk-lore of New England,[[163]] the chief divinity of the Micmacs and Penobscots appears under what seems at first the outrageously incongruous name of Gluskap, the Liar! This is the translation of the name as given by the Rev. S. T. Rand, late missionary among the Micmacs, and the best authority on that language. From a comparison of the radicals of the name in related dialects of the Algonkin stock, I should say that a more strictly literal rendering would be “word-breaker,” or “deceiver with words.” In the Penobscot dialect the word is divided thus,—Glus-Gahbé, where the component parts are more distinctly visible.[[164]]
The explanation of this epithet, as quoted from native sources by Mr. Leland, is that he was called the liar because “when he left earth, like King Arthur, for fairy land, he promised to return, and has never done so.”
It is true that the Algonkian Hero-God, like all the American culture-heroes, Ioskeha, Quetzalcoatl, Zamna, Bochica, Viracocha, and the rest, disappeared in some mysterious way, promising again to visit his people, and has long delayed his coming. But it was not for that reason that he was called the “deceiver in words.” Had Mr. Leland made himself acquainted with Algonkin mythology in general, he would have found that this is but one of several, to our thinking, opprobrious names they applied to their highest divinity, their national hero, and the reputed saviour and benefactor of their race.
The Crees, living northwest of the Micmacs, call this divine personage, whom, as Father Lacombe tells us, they regard as “The principal deity and the founder of these nations,” by the name Wisakketjâk, which means “the trickster,” “the deceiver.”[[165]] The Chipeways apply to him a similar term, Nenaboj, or as it is usually written, Nanabojoo, and Nanaboshoo, “the Cheat,” perhaps allied to Nanabanisi, he is cheated.[[166]]