Along with these there are many minor superstitions connected especially with the growth of crops and fruits. Thus it is widely believed that the fruit known as the white zapote (Sapota achras, in Maya, choch) will not ripen of itself. One must tap it lightly several times as it approaches maturity, repeating the formula:

Hoken, chechè; ocen, takan:

Depart, greenness: enter, ripeness.

The owl is looked upon as an uncanny bird, presaging death or disease, if it alights on or even flies over a house. Another bird, the cox, a species of pheasant, is said to predict the approach of high northerly winds, when it calls loudly and frequently in the woods; though this, according to one writer, is not so much a superstition as an observation of nature, and is usually correct.

A singular ceremony is at times performed to prevent the death of those who are sick. The dread being who in mediæval symbolism was represented by a skeleton, is known to the Mayas as Yum Cimil, Lord of Death. He is supposed to lurk around a house where a person is ill, ready to enter and carry off his life when opportunity offers. He is, however, willing to accept something in lieu thereof, and to bring about this result the natives perform the rite called kex, or “barter.” They hang jars and nets containing food and drink on the trees around the house, repeating certain invocations, and they believe that often the Lord of Death will be satisfied with these, and thus allow the invalid to recover.

Those diviners to whom I have alluded are familiarly known as Tat Ich, Daddy Face, and Tata Polin, Daddy Head, a reference, I suspect, to a once familiar name of a chief divinity, Kin ich, the face (or eye) of the day, i. e. the Sun.

A power universally ascribed to these magicians is that of transforming themselves into beasts. Were it not for so many examples of delusions in enlightened lands, it would be difficult to explain the unquestioning belief which prevails on this subject throughout Central America. Father Baeza relates that one of these old sorcerers declared in a dying confession that he had repeatedly changed himself into various wild beasts. The English priest, Thomas Gage, who had a cure in Guatemala about 1630, tells with all seriousness a number of such instances. Even in our own days the learned Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg is not entirely satisfied that animal magnetism, ventriloquism, and such trickery, can explain the mysteries of nagualism, as the Central American system of the black arts is termed. He is not certain that we ought to exclude the assistance of the invisible diabolic agencies![[196]]

The sacred books of the Quiches, a tribe living in Guatemala related to the Mayas, ascribe this power to one of their most celebrated kings. As an illustration the passage is worth quoting:

“Truly this Gucumatz became a wonderful king. Every seven days he ascended to the sky, and every seven days he followed the path to the abode of the dead; every seven days he put on the nature of a serpent and he became truly a serpent; every seven days he put on the nature of an eagle and again of a tiger, and he became truly an eagle and a tiger; every seven days also he put on the nature of coagulated blood, and then he was nothing else but coagulated blood.”[[197]]

Men and women alike might possess this magic power. This is shown in a curious little native story heard by Dr. Berendt in the wilds of Yucatan from a Maya woman, who told it to prove the value of salt as a counter-charm to the machinations of these mysterious beings. The doctor wrote it down with scrupulous fidelity, and added a verbal translation. As it has never been published, and as it is at once an interesting bit of authentic folk-lore and a valuable example of the Maya language, I give it here in the original tongue with a literal, interlinear translation:—