Show STORY TELLING IN MEXICO the mexicans are great story tell ers said an american mining engin eer who Is now operating south of the bonier the percentage of illiteracy is v ry large and stories told by w ord of mouth take the place of reading in every mining camp every cattle amp the fireside diversion when worl stops Is listening to folktale the man who 1 many of them and tells them well is sure to be jar in fact they have professional atory tellers half tramp half dour who wander from camp to camp amusing the peons for a few pennies after I 1 got easy with the language 1 used to listen to these tales when ever I 1 could I 1 found that about a third of the standard stories were boc caccio translated into aztec term thare would be different incidents different names different localities but there were the same plots I 1 asked a priest an authority on mexican history how ever got his start dowl there he explain ed it in this way A great many of boccaccio s tales are only the folk tales of the world ed up by t im from the common people and gathered by him into the along with stories of his cwi the french writers of bea ire and after boccaccio used many of the same stories they are in the roman de la rose and in halt a dozen others the padres in the early days of the spanish occupation brought over the e french works which were always popular in the monasteries they t n uch on boccaccio tor his ir reverence reve lence always queered him with the ch arch but they all knew the fab lieux the priests and friars told these tales to their indian acolytes and the became incorporated with the national folklore there as one tale not a pretty one wh ch I 1 used to hear about the campfires and which I 1 never could place in boccaccio or any other writer wl om I 1 knew last year I 1 visited pompe i and there was that whole tale told out in pictures on a wall I 1 got some of my scholarly friends to look it up they found that lar story or traces of it in greek latin and sanskrit literature it s as old a tale as we 1 now and here it is being told nightly as part of their own traditions by the aztec story tell ers of mexico |