252 THE ASS IN FOLK-STORY 



of the delightfully funny folk-stories about animals 

 I used to hear from the gauchos of the pampas. This 

 relates the encounter between an ass, taken by sur- 

 prise when grazing among the tall grasses on the 

 plain, and his deadly enemy the tiger, as the jaguar 

 is called, which resulted in the triumph of the ass, 

 purely by accident as in the case of the ass that 

 played on the flute. The discomfited jaguar there- 

 upon calls his friends together to give them an ac- 

 count of his thrilling adventure, and warns them not 

 to meddle with that beast, seeing that despite his 

 smaller size he is a more unconquerable and dangerous 

 animal than the stoutest horse. 



The reader must take my word for it that it is a 

 very good story, equal to anything in Uncle Remus 

 or in the folk-stories about animals from Africa and 

 the West Indies ; but as I am not writing this book 

 in Spanish, in which language it would seem perfectly 

 natural and innocent and would stain our purity no 

 more than to look at a picture by Wouvermans or to 

 walk through a farm yard, it cannot be told here. 



The gaucho story is funny mainly because of the 

 happy chance that turns the table on the aggressor; 

 but it is known in all that level country and the 

 adjacent Andean region, that the ass is the one beast 

 that does not lose his head in any circumstances, 

 however unexpected and dangerous. Thus, he (or 

 his son the mule) when cornered or in an enclosure 

 will save himself by a well-directed shower of blows, 

 while the more powerful horse, gone mad with terror, 

 will be destroyed — torn to shreds by the iron claws 



