1881.] Oot [Brinton. 



gives is not complete. I quote from the JDlcdonario de Motul, MSS. the 

 entry relating to this word : 



" Xibil, xibi, xibic : cundir como gota de aceita ; esparcirse la comida eu 

 "la digestion, j deshacerse la sal, nieve 6 yelo, humo 5 uiebla. 



' ' item : desparecerse una vision 6 fantasma. 



"item: temblar de miedo y espantarse. 



"item : quitarse el doler y la calentura." 



In the Cakchiquel we have the same word xibiJi, to frighten, to terrify, 

 from which are derived the instrumental form xibibeh, the verbal noun 

 xibibal, that which causes terror {e. g., xibibal gel, lit. "that which frightens 

 birds," i. e. the scarecrow set up in the cornfields, Varea), etc. This is 

 the secondary meaning of the root, and is the only one Avhich seems to 

 have survived in the Guatemala dialects. The original signification of the 

 word was undoubtedly "to melt, dissolve," thus disappear, and in this 

 sense it was applied to the act of death, the disappearance of man from 

 this mortal life. 



It is most interesting in this instance to note how the mental processes 

 of these secluded and semi-barbarous tribes led them to precisely the same 

 association of ideas which our greatest dramatist expresses in the opening 

 lines of Hamlet's famous soliloquy : 



" O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, 

 Thaw, and I'esolve itself into a dew; " 



And which Cicero records in the expression dissolutio naturce in the sense 

 of death {De Legibus I. ii. et al.). 



The natural terror and fright with which death and ghosts are every- 

 where regarded, and especially, as Landa remarks, by this people,* ex- 

 plains how this secondary meaning became predominant in the word. 

 The termination ba means in the Guatemala dialects, where, whence, 

 whither, bey, a path or road ; Xibilbay thus signifies, in its locative sense, 

 the place where they (^'. e. the dead) disappear, the Hades, the Invisible 

 Realm, which, as I have above appointed out, was supposed to be under 

 the ground. 



It was a common belief among many tribes in America, as I have else- 

 where shown, f that their earliest ancestors emerged from a world which 

 underlies this one on which we live, and in ancient Cakchiquel legend, 

 the same or a similar notion seems to have prevailed. At least, such I 

 take to be the sense of a passage in the earlier pages of the Memorial de 

 Tecpan-Atitlan, which I shall transcribe from the copy in my possession, 

 with the translation of the Abbe Brasseur, which, however, by his own 

 statement, cannot be depended upon as accurate. 



" Tan qa talax ri Chay Abah, rumah raxa Xibalbaj', gana Xibalbay tan 

 " qa ti qak vinak ruma qakol bitol ; tzukul" richin ri Chay Abah ok xqak 

 "ri vinak pan pokon qa xutzin vinak. 



* Relaclon de las Cosas de Yucata7i, g xxxiii. 



t The Myths of the New World, p. 2ii (second edition). 



