The Bird that Spoke the Truth (Spanish: El pájaro que contaba verdades) is a New Mexican folktale. It is related to the motif of the calumniated wife and classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children". These tales refer to stories where a girl promises a king she will bear a child or children with wonderful attributes, but her jealous relatives or the king's wives plot against the babies and their mother. Variants are widely collected across Latin America.
Sources The tale was collected in Northern New Mexico by José Manuel Espinosa in the 1930s from a twelve-year-old informant named María del Carmen González, who lived in San Ildefonso. The tale was originally titled Los niños perseguidos.Espinosa, José Manuel. Spanish Folk-tales From New Mexico. New York: The American folk-lore society, G. E. Stechert and co., agents, 1937. pp. 15–17, 188, 192. It was later republished by Joe Hayes in 1998 with the title El pájaro que contaba verdades ("The Bird that spoke the Truth").Espinosa, José Manuel; Hayes, Joe. Cuentos de cuanto hay – Tales from Spanish New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1998. pp. 27–29. .
Summary A man and his wife have three children: two boys with golden hair and a girl with a star on the forehead. One day, a jealous old witch breaks into their house, takes the children and abandons them in a canyon to die. Their parents return home. Their father, noticing the children's absence, blames his wife and locks her up behind a wall.
Meanwhile, the three children are saved by an old lady, who gives them shelter. On her deathbed, the old lady gives a magic bead to each of them that will serve as a token of life.
Some time later, the jealous witch finds the children and visits them. She tells them about a bird of green feathers, a bottle of holy water and a whistle. The elder brother decides to go on a quest for these items and goes to the mountains, where he meets an old man and his wife. The old man advises him to roll a ball and put cotton in his ears. The boy kicks the ball and follows it, but he hears the voices in the mountains and turns to stone.
The girl notices that a bead has blackened, and sends her other brother to find out what has happened. The second brother follows the same trail and reaches the house of the old couple. He receives the same advice, but forgets to cover his ears with cotton and is also turned to stone.
Finally, the girl notices that the second bead has blackened, and goes to the mountains with trimming accessories. She meets the old couple and offers to trim the old man's beard. In return for the girl's kind deed, he tells her how to get the bird with green feathers. He also tells her that she can find the holy water on the mountain, which will restore her brothers to normal. She follows the old man's instructions, gets the bird and the whistle, and restores her brothers to life.
Some time later, their father stops by the siblings' house, but he does not recognize them, because they are wearing caps to hide their hair. The green-feathered bird tells the whole story to the man and the siblings, then jumps on the table and takes off the caps. The father recognizes his children and they return to release their mother.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", a tale type that, according to William Bernard McCarthy, is "widely collected" in Ibero-American tradition."Tales from the Hispanic Southwest." In: Cinderella in America: A Book of Folk and Fairy Tales. Edited by McCarthy, William Bernard. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 2007. p. 97. doi:10.2307/j.ctt2tv86j.8. In the same vein, Stith Thompson noted that the Latin American variants represent one of three traditions of tale type 707 that occur in America, the others being the Portuguese and Franco-Canadian,Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. University of California Press. p. 121. . and German ethnologue located variants in California and New Mexico.Bierhorst, John. Latin American Folktales: Stories from Hispanic and Indian Traditions. New York: Pantheon Books. 2002. p. 340. .
Variants North America United States A variant was collected from a Spanish-descent fifteen-year-old named Philomene Gonzalez, from Delacroix Island, Louisiana, in 1941. In this variant, titled Golden Star, a maiden wishes to marry the prince and to have a boy with white and golden hair and with a star on the forehead. She gives birth to this boy and a girl with the same traits the following year. An old woman replaces the children for puppies and throws them in the river, but God rescues them. This version lacks the quest for the items, and concludes when God sends them to a feast with the king.Claudel, Calvin. "Spanish Folktales from Delacroix, Louisiana". In: The Journal of American Folklore 58, no. 229 (1945): 214–125. Accessed April 21, 2021. doi:10.2307/536610.
In a tale collected in 1966, in Los Angeles, with the title El pájaro que habla, three kings take shelter during a storm in the house where three princesses live. The princesses see the kings and profess their wishes: the first will sew clothes for the king that can fit in a nutshell; the second a cape that can fit in a pine nut; and the third that she will bear three children, a boy with golden hair, a boy with silver hair and a girl with the star on the front. Years later, the three children seek the bird that talks, a tree that yields fruit, and the water of a thousand colours.Miller, Elaine K. Mexican Folk Narrative from the Los Angeles Area: Introduction, Notes, and Classification. New York, USA: University of Texas Press, 2021. pp. 292-301.
New Mexico In New Mexican variant collected from informant Guadalupe Gallegos, from West Las Vegas, New Mexico, titled The Bird of Truth, or The Three Treasures, a father warns his three daughters to avoid gossiping, because the king might hear them. And so it happens: the king wears a commoner disguise and spies on the three sisters. The elder sister wants to marry the king's cook to eat wonderful dishes, the middle one the king's baker to eat the best pastries, and the youngest the king himself, for she promises to bear him three children with hair of gold, "like their father". The king chooses the youngest sister as his queen, to the jealousy of the other two. The queen gives birth first to a girl, then to two boys in the following years. Her sisters cast their nephews and niece in the garden and replace them by puppies, but the children are saved by the gardener. The siblings are raised by the gardener and his wife, who makes the children wear wigs to hide their hair. The children grow up and build a palace for themselves. One day, a nun visits their palace and tells them about three missing treasures: the golden water, the talking bird, and the singing tree.West, John O. "Review: Two Guadalupes: Hispanic Legends and Tales from Northern New Mexico by Marta Weigle". In: Journal of the Southwest 31, no. 1 (1989): 138. Accessed April 21, 2022. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40169668."Tales from the Hispanic Southwest." In: Cinderella in America: A Book of Folk and Fairy Tales. Edited by McCarthy, William Bernard. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 2007. pp. 94-97. doi:10.2307/j.ctt2tv86j.8.
In a variant titled El Pájaro Verde, collected by Arthur L. Campa for his 1930 thesis, a queen has two sons and a daughter, but each time a child is born, the queen's jealous servants take the child and lie to the king that the child was stillborn. The children are cast in the water, but they are rescued by an old woman who raises them. On her deathbed, the old woman tells the children, named José, María and Jesús, about a mountain located in the city of Trina, where three treasures are found: the bird that talks, the tree that sings and the water of life. She exhorts them to quest for the items in order to ensure a life-long happiness for them.
In a tale collected from informant Candelaria Valdez, from Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, with the title Las tres hermanas ("The Three Sisters"), a prince marries the youngest of three sisters, to the elder two's jealousy. After a year of marriage, the princess becomes pregnant and gives birth to a boy while the prince is away, but the elder sisters hire an old witch to put a lump of flesh in his place and to cast the boy in the forest. The king's gardener finds the boy and takes him to his wife. After a while, the princess gives birth to a girl, whom the old witch throws in the forest to die, but a she-dog nurses the baby when she is found by the gardener. When the boy is six years old and the girl three, the gardener sells some firewood to the prince, and the prince invite the gardener and his family to drink a cup of chocolate in the palace in a certain afternoon, along with other boys. The boys of the city go to the prince's castle, the last to arrive the gardener with the children. When the children drink their chocolate, the prince notices the children look like him, and questions the children about it. The boy says the gardener is his father and the girl that a she-dog is her mother. The prince sends for the gardener the next afternoon to question him about the origin of the children, and the gardener says he found in the wilderness. The prince realizes the children are his, then confronts his sisters-in-law about their deception. The elder sisters confess to their crime, and are sentenced to be burned at the stake along with the old witch. The prince releases his wife from the dungeons, while he rewards the gardener and his wife.
Colorado In a tale collected from an informant named Frutoso Herrera, from Antonito, with the title El árbol que canta ("The Singing Tree"), a king who is single walks the streets of his city in the afternoon and spies on the conversation between three sisters about their marriage wishes: the elder wants to marry the king's cupbearer to drink wine, the middle one the king's baker to eat bread, and the youngest the king himself. The following day, the king sends for the girls and brings them to his presence to fulfill their marriage wishes. Some time later, the king goes to war, leaving his wife unattended. She gives birth to a boy, whom the elder sisters, out of jealousy, throw to a pig trough and write the king she gave birth to a puppy. The next year, the queen gives birth to a second son, whom the elder sisters cast in the same pig trough and lie she gave birth to a cat. In the third year, the queen gives birth to a girl, whom they throw into a pig trough and lie to the king that his wife gave birth to a meat lump. The king returns and, after the queen's third pregnancy, orders for a glass house to be built to house the queen and for people to spit on her. As for the children, each time the king's gardener rescues the babies and names them, respectively, Juan, Pedro and Pervís. The siblings are raised by the gardener and his wife until the couple die, and the trio live in their house. One day, when they are older, an old woman pays them a visit and compliments their house and garden, but says they lack the talking bird, the singing tree and the golden water.