Kekchi

(map)

Once, long ago, in the town of Tzalamha, there lived a poor young man who welcomed everybody and whose only regret was that his hut was too small to entertain the whole town at once. He learned an incantation to the Duende, a powerful being who, if in good humor and for a good cause, can grant any wish. On that particular moonless night, the Duende must have been in a particularly good humor, for he immediately granted enough money for the young man to build a large castle.

The young man selected a site on a hill, and as the castle's foundations were being laid, he swelled with pleasure at the prospect of welcoming the town to his castle, but as time went on, he became more reluctant to share a rich home, and he grew more and more to dislike his fellow men. When the last stone of the castle was laid, he lived entirely alone.

One rainy night, an old stranger knocked at his bolted door and asked for hospitality. The owner of the castle brusquely told him to be gone and would not listen to the stranger's further entreaties. Seeing that the old man tarried, the castle owner said, "I wish the road to this castle would go, so that no man could find a way to my door."

The old man, who was Duende himself, walked away and caused the castle slowly to sink into the ground, until it disappeared entirely. But the people of Tzalamha know that it was once there, for sometimes, as they walk at the foot of the hill, they can hear the castle owner begging piteously for someone to come visit him. The people also know that Duende set a great horned serpent to guard the sunken castle, and if anyone digs in the hill, it will come from the ground into the river, causing the river to flood the town, and those who are not drowned will die of pestilence.

George B. Gordon, 1915. "Guatemala Myths", The Museum Journal 6: 130-131.