pipila

[Gingerich Willard P.]

Listeros:
I'll take advantage of this (relative) lull on the list to ask about a word
that came up almost a year ago:  pipil.

Near the opening of the Ms. of 1558 (aka Leyenda de los soles), the
informant says of the destruction of the proto-people of the 3rd "sun":
   auh inic polliuhque tlequiahuilloque totolme mocuepque.   . . . inic
polliuhque pipiltin catca ye ica in axcan ic monotza cocone pipilpipil --

Lehmann translates (in German of course) "And thus they went to ruin:  they
were covered by the rain of fire; they turned themselves into chickens.  .
. . those who went to ruin this way, they were the pipiltin  (boys, knaves,
or princes, sovereigns).  That is why even to this day children are called
'Pipilpipil' (i.e., boys, knaves)"--and he provides a footnote on "pilli"
and on the Pipil of Central America.
Velazquez translates, "se volvieron gallinas.  . . . fueron pipiltin
(ninos);  por eso ahora se llama a los ninos pipilpipil (muchachitos)".
Bierhorst translates, "They were changed into turkeys.   . . . And when
they died they were children.  Therefore today they are called the baby
children".

I could never understand how a foundation myth, which has a clear
etiological function in all its versions, would want to say that a
generation (if we can call them that) of proto-people had been transformed
into our own, normal children, or, by implication, that all our children
come from the third age.  Such a translation seemed to contradict the
burden of the narrative itself ("our" present condition of human normality
derives from the fifth creation; the derivatives of other "suns" are
inferior creatures and aberrations).  So I translated these phrases, "and
thus they were destroyed, in a rain of fire;  they were all transformed to
birds.  . . . they became the Pipiles.   . . . This is why today children
are called pipilpipil, 'little gobblers'."    I speculated the Mexica
narrator(s) might be disparaging the Pipil dialect as "turkey-talk", sug
gested to me by Lehmann's note and the following entry in Santamaria's
Diccionario General de Americanismos:  "Pipiles. (Del Azteca pipil,
muchacho, porque en un principio hablaron el azteca en forma corrompida,
como lo hablaria un nino) Antiguas tribus indigenas de Centro America."

However, the discussion on-line made me question whether there was any
reliable attestation of pipil as "turkey" in any 16th or 17th century
record;  checking the usual suspects I could find none.
Therefore any use of "turkey" would appear suspect for this 1550s text.

I think today, I would translate, closer to Velazquez, "...They were turned
into birds.  ...They were children [at the time of transformation];  that's
why today children are called "little chirpers."

Who's correctly reading this narrator?  Or are we all lost?

[BTW, listeros who receive Estudios de C. Nahuatl may have seen my
translation of this ms. in the 1998 (#28) issue.  Unfortunately, I was not
able to review the galleys and a number of strange print errors crept in.
 Most importantly, however, my brief theory of the oral verse-phrase
structure perceivable in the transcribed text is almost impossible to see
in the sample as printed.  I would welcome the opportunity to send
corrected off-prints to anyone who is interested.]

Willard Gingerich
St. John's University
8000  Utopia Pkwy
Jamaica, NY 11349
718-990-1442  FAX 718-990-1894
gingeriw at stjohns.edu