kuku'i ghost

[Rankin, Robert L]

"El Cucuy [is] a gigantic bogeyman with a crooked back and a large,
glowing 
red ear[s] who is known to come down from his cave in the mountains to
carry 
bad children away."

Actually, it sounds like a borrowing from some South American native
language into Spanish.  A lot of these terms were brought to North
America by the Spanish conquistadores.  They learned them with Cortez in
Mexico or with Pizarro in Peru and then joined other expeditions north
of the border that transferred the terms to North American Indian
languages.  For example the Aztec word for 'turkey' turns up in Muskogee
Creek referring to one or another kind of fowl.  The Quechua term for
'basket' crops up among terms for Indian baskets in Juan Pardo's account
of his trek through the Southeast.  This may well be another such term.


Bob