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THE HIDFOLK OF TEXAS by Claire Campbell  Hearken to my tales of the hidfolk! Most of our folklore presentations describe places and things and people that we can see. I want to reveal a bit about the hidfolk of Texas: the “little people,” fairies and elves, brownies, trolls, the little men of the Comanche Indians. Hidfolk are a part of cultures all over the world, and the people of those cultures have brought them to Texas. If you think hidfolk are imaginary, that’s alright. Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” But if they’re real we just have to live with them. You probably already do if you think about it. I know we do at our house. Whenever we can’t find something or when something suddenly shows up that we’ve missed, we know it’s the Borrowers—those little people who live under the floor—but they almost always bring things back. The hidfolk are like all folklore, a haunting blend of history and fantasy, and we can’t be quite sure which part is real. The diversity of the people of Texas has been compared to a patchwork quilt made of many patterned pieces. Each piece has its own spirit hidden in the stitches: the Czechs of Central Texas are careful to avoid their evil water-well spirits; the Poles in Panna Maria warn us of ghosts and werewolves; African Americans don’t have fairies1 but they know about “hants” and ghosts, and Anansi the spider can be anywhere; Italian hidfolk are sometimes hard to hide, because many of those that were brought from Sicily are ogres who tend to be BIG. I don’t want to forget the Chinese Texans who built the railroad . The Chinese say that the fox is the cleverest of animals, and so the fox fairy can change himself into a man or woman whenever he wants to.2 We may have one among us at any time or place, for no one can tell them from everyday folk. The hidfolk of Native Americans are the original fabric of our quilt. Five hundred years ago Cabeza de Vaca met early Pueblo Indians in Texas, the Jumanos.3 Other Pueblo Indians came in the 265 1700s and settled near what is now El Paso. Because some of this paper may sound like storytelling to you, there is a Pueblo hidfolk tradition that is important to remember. Pueblo tradition says winter is storytelling time.4 Stories may not be told between the last frost in spring and the first frost in fall because that is planting and growing time. People would listen rather than work; even animals would come close to hear stories and would forget to raise their young or to grow the winter coats they will need. So, if a Pueblo storyteller ignores that tradition the Spirit will become a bee and sting the tongue of the teller, or become a snake to wrap around his throat and thus stop the telling. This hidfolk belief is still very much observed by the older Pueblo tellers. W. W. Newcomb, in his book The Indians of Texas, tells of Comanche spirits, “the little men.” They were something like the elves of other cultures, but much more dangerous. These little creatures were almost a foot high and were armed with shields, bows, and stone-tipped arrows, arrows that always killed. Sometimes a daring shaman tried to acquire power for himself from these little men. That was a dangerous thing to do because the power could be easily misused and misdirected.5 We don’t often hear about Mexican hidfolk. I once asked a cultural anthropologist in San Antonio. She knew, of course, of the brujas, the witches, and La Llarona, but nothing like “the little people.” But I searched and I have found some that are known as the “pichilingis.” In the old days they could be seen in every place imaginable. Anthony John Campos, author of Mexican Folk Tales, said when his great-grandmother was alive she would tell him of experiences she had as a young girl. “You could be walking along a road,” she said, “and suddenly you would catch sight of one in a treetop. At night, while people were sleeping, the pichilingis would drag them off their sleeping mats so that when they woke up they were in a different place than where they had gone to sleep.”6 She said that when she and her...

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