Storyteller Joe Hayes: El Cucuy

Summary

Joe Hayes introduces El Cucuy, the bogeyman parents warn will carry off misbehaving children. Though people describe him as a monster, ghost, or shaggy bear, the version Hayes has heard about is an old man with a crooked back and one enormous red ear—so sensitive he can hear ants walking and children acting up from 250 miles away.

The tale follows three sisters whose mother has died. Their youngest sister, Dita, works hard to help their father, while her two older sisters refuse to do chores and tease her for being a “goody-goody.” Their father warns that he’ll call El Cucuy if they keep behaving badly. The older girls scoff—until they deliberately make Dita’s work harder by scattering fireplace ashes and tying knots in their father’s shirts.

Furious, their father calls El Cucuy. Nothing happens at first, and the sisters celebrate, thinking he must be imaginary. But at sunset, El Cucuy comes down from his mountain cave, marches into their house, and carries the two older girls away. He ignores their pleas despite his famously sharp hearing, and taunts them that their family is glad to be rid of them—even though he knows their father is desperately searching for them.

A goat-herding boy eventually hears the sisters whimpering from a cave. After freeing a goat caught in a rocky crevice, he discovers the girls below and helps them climb out using his jacket as a makeshift rope. They reunite with their father and Dita, and the sisters promise never to call El Cucuy into their lives again. They grow up to be hardworking and kind, and the storyteller jokes that the town’s especially polite children are their descendants.

Personalities Featured

• Joe Hayes — Storyteller
• El Cucuy — The bogeyman
• Dita — The hardworking youngest sister
• The two older sisters — Initially lazy and teasing, later reformed
• The sisters’ father — Raises his daughters alone and regrets calling El Cucuy
• The goat-herding boy — Finds and rescues the sisters