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Custom and Myth by Andrew Lang
page 14 of 257 (05%)
When so any man heareth the sound of strokes in the night, as if one
were felling trees, he reckons it an evil boding. And this sound they
call youaltepuztli (youalli, night; and tepuztli, copper), which
signifies 'the midnight hatchet.' This noise cometh about the time of
the first sleep, when all men slumber soundly, and the night is still.
The sound of strokes smitten was first noted by the temple-servants,
called tlamacazque, at the hour when they go in the night to make
their offering of reeds or of boughs of pine, for so was their custom,
and this penance they did on the neighbouring hills, and that when the
night was far spent. Whenever they heard such a sound as one makes
when he splits wood with an axe (a noise that may be heard afar off),
they drew thence an omen of evil, and were afraid, and said that the
sounds were part of the witchery of Tezeatlipoca, that often thus
dismayeth men who journey in the night. Now, when tidings of these
things came to a certain brave man, one exercised in war, he drew
near, being guided by the sound, till he came to the very cause of the
hubbub. And when he came upon it, with difficulty he caught it, for
the thing was hard to catch: natheless at last he overtook that which
ran before him; and behold, it was a man without a heart, and, on
either side of the chest, two holes that opened and shut, and so made
the noise. Then the man put his hand within the breast of the figure
and grasped the breast and shook it hard, demanding some grace or
gift.

As a rule, the grace demanded was power to make captives in war. The
curious coincidence of the 'midnight axe,' occurring in lands so remote
as Ceylon and Mexico, and the singular attestation by an English lady of
the actual existence of the disturbance, makes this youaltepuztli one of
the quaintest things in the province of the folklorist. But, whatever
the cause of the noise, or of the beliefs connected with the noise, may
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