South and North (Calvun’s helper dogs)

Overview

A young shepherd exchanges all his sheep for two little dogs and a rifle. Their former owner tells him to call them whenever someone threatens his life. Lenz’s Spanish translation names them Sur and Norte, South and North. The boy’s older sister, whose lover is a Cherruve, resents the exchange and plots his death. Pretending illness, she sends him up a pear tree while the dogs and rifle are shut in a box. When the monster approaches, the boy obtains permission to call his helpers. They arrive and kill it; the account does not explain how they escape the box.

Leaving his sister, the boy finds a weeping girl offered to a seven-headed Cherruve so that her father can obtain drinking water. The dogs kill this monster too, and a river begins to flow. A woodcutter subsequently cuts off its seven heads and claims the reward of marriage. The true rescuer retains its tongues in a handkerchief. Lenz notes that their removal was omitted from the earlier telling: their later production, rather than an invented cutting scene, is the explicit evidence.

The dogs help bring their master into the wedding celebration. North disrupts one meal; South is detained after another, giving the boy a reason to demand his dog back. He challenges the claimant to produce the missing tongues, presents them himself and receives the girl’s confirming testimony. The impostor is dismissed, not executed, and the rescued woman marries the boy.

His sister later arrives offering to work. Secretly, she sets the dead Cherruve lover’s nails upright in her brother’s bed; he dies and is buried. The grieving dogs dig up his body with his father-in-law’s permission, sit him upright and pull out the nails with their teeth. He explicitly returns to life and becomes wealthy. The final statement that water flows because of these events refers back to the water narrative; it does not say that his revival starts a second river.

Víctor Manuel Chiappa recorded this tale, which Lenz revised with Calvun. Lenz’s concluding note assigns it a European origin; that is the editor’s comparative judgment, separate from the documented Pehuenche telling. The dogs are neither identified as transformed princes nor given a later departure or human form.

Origins & earliest records

Calvun (Segundo Jara), Los dos perritos, Estudios araucanos VII no 4, printed 242–249, all 37 sections. Recorded by Víctor Manuel Chiappa and revised by Rodolfo Lenz with Calvun; collected volume title 1895–1897.

Records & interpretation

Complete bilingual episode and all notes read. Original printed 243 confirms the Spanish directional names; original 249 explicitly describes exhumation, removal of the nails and revival. No independent claim of a historical monster encounter.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Estudios araucanos, VII: Cuentos míticos

   Rodolfo Lenz; narrative by Calvun (Segundo Jara), recorded by Víctor Manuel Chiappa · 1897

   VII no 4, Los dos perritos, 242–249, complete 37 sections and notes. Source recording and revision stated on 242; names in Spanish translation on 243; resurrection on 249. Volume title spans 1895–1897.

Family & connections

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References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Primary textInternet Archive: Lenz Estudios araucanos original collected volumeResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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