He Is Always Letting You Know That He Is
There, That He Has Got His Eye On You, So That You Had Better Be
Careful About Your Actions.
The Bien-te-veo, I need hardly say, was one of my feathered
favourites, and I begged my gaucho friends to tell me this _cuento_,
but although I met scores of men who had heard it, not one remembered
it:
They could only say that it was very long - very few persons could
remember such a long story; and I further gathered that it was a sort
of history of the bird's life and his adventures among the other
birds; that the Bien-te-veo was always doing clever naughty things and
getting into trouble, but invariably escaping the penalty. From all I
could hear it was a tale of the Reynard the Fox order, or like the
tales told by the gauchos of the armadillo and how that quaint little
beast always managed to fool his fellow-animals, especially the fox,
who regarded himself as the cleverest of all the beasts and who looked
on his honest, dull-witted neighbour the armadillo as a born fool. Old
gauchos used to tell me that twenty or more years ago one often met
with a reciter of ballads who could relate the whole story of the
Bien-te-veo. Good reciters were common enough in my time: at dances it
was always possible to find one or two to amuse the company with long
poems and ballads in the intervals of dancing, and first and last I
questioned many who had this talent, but failed to find one who knew
the famous bird-ballad, and in the end I gave up the quest.
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