ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to apply a specific method that is an outgrowth of field work on myths in small-scale societies by the anthropologist Pierre-Yves Jacopin, who spent approximately three years living with the Yukuna Indians in Colombia in the 1970s. It begins with a syntagmatic analysis of the myth in its two versions, episode by episode, seeking to make explicit the logic and consistency of their unfolding. The next step is to carry the analysis of the myth into a wider context, which could be mythical or ritual. In the case of this particular myth, an exploration of its ritual dimension is particularly appropriate, since that has been the thrust of modern research on it. The application of force is a recurrent feature of this story as it is of the myth of Glaucus in Pseudo-Apollodorus, but here, too, it is the child who is at risk from the male initiator, as in the Cretan ritual.
