Ngäbe · deity · Ngäbe traditional religion; continuing · deity
In the Ngäbe (Guaymí) creation cycle first written down in the nineteenth century, the creator Noncomala waded into a river of the newly made but still dark world and loved the water-maiden Rutbe, who bore him twins, the sun and the moon; their rising brought light to the earth. In the modern telling collected at Potrero de Caña in the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé and published bilingually as 'Ñaglon bata Sö / El Sol y la Luna', the two brothers grow up dirty and neglected in the ashes of the hearth of their mother, the singer Evia, and later reveal themselves as men of extraordinary build, the one identified with the sun clothed all in gold. Ñänä is the ordinary Ngäbere word for the sun, and the tale's title preserves the dialect variants ñaglon and ngweana.
Marian Edwardes & Lewis Spence, A Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology (London: J. M. Dent & Sons / New York: E. P. Dutton, 1912), p. 127, s.v. 'Noncomala'
Roger Séptimo & Luz Graciela Joly Adames, Kugüe kira nie ngäbere / Sucesos antiguos dichos en guaymí (Etnohistoria guaymí) (Panamá: Asociación Panameña de Antropología, 1986), tale 'Ñaglon bata Sö / El Sol y la Luna'
Hartley Burr Alexander, Latin-American Mythology (The Mythology of All Races, vol. XI; Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1920), chapter on the Isthmian region (Guaymí creation and flood traditions)