Part 9

This record testifies to the truth of the pretty legend to the extent that it proves that the hero and the heroine of it were real people, and that their wedding really took place; and it also testifies to the melancholy fact--since Don Alvaro came to Mexico in the train of the Viceroy Don Gastón de Peralta, whose entry into the Capital was made on September 17, 1566--that their wedded life lasted less than seven years. The once stately but now shabby house whereon the cross is carved is in what anciently was a dignified quarter of the City; and the niche for a saint, vacant now, above the cross is one of the characteristics of the old houses in which people of condition lived. The cross is unique. No other house in the City is ornamented in this way.

NOTE V

LEGEND OF THE MUJER HERRADA

Doubtless this legend has for its foundation an ancient real scandal: that--being too notorious to be hushed up--of set purpose was given to the public in a highly edifying way. Certainly, the story seems to have been put in shape by the clerics--the class most interested in checking such open abuses--with the view of driving home a deterrent moral by exhibiting so exemplary a punishment of sin.

Substantially as in the popular version that I have used in my text, Don Francisco Sedano (circa 1760) tells the story in his delightful "Noticias de México"--a gossiping chronicle that, on the dual ground of kindly credulity and genial inaccuracy, cannot be commended in too warm terms.

"In the years 1670-1680, as I have verified," Sedano writes, "there happened in this City of Mexico a formidable and fearful matter"; and without farther prelude he tells the story practically as I have told it, but in much plainer language, until he reaches the climax: when the priest and the blacksmith try to awaken the woman that she may enjoy the joke with them. Thence he continues: "When a second call failed to arouse her they looked at her more closely, and found that she was dead; and then, examining her still more closely, they found nailed fast to her hands and to her feet the four iron shoes. Then they knew that divine justice thus had afflicted her, and that the two blacks were demons. Being overcome with horror, and not knowing what course to follow in a situation so terrible, they agreed to go together for counsel to Dr. Don Francisco Ortiz, cura of the parish church of Santa Catarina; and him they brought back with them. On their return, they found already in the house Father José Vidal, of the Company of Jesus, and with him a Carmelite monk who also had been summoned. [By whom summoned is not told.] All of them together examining the woman, they saw that she had a bit in her mouth [the iron shoes on her hands and feet are not mentioned] and that on her body were the welts left by the blows which the demons had given her when they took her to be shod in the form of a mule. The three aforesaid [the Cura, Father Vidal, and the Carmelite] then agreed that the woman should be buried in a pit, that they then dug, within the house; and that upon all concerned in the matter should be enjoined secrecy. The terrified priest, trembling with fear, declared that he would change his life--and so left the house, and never appeared again."

Sedano documents the story with facts concerning the reputable clerics concerned in it, writing: "Dr. Ortiz, cura de Santa Catarina, being internally moved [by what he had seen] to enter into religion, entered the Company of Jesus; wherein he continued, greatly esteemed and respected, until his death at the age of eighty-four years. He referred always to this case with amazement. A memoir of Father José Vidal, celebrated for his virtues and for his preaching, was written by Father Juan Antonio de Oviedo, of the Company of Jesus, and was printed in the College of San Yldefonso in the year 1752. In that memoir, chapter viii, p. 41, this case is mentioned; a record of it having been found among the papers of Father Vidal." Sedano adds that he himself heard the case referred to in a Lenten sermon preached by a Jesuit Father in the church of the Profesa in the year 1760.

[Illustration: NO. 7 PUERTA FALSA DE SANTO DOMINGO]

Sedano farther writes: "In the Calle de las Rejas de la Balvanera is a casa de vecindad [tenement house] that formerly was called the Casa del Pujabante: because a pujabante and tenazos [farrier's knife and pincers] were carved on the stone lintel of the doorway. This carving I have seen many times. It was said to mark the house in which the blacksmith lived, in memory of the shoeing of the woman there. The house [the site is that of the present No. 5] has been repaired and the carving has been obliterated. In the street of the Puerta Falsa de Santo Domingo, along the middle of which anciently ran a ditch, facing the Puerta Falsa, was an old tumble-down house [the site is that of the present No. 7] wherein lived, as I was told by an antiquarian friend, the priest and the woman. This is probable: because Father Vidal tells that the house was near the parish church of Santa Catarina; and for that reason Dr. Ortiz, the cura of that church, would be likely to make notes of an occurrence in his own parish."

NOTE VI

LEGEND OF THE ACCURSED BELL

This legend affords an interesting example of folk-growth. As told by Señor Obregón, the story simply is of a church bell "in a little town in Spain" that, being possessed by a devil, rang in an unseemly fashion without human aid; and for that sin was condemned to have its tongue torn out and to be banished to Mexico. As told by Señor Arellano, the story begins with armor that was devil-possessed because worn by the devil-possessed Gil de Marcadante. This armor is recast into a cross wherein the devils are held prisoners and harmless; the cross is recast into a bell of which the loosed devils have possession--and from that point the story goes on as before. As told in verse by Señor Juan de Dios Peza, the armor is devil-forged to start with; and is charged still more strongly with devilishness by being worn in succession by an Infidel and by a wicked feudal lord before it comes to Gil de Marcadante--from whose possession of it the story continues as before.

A fourth, wholly Spanish, version of this legend is found in Becquer's _La Cruz del Diablo_. In this version the armor belongs in the beginning to one Señor del Segre, whose cruelties lead to a revolt of his vassals that ends in his death and in the burning of his castle--amid the ruins of which the armor remains hanging on a fire-blackened pillar. In time, bandits make their lair in the ruined castle. While a hot dispute over their leadership is in progress among them the armor detaches itself from the pillar and stalks into the midst of the wrangling company. From behind the closed visor a voice declares that their leader is found. Under that leadership the bandits commit all manner of atrocities. Again the country folk rally to fight for their lives. Many of the bandits are killed, but the leader is scatheless. Swords and lances pass through the armor without injuring him. In the blaze of burning dwellings the armor becomes white-hot, but he is unharmed. A wise hermit counsels exorcism. With this spiritual weapon the devil-leader is overcome and captured; and within the armor they find--nothing at all! In true folk-story fashion the narrative rambles on with details of the escape and recapture of the devil-armor "a hundred times." In the end, following again the wise hermit's counsel, the armor is cast into a furnace; and then, being melted, is refounded--to the accompaniment of diabolical shrieks and groans of agony--into a cross. A curious and distinctive feature of this version is that the devils imprisoned in the cross retain their power for evil. Prayers made before that cross bring down curses; criminals resort to it; in its neighborhood is peril of death by violence to honest men. So leaving the matter, Becquer's story ends. The scene of these marvels is the town of Bellver, on the river Segre, close under the southern slope of the Pyrenees.[10]

Señor Obregón gives what is known of the bell's history in Mexico. It was of "medium size"; the hanger in the shape of an imperial crown supported by two lions; on one side, in relief, the two-headed eagle holding in its talons the arms of Austria; on the other side a Calvario--Christ, St. John, the Virgin; near the lip, the words "Salve Regina," and the legend: "Maese Rodrigo me fecit 1530." From the unknown time of its arrival in Mexico until the last quarter of the eighteenth century it reposed idly in one of the corridors of the Palace. There it was found by the Viceroy (1789-1794) the Conde de Revillagigedo; and by that very energetic personage, to whom idleness of any sort was abhorrent, promptly was set to work. In accordance with his orders, it was hung in a bell-gable, over the central doorway of the Palace, directly above the clock; and in that position it remained, very honestly doing its duty as a clock-bell, for more than seventy years. During the period of the French intervention, in December, 1867, a new bell was installed in place of it and orders were given that it should be melted down--possibly, though Señor Obregón gives no information on this point, to be recast into cannon, along with the many church bells that went that way in Mexico at about that time. Whatever may have been planned in regard to its transmutation did not come off--because the liquid metal became refractory and could not be recast. As this curious statement of fact has an exceptional interest in the case of a bell with so bad a record, I repeat it in Señor Obregón's own words: "_Entonces se mandó fundirla; mas al verificarlo se descompuso el metal!_"

NOTE VII

LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL PADRE LECUONA

By a natural confusion of the name of the street in which the dead man was confessed with the name of the priest who heard his confession, this legend frequently is told nowadays as relating not to Padre Lanza but to Padre Lecuona. An old man whom I met in the Callejón del Padre Lecuona, when I was making search for the scene of the confession, told me the story in that way--and pointed out the house to me in all sincerity. Following that telling, I so mixed the matter myself in my first publication of the legend. Who Padre Lecuona was, or why the street was named after him, I have not discovered. Probably still another legend lurks there. Señor Riva Palacio tells the story as of an unnamed friar "whom God now holds in his glory," and assigns it to the year 1731. The motive of the story is found in Spain long before the oldest date assigned to it in Mexico. The wicked hero of Calderon's play, _La devocion de la Cruz_, is permitted to purge his sinful soul by confession after death. The Padre Lanza whose name has been tacked fast to the story--probably because his well-known charitable ministrations to the poor made him a likely person to yield to the old woman's importunities--was a real man who lived in the City of Mexico, greatly loved and respected, in the early years of the nineteenth century. Señor Roa Bárcena fixes the decade 1820-1830 as the date of his strange adventure with a dead body in which was a living soul.

[Illustration: WHERE THE DEAD MAN WAS CONFESSED]

Aside from minor variants, two distinct versions of this legend are current. That which I have given in my text is the more popular. The other, less widely known, has for its scene an old house in the Calle de Olmedo--nearly a mile away from the Callejón del Padre Lecuona, and in a far more ancient quarter of the City. Concisely stated, the Calle de Olmedo version is to this effect:

Brother Mendo, a worthy and kind-hearted friar, is met of a dark night in the street by a man who begs him to come and hear a dying person confess. The friar wears the habit of his Order, and from his girdle hangs his rosary. He is led to a house near by; and finds within the house a very beautiful woman, richly clad in silks, whose arms are bound. That she is not in a dying state is obvious, and the friar asks for an explanation. For answer, the man tells him roughly: "This woman is about to die by violence. I must give her death. As you please, wash clean her sinful soul--or leave it foul!" At that, he yields, and her confession begins. It is so prolonged that the man, losing patience, ends it abruptly by thrusting forth the friar from the house. Through the closed door he hears shrieks and tries to re-enter; but the door remains closed firmly, and his knocking is unheeded. He finds that his rosary no longer is at his girdle. In order to recover it, and to allay his fears for the woman's safety, he calls a watchman to aid him by demanding in the name of the law that the door shall be opened. No response is made from within to their violent knocking; and an old woman, aroused by it, comes out from a nearby dwelling and tells them that knocking there is useless--that through all her long lifetime she has lived beside that house, and that never through all her long lifetime has that house been inhabited. The watchman--holding his lantern close to the door, and so perceiving that what she tells is verified by the caked dust that fills its crevices and that clogs its key-hole--is for abandoning their attempt to enter. The friar insists that they must enter: that his rosary is within the house; that he is determined to recover it; that the door must be forced. Yielding to him, the watchman forces the door and together they enter: to find a yellowed skeleton upon the floor; scattered around it scraps of mouldering silk; in the eye-sockets of the skull cobwebs--and lying across that yellowed skeleton is the friar's rosary! Brother Mendo covers his face with his hands, totters for a moment, and then falls dying as he exclaims in horror: "Holy God! I have confessed a soul from the other life!" And the crowd of neighbors, by that time assembled, cries out: "Brother Mendo is dead because he has confessed the dead!"

NOTE VIII

LEGEND OF THE LIVING SPECTRE

The theme of this legend--the transportation by supernatural means of a living person from one part of the world to another--is among the most widely distributed of folk-story motives. In _The Arabian Nights_--to name an easily accessible work of reference--it is found repeatedly in varying forms. In Irving's _Alhambra_ a version of it is given--"Governor Manco and the Old Soldier"--that has a suggestive resemblance to the version of my text. Distinction is given to the Mexican story, however, by its presentment by serious historians in association with, and as an incident of, an otherwise well-authenticated historical tragedy.

That Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, Governor of the Filipinas, did have his head badly split open, and died of it, in the Molucca Islands, on the 25th of October in the year 1593, and that on that same day announcement of his so-painful ending was made in the City of Mexico, are statements of natural and of supernatural fact which equally rest upon authority the most respectable: as appears from Señor Obregón's documentation of the legend, that I here present in a condensed form.

Guarded testimony in support of the essential marvel of the story is found in a grave historical work of the period, _Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas_, written by the learned Dr. Antonio de Morga, a Judge of the Criminal Court of the Royal Audiencia and sometime legal adviser (_consultor_) to the Holy Office in New Spain. This eminent personage notes as a curious fact that the news of the murder of Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas was known on the Plaza Mayor of the City of Mexico on the very day that the murder occurred; but adds--his legal caution seemingly disposing him to hedge a little--that he is ignorant of the means by which the news was brought.

Without any hedging whatever, Fray Gaspar de San Agustin, in his _Conquista de las Islas Philipinas_ (Madrid, 1698), tells the whole story in a whole-hearted way. According to Fray Gaspar, there arrived in Manila about the year 1593, Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas being at that time Governor, ambassadors sent by the King of Cambodia--one of them a Portuguese named Diego Belloso, and the other a Spaniard named Antonio Barrientes--whose mission was to ask the assistance of the Spaniards in repelling an invasion of Cambodia, then threatened by the King of Siam. As a present from the King to the Governor, the embassy brought "two beautiful elephants (_dos hermosos elefantes_), which were the first ever seen in Manila."

Don Gómez Pérez promised readily the assistance asked for; but with the intention of using a pretended expedition to Cambodia as a cloak for a real expedition to seize the Moluccas. To this end he assembled an armada, made up of four galleys and of attendant smaller vessels, on which he embarked a considerable military force; and, along with the soldiers, certain "notable persons and venerable religious." His preparations being completed, he sailed from Manila on October 17, 1593. A week later, the capitana galley, having on board the Governor, was separated from the fleet by a storm and was driven to take shelter in the harbor of Punta de Azufre: to make which haven the two hundred and fifty Chinese rowers were kept at their work with so cruel a rigor, the climax of other cruelties, that they determined to mutiny. Accordingly, on the night of their arrival, October 25th, "putting on white tunics that they might know each other in the darkness," they rose against the Spaniards and murdered every one of them--the Governor, as he came forth from his cabin, having "his head half split open"--and tossed their dead bodies overboard into the sea.

Fray Gaspar points out that Don Gómez Pérez came to that bad end as a just reward from heaven, because on various occasions he arrogantly had "contended and disputed" with the Bishop of the Filipinas; and in support of this view of the matter he declares that the Governor's deserved murder "was announced in Manila and in Mexico by supernatural signs." In Manila the announcement was symbolical: "On the very day of his killing there opened in the wall [of the Convent of San Agustin] on which his portrait was painted a crack that corresponded precisely with the splitting of his skull." Of the other announcement, that described in the legend, he writes in these assured terms: "It is worthy of deep ponderation that on the very same day on which took place the tragedy of Gómez Pérez that tragedy was known in Mexico by the art of Satan: who, making use of some women inclined to such agilities (_algunas mujeres inclinadas á semejantes agilidades_), caused them to transplant to the Plaza Mayor of the City of Mexico a soldier standing guard on the walls of Manila; and this was accomplished so unfelt by the soldier that in the morning--when he was found walking sentry, musket in hand, in that city--he asked of those who addressed him in what city he was. By the Holy Office it was ordered that he should be sent back to these islands: where many who knew him have assured me of the truth of this event."

Señor Obregón's comment, at once non-committal and impartial, on Fray Gaspar's narrative admits of no improvement. I give it in his own words: "In the face of the asseveration of so brainy a chronicler (_un cronista tan sesudo_) we neither trump nor discard (_no ponemos ni quitamos rey_)"; to which he adds a jingle advising the critical that he gives the story as it was given to him:

"Y si lector, dijeres, ser comento, Como me lo contaron te lo cuento."

NOTE IX

LEGEND OF LA LLORONA

This legend is not, as all of the other legends are, of Spanish-Mexican origin: it is wholly Mexican--a direct survival from primitive times. Seemingly without perceiving--certainly without noting--the connection between an Aztec goddess and this the most widely distributed of all Mexican folk-stories, Señor Orozco y Berra wrote:

"The Tloque Nahuaque [Universal Creator] created in a garden a man and a woman who were the progenitors of the human race.... The woman was called Cihuacohuatl, 'the woman snake,' 'the female snake'; Tititl, 'our mother,' or 'the womb whence we were born'; Teoyaominqui, 'the goddess who gathers the souls of the dead'; and Quilaztli, implying that she bears twins. She appears dressed in white, bearing on her shoulder a little cradle, as though she were carrying a child; and she can be heard sobbing and shrieking. This apparition was considered a bad omen." Referring to the same goddess, Fray Bernardino de Sahagun thus admonished (circa 1585) the Mexican converts to Christianity: "Your ancestors also erred in the adoration of a demon whom they represented as a woman, and to whom they gave the name of Cioacoatl. She appeared clad as a lady of the palace [clad in white?]. She terrified (_espantada_), she frightened (_asombraba_), and cried aloud at night." It is evident from these citations that La Llorona is a stray from Aztec mythology; an ancient powerful goddess living on--her power for evil lessened, but still potent--into modern times.

She does not belong especially to the City of Mexico. The belief in her--once confined to, and still strongest in, the region primitively under Aztec domination--now has become localized in many other places throughout the country. This diffusion is in conformity with the recognized characteristic of folk-myths to migrate with those who believe in them; and in the case of La Llorona reasonably may be traced to the custom adopted by the Conquistadores of strengthening their frontier settlements by planting beside them settlements of loyal Aztecs: who, under their Christian veneering, would hold to--as to this day the so-called Christian Indians of Mexico hold to--their old-time faith in their old-time gods.

Being transplanted, folk-myths are liable to modification by a new environment. The Fiery Cow of the City of Mexico, for instance, not improbably is a recasting of the Basque vaca de lumbre; or, possibly, of the goblin horse, El Belludo, of Grenada--who comes forth at midnight from the Siete Suelos tower of the Alhambra and scours the streets pursued by a pack of hell-hounds. But in her migrations, while given varying settings, La Llorona has remained unchanged. Always and everywhere she is the same: a woman clad in white who by night in lonely places goes wailing for her lost children; a creature of evil from whom none who hold converse with her may escape alive.