NOTES

Don Juan Manuel was a real person: who lived stately in a great house, still standing, in the street that in his time was called the Calle Nueva, and that since his time has borne his name; who certainly did murder one man—in that house, not in the street—at about, probably, eleven o'clock at night; and who certainly was found hanging dead on the gallows in front of the Capilla de la Espiración, of an October morning in the year 1641, without any explanation ever being forthcoming of how he got there. What survive of the tangled curious facts on which the fancies of this legend rest have been collected by Señor Obregón, and here are summarized.

Don Juan Manuel de Solórzano, a native of Burgos, a man of rank and wealth, in the year 1623 came in the train of the Viceroy the Marqués de Guadalcázar to Mexico; where for a long while he seems to have led a life prosperous and respectable. In the year 1636 he increased his fortune by making an excellent marriage—with Doña Mariana de Laguna, the daughter of a rich mine-owner of Zacatecas. His troubles had their beginning in an intimate friendship that he formed with the Viceroy (1635-1640) the Marqués de Cadereita; afriendship of so practical a sort on the side of the Viceroy as to cause remonstrance to be made in Spain against his excessive bestowal of official favors on his favorite. Moreover, "the evil speaking of the curious" was excited by the fact that Don Juan and his wife spent a great part of their time at the Palace in the Viceroy's company.

Matters were brought to a crisis by Don Juan's appointment as Administrator of the Royal Hacienda; an office that gave him control of the great revenues derived from the fleets which plied annually between Mexico and Spain. The conduct of this very lucrative administration previously had been with the Audiencia; and by the members of that body vigorous protest was made against the Viceroy's action in enriching his favorite at their cost. "Odious gossip" was aroused; threats were made of a popular uprising; an appeal—duly freighted with bribes to assure its arrival at the throne—was made to the King. "But the springs put in force by the Viceroy must have been very powerful—more powerful than the money sent by the Audiencia—since Philip IV. confirmed Don Juan in the enjoyment of his concession."

HOUSE OF DON JUAN MANUEL

While the case thus rested, an incidental scandal was introduced into it. By the fleet from Spain came one Doña Ana Porcel de Velasco: a lady of good birth, very beautiful, the widow of a naval officer, reduced by her widowhood and by other misfortunes to poverty. In her happier days she had been a beauty at Court, and there the Marqués de Cadereita had known her and had made suit to her, wherefore she had come to Mexico to seek his Viceregal protection. Housing her in the Palace being out of the question, the Viceroybegged that Don Juan would take her into his own home: and that disposition of her, accordingly, was made—with the result that more "odious gossip" was aroused. What became of the beautiful Doña Ana is unrecorded. Her episodic existence in the story seems to be due to the fact that because of her the popular ill-will against Don Juan and against the Viceroy was increased.

A far-reaching ripple from the wave of the Portuguese and Catalonian revolt of the year 1640, influencing affairs in Mexico, gave opportunity for this ill-will to crystallize into action of so effective a sort that the Viceroy was recalled, and his favorite—no longer under protection—was cast into prison. Don Juan's commitment—the specific charge against him is not recorded—was signed by one Don Francisco Vélez de Pereira: who, as Señor Obregón puts it, "was not only a Judge of the criminal court but a criminal Judge" (no era solamente un Alcalde del crímen sino un Alcalde criminal) because he made dishonest proposals to Doña Mariana as the price of her husband's liberation. It would seem that Doña Mariana accepted the offered terms; and in so grateful a spirit that she was content to wait upon the Alcalde's pleasure for their complete ratification by Don Juan's deliverance. Pending such liquidation of the contract, news was carried to Don Juan in prison of the irregular negotiations in progress to procure his freedom: whereupon he procured it for himself, one night, by breaking jail. Going straight to his own home, he found there the Alcalde—and incontinently killed him.

That one killing that Don Juan Manuel certainly did commit—out of which, probably, has come thelegend of his many murders—created, because of the high estate of all concerned in it, a deplorable scandal: that the Audiencia—while resolved to bring Don Juan to justice—sought to allay by hushing up, so far as was possible, the whole affair. The Duque de Escalona, the new Viceroy (1640-1642), was at one with the Audiencia in its hushing-up policy; but was determined—for reasons of his own which are unrecorded—that Don Juan should not be executed. So, for a considerable period of time, during which Don Juan remained in prison, the matter rested. The event seems to imply that the Audiencia accomplished its stern purpose, as opposed to the lenient purpose of the Viceroy, by means as informal as they were effective. Certainly, on a morning in October, 1641, precisely as described in the legend, Don Juan Manuel was found hanging dead on the gallows in front of the Capilla de la Espiración. Señor Obregón concludes the historical portion of his narrative in these words: "The Oidores, whose orders it is reasonable to suppose brought about that dark deed, attributed it to the angels—but there history ends and legend begins."

DOORWAY, HOUSE OF DON JUAN MANUEL

Somewhere in the course of my readings—I cannot remember where—I have come upon the seriously made suggestion that Don Juan Manuel practically was a bravo: that the favors which he received from the Viceroy were his payment for putting politically obnoxious persons out of the way. This specious explanation does account for his traditional many murders, but is not in accord with probability. Aside from the fact that bravos rarely are men of rank and wealth, a series of murders traceable to political motives during the Viceregal term of the Marqués deCadereita—whose many enemies keenly were alive to his misdoings—almost certainly would be found, but is not found, recorded in the chronicles of his time. Such omission effectively puts this picturesque explanation of Don Juan's doings out of court.

Simon Peyrens, a Flemish painter, came to Mexico in the suite of the third Viceroy (1566-1568) Don Gastón de Peralta, Marqués de Falces. If he painted—and, presumably, he did paint—a Virgin of Mercy for the Altar del Perdon, his picture has disappeared: doubtless having been removed from the altar when the present Cathedral (begun, 1573; dedicated, though then incomplete, 1656) replaced the primitive structure erected a few years after the Conquest. The Virgin of the Candelaria on the existing Altar del Perdon was painted by Baltasar de Echave, the Elder; a Spanish artist of eminence who came to Mexico about the end of the sixteenth century. Peyrens certainly had the opportunity to do his work under conditions akin to, but decidedly more unpleasant than, those set forth in the legend: as Señor Obregón has made clear by producing facts which exhibit the afflictions of that unfortunate artist; and which also, incidentally, account for the appearance in Mexico of a miracle-story that in varying forms is found in the saintly chronicles of many lands.

Señor Obregón's source is an original document ofthe time of Fray Alonso de Montúfar; a Dominican brother who was the second Archbishop of Mexico (1554-1572), and who also held the office of Inquisitor—in accordance with the custom that obtained until the formal establishment (1571) of the Inquisition in Mexico. It was before him, therefore, as represented by his Provisor, that the case of Peyrens was brought.

As stated in this document, Peyrens had declared in familiar talk with friends that simple incontinence was not a sin; and he farther had declared that he liked to paint portraits, and that he did not like to, and would not, paint saints nor pictures of a devotional sort. His friends admonished him that his views in regard to incontinence made him liable to arraignment before the ecclesiastical authorities; whereupon—seemingly seeking, as a measure of prudence, to forestall by his own confession any charge that might be brought against him—he "denounced himself," on September 10, 1568, to Fray Bartolomé de Ledesma, Gobernador de la Mitra. As the result of his confession—instead of being granted the absolution that he obviously expected to receive—he was arrested and cast into prison.

Four days later, September 14th, he was examined formally. To the questions propounded to him, he replied, in substance: That he had been born in Antwerp, the son of Fero Peyrens and of Constanza Lira his wife; that he was not of Jewish descent; that none of his family had been dealt with by the Inquisition; that in his early manhood he had gone to Lisbon and later to Toledo, where the Court then was seated, to practice his profession as a painter; that he had come to New Spain, in the suite of the Viceroy, in the hope of bettering his fortunes. In regard to the chargesagainst him, he explained: That what he had said about the sinlessness of simple incontinence had been spoken lightly in friendly talk, and, moreover, very well might have been misunderstood because of his imperfect knowledge of the Spanish tongue; and that what he had said about liking to paint portraits and not being willing to paint saints had been said only because portrait-painting was the better paid. His trial followed: at which nothing more was produced against him—although a number of witnesses, including "many painters," were interrogated—than the facts brought out in his own examination.

In order to force from Peyrens himself a fuller and more incriminating confession, the Provisor, Don Estéban de Portillo, ordered that he should be "submitted to the test of torture." This test was applied on December 1st—when Peyrens "supported three turns of the rack and swallowed three jars of water dripped into his mouth by a linen rag," without modifying or enlarging his previous declarations. By the rules of the game—he having, in the jargon of the Inquisition, "conquered his torment"—the proceedings against him then should have ended. Mr. Lea, commenting on his case ("The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies," p. 198), writes: "This ought to have earned his dismissal, but on December 4th he was condemned to pay the costs of his trial and to give security that he would not leave the City until he should have painted a picture of Our Lady of Merced, as an altar-piece for the church. He complied, and it was duly hung in the Cathedral."

I have not found—seemingly, Mr. Lea did find—a record of the actual painting of the picture. Thesentence passed on Peyrens is given in full by Señor Obregón—in archaic Spanish, whereof much of the queer flavor evaporates in translation—and is as follows:

"In the criminal plea now pending before me, preferred by the Holy Office against simon peireins fleming held in the prison of this Arcobispado in regard to the words which the said simon peireins spoke and on which he has been prosecuted, on the acts and merits of this case it is found that for the crime committed by simon peyrens using him with equity and mercy I condemn him to paint at his own cost an altar-piece (retablo) of our lady of mercy for this holy church [the Cathedral] very devout and to me pleasing, and that in the interim while he is painting this altar-piece he shall not leave this city under penalty of being punished with all rigor as one disobedient to the mandates of the holy office, and I admonish and command the said simon peireins that from this time forth he shall not speak such words as those for the speaking of which he has been arrested nor shall he question any matters touching our holy catholic faith under penalty of being rigorously punished and in addition I condemn him to pay the costs of this trial, and this is my definitive sentence so judging and I pronounce and order it in and by this writingEl DorEstevan de Portillo"In Mexico the fourth of december of the year one thousand five hundred and sixty eight was given and pronounced this definitive sentence of the above tenor by the aforesaid sor doctor barbosa (sic) provisor and vicar general of this Archbishopric of Mexico in thepresence of me joan de avendaño apostolic notary public and of the audiencia of this Archbishopric of mexico witnesses el bachiller villagomez and juan vergarajohan de avendaño"

El DorEstevan de Portillo

"In Mexico the fourth of december of the year one thousand five hundred and sixty eight was given and pronounced this definitive sentence of the above tenor by the aforesaid sor doctor barbosa (sic) provisor and vicar general of this Archbishopric of Mexico in thepresence of me joan de avendaño apostolic notary public and of the audiencia of this Archbishopric of mexico witnesses el bachiller villagomez and juan vergara

johan de avendaño"

The ancient record ends with the statement that this sentence was communicated to Peyrens on the day that it was pronounced, and that he "consented and did consent" with it—y dixo que consentía y consentió.

Carved over an arch half-way up the main stairway of the ex-Aduana—the building no longer is used as a custom-house—still may be read Don Juan's acrostic inscription that sets forth the initials of Doña Sara de García Somera y Acuña, the lady for whom he so furiously toiled:

Siendo prior del Consulado el coronel D^n Juan Gutierrez Rubin de Celis, caballero del Orden de Sntiago, y consules DnGarza de Alvarado del mismo Orden, y DnLucas Serafin Chacon, se acabó la fabrica de esta Aduana en 28 de Junio de 1731.

Señor Arellano has documented the legend of the Green Cross by adding to his sympathetic version of it the following note: "Some years ago I saw in either thechurch of San Miguel or the church of San Pablo, set aside in a corner, a bronze tablet that once had rested upon a tomb. On it was the inscription, 'Doña María de Aldarafuente Lara y Segura de Manrique. Agosto 11 de 1573 años. R.I.P.'; and beneath the inscription was a large Latin cross. Probably the tablet was melted up. When I went to look for it, later, it was not to be found."

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.

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 theview 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 thewelts 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.

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, inmemory 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."

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 withdevilishness 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'sLa 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 crossretain 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 honestlydoing 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!"

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 thestory 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.

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 giveher 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!"

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. InThe Arabian Nights—to name an easily accessible work of reference—it is found repeatedly in varying forms. In Irving'sAlhambraa 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 theCriminal 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 hisConquista 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 standingguard 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."

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 calledCihuacohuatl, '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.

Don Vicente Riva Palacio's metrical version of this legend seems to be composite: a blending of the primitive myth with a real tragedy of Viceregal times. Introductorily, he tells that for more than two hundred years a popular tale has been current in varying forms of a mysterious woman, clad in white, who runs through the streets of the City at midnight uttering wailings so keen and so woful that whoever hears them swoons in a horror of fear. Then follows the story: Luisa, the Wailer, in life was a woman of the people, very beautiful. By her lover, Don Muño de Montes Claros, she had three children. That he might make a marriage with a lady of his own rank, he deserted her. Through a window of his house she saw him at his marriage feast; and then sped homeward and killed—with a dagger that Don Muño had left in her keeping—her children as they lay sleeping. Her white garments all spattered with their blood, she left her dead children and rushed wildly through the streets of the City—shrieking in the agony of her sorrow and her sin. In theend, "a great crowd gathered to see a woman garroted because she had killed her three children"; and on that same day "a grand funeral procession" went with Don Muño to his grave. And it is this Luisa who goes shrieking at night through the streets of the City even now.

My friend Gilberto Cano is my authority for the version of the legend—the popular version—that I have given in my text. It seems to me to preserve, in its awed mystery and in its vague fearsomeness, the very feeling with which the malignant Aztec goddess assuredly was regarded in primitive times.

[1]SeeNote I.

[2]SeeNote II.

Back to Index Next