de Celis, caballero del Orden de S^ntiago, y consules D^n
Garza de Alvarado del mismo Orden, y D^n Lucas Serafin Chacon,
se acabó la fabrica de esta Aduana en 28 de Junio de 1731.
NOTE IV
LEGEND OF THE CALLE DE LA CRUZ VERDE
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 the church 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.
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.