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 the end, "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.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: See Note I.]
[Footnote 2: See Note II.]
[Footnote 3: See Note III.]
[Footnote 4: See Note IV.]
[Footnote 5: See Note V.]
[Footnote 6: See Note VI.]
[Footnote 7: See Note VII.]
[Footnote 8: See Note VIII.]
[Footnote 9: See Note IX.]
[Footnote 10: "La Cruz del Diablo," with other stories of a like sort
by Becquer, all very well worth reading, may be read in English in the
accurate translation recently made by Cornelia Frances Bates and
Katharine Lee Bates under the title _Romantic Legends of Spain_ (New
York, Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.); and in the original Spanish, with the
assistance of scholarly notes and a vocabulary, in the collection
prepared for class use by Dr. Everett Ward Olmsted under the English
title _Legends and Poems by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer_ (Boston, Ginn &
Co.).]
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
The carat character (^) indicates that the following letter is
superscripted (example: S^ntiago). If two or more letters are
superscripted they are enclosed in curly brackets (example: D^{or}).
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as
printed.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
paragraphs, thus the page number of the illustration might not match
the page number in the List of Illustrations.
The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the
transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
The list of drawings is incorrect. There is no drawing in the book for
LEGEND OF THE CALLE DEL PUENTE DEL CLÉRIGO _Facing p._ 14, but
the reference to it has been left in place.
End of Project Gutenberg's Legends of the City of Mexico, by Thomas A. Janvier