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La Llorona: The Crying Woman

MrRING

Android Futureman
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The Weeping Woman ghost who wanderes the streets at night crying out for her murdered children... I've always thought this was an interesting folk tale. But is it truth as well, or at least based on an ancient political occurance? This site:

La Llorona, The Crying Woman

indicates that the story is that of La Malianche, a woman who helped Cortez in his destruction of the Mayan culture. It also, if you look down the timeline lone enough, ties the story into weeping Virgin statues. And there is also a place where believers write down their encounters with the Sad Lady...

From the timeline:

1519

Hernan Cortés, the Spanish conquistador, sails from Cuba to what is now known as Mexico. The natives of Mexico believe the Spaniards to be fair-skinned gods. Shortly after arriving, La Malinche is given to Cortés and quickly learns to speak Castillian Spanish. She is placed in a central role as Cortés' translator and mistress.

La Malinche, now called Marina among the Spanish, translates for Cortés in his meeting with the Aztec leader Moctezuma. After claiming to be friends and gaining access to the villages, Cortés and his men massacre the inhabitants. One of the main goals is to impose Catholicism.

circa 1521

La Malinche gives birth to two twin boys by Cortés.

Cortés continues his conquests. The King and Queen of Spain, fearing that Cortés has betrayed them and is building his own empire, repeatedly ask him to return to Spain. He refuses, saying that if he leaves they will lose their new territories. The King and Queen send a beautiful Spanish lady to convince him to return.

circa 1522

The Spanish Lady seduces Cortés and convinces him to return to Spain with his two sons. Cortés tells La Malinche of his decision to return with his children and to leave her behind.

La Malinche, now realizing the role she has played in helping Cortés massacre her people, prays to her gods for help. One of her gods appears to her and says, "If you let him take your children, one of them will return and destroy your people."

The night before Cortés' departure, La Malinche escapes with the babies. Cortés' soldiers soon discover her absence and set out after her. Upon arriving at the lake that Mexico City now rests on, the soldiers surround La Malinche. Just when they are at the brink of capturing her, she pulls out a dagger and stabs her babies in the heart, dropping their lifeless bodies into the water. La Malinche lets out a heart-wrenching cry, "Oh, hijos mios." (Oh, my children.)

circa 1530

La Malinche dies. Up to the time of her death she is seen and heard near the lake weeping and wailing for her children. She is given the name "La Llorona," the weeping woman.
 
Given the resonance of the La Llorona legend and her tendency to colonize new territory as areas gain Hispanic populations, it seems to me most likely that the unfortunate Malinche became attached to a pre-existing legend, than that the legend began with her. After all, the striking and always-repeated portion of it is the part *after* death; the circumstances under which La Llorona murdered her children are different from version to version, but she always wanders the earth wailing and searching for them.

In Texas, La Llorona tends to be associated with bodies of water; sufficiently so that my default mode of the legend (though I've heard plenty of variations) is that the children were drowned. I have read versions of her story in which people encountered La Llorona , and found her to have a horse's head; this (rare) variant links her to San Antonio's donkey lady, a lover's lane monster whose husband and children were burned and who now runs mad on all fours (her hands and feet mere charred stump) seeking revenge and making donkey noises with her smoke-damaged respiratory system.

It would be interesting to know whether Spanish folklore has any precedent for La Llorona, or whether it's an American-grown legend exclusively.

At the recent Texas Library Association convention, I picked up a bumper sticker from a folklore publishing outfit out of El Paso that says: Honk if You've Seen La Llorona. I think "heard" is the more operative word.
 
Actually, Doña Marina never killed her children with Cortes and married instead a Spanish notable who took her to The Hague, where you can fin a so called "House of Malinche", iirc, where her descendants celebrate their heritage.
 
Peni said:
It would be interesting to know whether Spanish folklore has any precedent for La Llorona, or whether it's an American-grown legend exclusively.

It does actually. There is an Aztec (or was it Mayan?) Goddess that was heard screaming "Mi hijos" by her priests shortly before some sort of catastrophe. I can't remember her name or exactly what happened I read this in a book. Later, I'll locate the book and find out .

Sorry for bringing up such an old post though.
 
There's a thread on this subject somewhere...
 
Interesting Miami Herald article

Delurking to post this, not sure if I got it here (apoligies if I did!) but I thought others would be interested since it's about La Llorona...

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/1997-06-05/feature.html

Edited to add...anybody know anything else about the "Blue Lady" they refer to in the article? Is this just a reference to the Christian Virgin Mary, or is there something else? Interesting that if it *is* just the Virgin Mary, the stories seem to have stripped her of any religious connotations.

I'm also curious to know if this article has any truth to it - have kids in Miami really been talking about these things? Chilling if so...
 
ruf
shonda said:
Peni said:
It would be interesting to know whether Spanish folklore has any precedent for La Llorona, or whether it's an American-grown legend exclusively.

It does actually. There is an Aztec (or was it Mayan?) Goddess that was heard screaming "Mi hijos" by her priests shortly before some sort of catastrophe.

According to Bernadino de Sahagun, a Spanish priest who interrogated the Aztec priesthood after the Conquest and wrote an enormous volume on Aztec culture, the goddess Cihuacoatl was heard screaming and crying during the nights preceding the arrival of the Spanish, this has become fused with the Llorona legend in Mexico, along with La Malinche, Cortes' translator who is seen as having betrayed Mexico.

But the Llorona legend is found throughout Latin America, and I doubt it originated in Mexico. The legend is certainly found in Guatemala and Honduras, and the excellent Guatemalan folklorist Celso A. Lara Figueroa writes that it has been recorded in Venezuela and Colombia as well as further south. I think the most likely origin for such a widespread legend is that it originated in Spain and was carried throughout Latin America by the conquistadores. Interestingly, parallels with other Latin American legends such as the Tatuana (a tattoed witch who escapes from her prison cell by drawing a boat on the wall which she sails away in) and the Siguanaba (a beautiful woman with a horse's head who lures unfaithful men to their doom) can be found in Ireland, though I'm not sure what the link would be (Spanish influence in Catholic Ireland?).

I knew a woman in Guatemala (from the village of Salcajá if you're interested) who told me one morning that she had heard the Llorona the previous night. She described the sound to me and how it moved around the village and I'm pretty sure she was describing the sound of a (grey)fox...there are plenty of feral dog packs wandering Guatemalan towns and villages, so foxes are not at all common in the towns, unlike in Britain, so the people are unfamilar with the sound. Therefore when they do hear the cry of an adventurous fox, they attribute it to the Llorona!
 
Could the similarity of the legends of the pooka in Eire and the Siguanaba be because they may come from pre-roman times when both cultures were more similar...?
 
Another version of La Llorona:

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/HC-WeepingWoman1.html

The legend of La Llorona (pronounced "LAH yoh ROH nah"), Spanish for the Weeping Woman, has been a part of Hispanic culture in the Southwest since the days of the conquistadores. The tall, thin spirit is said to be blessed with natural beauty and long flowing black hair. Wearing a white gown, she roams the rivers and creeks, wailing into the night and searching for children to drag, screaming to a watery grave.

No one really knows when the legend of La Llorona began or, from where it originated. Though the tales vary from source to source, the one common thread is that she is the spirit is of a doomed mother who drowned her children and now spends eternity searching for them in rivers and lakes.

And I agree that there could be an earlier version of the tale - wouldn't it be interesting if it went back to the Olmecs or some other ancient South American civilization....
 
Leaferne said:
Hi gwebber and welcome! There's a thread about that here:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15439

When I first read this, I too thought the "Blue Lady" was the BVM; anyone else know who else it could be?

From the previous article in the Miami New Times:

"An astute folklorist can see traces of old legends in all new inventions. For example, Yemana, a Santeria ocean goddess, resembles the Blue Lady; she is compassionate and robed in blue, though she is portrayed with white or tan skin in her worshippers' shrines."
 
Weeping Women and Crying Babies

One of the things which I find most fascinating about the "La Llorona" legends is that a very close variant can also be found in areas of the eastern and midwestern United States which were traditionally not heavily Hispanic.

I speak of the "Crybaby Bridge" stories. Most of these tales involve a deeply distraught and dispairing mother who throws her infants down from a high bridge into a rushing river or - sometimes - busily-travelled railroad tracks, usually (but by no means always) joining them in death herself. According to the legends, the babies' wails continue to be heard decades later. (There are also a few "Crybaby Road" tales, but these seem to involve fatal automobile accidents.)

"Crybaby Bridge" yarns have been reported from at least a half-dozen states. And according to hauntedohio.com, Ohio claims approximately THIRTY "Crybabt Bridges"!

Both the "La Llorona" and the "Crybaby Bridge" stories seem to have been given a strong shot in the arm - or perhaps I should say a nasty punch in the face - by the crimes of Susan Smith and Andrea Yates.
 
Re: Weeping Women and Crying Babies

OldTimeRadio said:
One of the things which I find most fascinating about the "La Llorona" legends is that a very close variant can also be found in areas of the eastern and midwestern United States which were traditionally not heavily Hispanic.
"quote]

I suspect this theme of the cruel mother may be archetypical, given that it's surfaced in many different cultures- for example, Medea.
 
Cruel Mother?

But the Llorona legends (and just maybe more) aren't mainly about CRUEL Mothers.

Agreed, the mother who murders her children just to be rid of them is certainly a Cruel Mother in any culture I've ever heard of.

But the MAJORITY of the La Llorona stories concern DISPAIRING mothers, who kill their children only because they see no other way out, and most often join them in death.

And the overriding emotion associated with the tales is REMORSE. The mothers in these yarns seem to be imprisoned in a "Purgatory"-type state. They DON'T seem to be DAMNED.

[The situation of Marley's ghost in Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL seems to be very similar. Marley's working off his punishment one chain link every Christmas. He doesn't seem to be damned either.]

There was a case from New York State (as I recall) a dozen or so years ago. A young mother killed her children "because the Virgin Mary commanded me to do so, in order to protect them from the coming earthquakes."

A deeply, deeply disturbed mother? Certainly. But a Cruel Mother? Not in the usual sense.
 
La Llorona

There are two putatively paranormal entities that for years, decades, flew far beneath my own personal Fortean radar. I regarded both of them as urban legends at best, poetic fantasies, fictional folktales. I speak of La Llorona and the Phantom (Vanishing) Hitchhiker.

I READ the various accounts, mind you. THAT much of a skeptic I'm not, to ignore published paranoraml claims and reports which come my way. I read them and filed them away. Yet I DIDN'T believe them and regarded them as embarrassments to serious Fortean scholarship

But going through back files recently I realized that there are just too many accounts, very much including first person reports, of both of the above categories to ignore.

So I think I'm slowly changing my mind.
 
Mr. Radio, you may find (as I do) that making the mental distinction between the Experience and the Explanation is useful in this and many other Fortean cases.

Someone experiences a weird event - hearing a woman crying and sobbing near a bridge where no woman should be, or can be, or whatever; following a flirtatious woman who, when caught up with, proves to have a horse's head; seeing a white, or blue, or otherwise remarkable figure floating above the road; and so on.

If this happens once, it is inexplicable and bizarre, and the experiencer will react according to his personal predilictions - which, in the majority of people, involves seeking out or making up an explanation which reduces the inexplicability. If it happens many times to many different people, then an explanation *will be* forthcoming, not so much invented, as reverse-engineered, out of the local culture, half-remembered history, rumor, logical possibility, and assumptions about the way the world works. Elements of an explanation that worked perfectly and may even have been true of one experience will, in the absence of anything more compelling, be grafted onto another experience and forced to match it, sometimes in company with elements of other explanations of other experiences.

If you read enough folklore papers in which attempts are made to track motifs down to their lairs you'll find ample support for this model of explanation-making; but be patient with the folklore scholar's assumption that the truth or falsity of an individual story is not remotely interesting. From his point of view, it isn't.

I hasten to add that this happens to scientists and the skeptical as well as to laypeople and the gullible. A crying fox may really account for some La Llorona stories; to attribute all such stories to crying foxes without further investigation is as much mythmaking as it was to attribute the sound of foxes to La Llorona. Only particular investigation can reveal "the truth" behind a particular experience, and only sometimes.

So, when you encounter a story which seems to you prima facie absurd, try separating out the explanations (or the motifs if you prefer) and look at the core event as an independent entity. I have no doubt that there's a "La Llorona" phenomenon and that it's worldwide. (Compare the Bean Sidhe and the Washer at the Ford.) I think European and American motifs mingled in the stories we now tell about her in America, I wonder about Asian and African manifestations of the same thing, and I think it's demonstrable that motifs appropriate to La Llorona have migrated to other phenomena at the same time that motifs appropriate to other phenomena have migrated to explanations of La Llorona. That doesn't invalidate the phenomena. It just confuses how we think about them.

I call it all The Fairies, myself. But that's just because I don't know anybody personally who believes in fairies, and I find that committing to a theory interferes with appreciation of the stories.
 
Sometime you have to wonder about ancient stories and their origins around the world - I was just reading about the ancient Greek vampire the Lamia, and it sure has close similarities to La Llorona:
In Greek mythology, Lamia was the daughter of Libya and Belus. According to the legend, Zeus engaged in an affair with Lamia. Hera, furious that her husband had cheated on her yet again, punished the unfortunate Lamia. As a result of Hera's wrath, Lamia was compelled to eat her own children. The story takes an even uglier turn when we learn that the crazed Lamia then developed a taste for children.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Lamia is usually described as a sort of bogey-woman. Her story was chilling and more than a bit macabre - perfect for frightening small children. It is said that Greek mothers sometimes told their children this tale in order to make them behave.

However, the legend of the Lamia inspired more than fear, for the poet John Keats took up the subject in his poem entitled simply Lamia. An excerpt from the poet's description of Lamia follows:

"She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries-
So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,
She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman's mouth with all its pearls complete:
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?"

Could their be a connection, or perhaps a world myth that is in every culture ?
 
Lilith

There also seems to be a connection to Lilith, "Adam's first wife," that curious rabbinical prequel to the more familiar story of Adam and Eve.

As for the Lamia, she goes from mother to murderer of her own children to a continuing danger to subsequent generations of children. That certainly resonates with at least some of the La Llorona stories.

But the more common portrait of the Lamia is of a crone who enamours and then seduces virile young men, draining them dry, vampire-like. There's most likely a connection here with the incest motif.
 
A correspondent on another list recently referred, rather matter-of-factly, to La Llorona as being "damned."

But I've always interpreted the legend from a Christian or more specifically Roman Catholic orientation, with the "Weeping Woman" being in a Purgatory-type situation, somewhat akin to Jacob Marley in A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

Peni, what's your take on this?
 
La Llorona, specifically by that name, is a story from a Catholic culture - therefore, it's natural to assign her specific case to purgatory rather than to hell. The medieval church actually assumed all ghosts to be spirits in purgatory - the glowing quality of ghosts is explicitly linked to the fires of purgatory, not of hell, in many accounts. I believe this explantation for ghosts was still extant in Catholic countries during the 17th century, when the Conquistadors arrived in Mexico (and recall that Cortez's concubine/guide La Malinche is associated with the La Llorona story).

If your other correspondent is actively Protestant, however, this is not an instinctive way to think. One reason so many Protestant sects consider all ghosts to be demonic is simply that purgatory doesn't exist for them. You die and you're saved or you're not - the well-regulated Afterlife of this tradition doesn't leave any room for ghosts or posthumous atonement. A more generous, flexible tradition, however, allows for a certain amount of human muddle. If Hell is a state, rather than a place - which is actually what most of the Christians I know assume, though they don't often state it - then a wandering ghost would appear to be damned and "in Hell" even though she appears to be on earth.

It's also possible that your correspondent meant to write "doomed" and wasn't presuming to say anything about La Llorona's spiritual state.

BTW, anybody know whether the Jack-o-lantern story, in which Jack is too wicked to get into Heaven but has also offended the Devil with his tricks, so that he is condemned to wander the earth in ghostly form forever, dates back to the days of ghosts-from-purgatory? It seems obviously related, but all the versions I recall are Protestant-era.
 
PeniG said:
The medieval church actually assumed all ghosts to be spirits in purgatory - the glowing quality of ghosts is explicitly linked to the fires of purgatory, not of hell, in many accounts. I believe this explantation for ghosts was still extant in Catholic countries during the 17th century....

Peni, thank you so very much for this information. Although I was Roman Catholic until age 26, this hadn't fully occurred to me before, but it certainly resonates with all that I know of the mediaeval Church. But could you possibly supply a specific reference?


....the well-regulated Afterlife of this tradition doesn't leave any room for ghosts or posthumous atonement.

The only exceptions I can think of are some of the novels of the English Protestant author Charles Williams, that great friend of C. S. Lewis. But as it's not considered proper to build theology on even Christ's own parables, so much less so on novels by mortals!

BTW, anybody know whether the Jack-o-lantern story, in which Jack is too wicked to get into Heaven but has also offended the Devil with his tricks, so that he is condemned to wander the earth in ghostly form forever, dates back to the days of ghosts-from-purgatory? It seems obviously related, but all the versions I recall are Protestant-era.

No, I can't, but it seems related to the mediaeval European legend that Mohammed's coffin hangs suspended half-way between Heaven and Hell - the occupant being considered too heretical for Heaven (from the mediaeval Christian viewpoint) but likewise too saintly for Hell. There's also a Hans Christian Andersen tale in which the young protagonist finds himself in the same predicament. (I can't bring the story title to mind at the moment, but it was the Andersen yarn which at last convinced me that, yes, he actually did hate children.)
 
Alas, I've run across the "fires of purgatory" explanation in a number of true ghost story compliations that reached way back into the past, but I've read so many of these in my time they've all run together in my head. You might check in "The Night Side of Nature," but that's not exactly a model of organization and easy reference. A book I read a few years ago on the history of popular representations of ghosts discussed the "fires of purgatory" at some length, but I'm damned (or doomed) if I remember the title or author. I'll have a poke through the backs of my diaries when I get home. It might have been a Prometheus publication, since I remember the author was interested in demonstrating the way perceptions of ghosts varied over time in synch with the stories told about them, which he considered to be evidence that ghosts were cultural constructions rather than objective realities. (And so it is, although that's not the only interpretation that can be placed on the evidence.) This agenda doesn't mesh as well with other possible publishers of the same material, such as university presses or folklore societies interested in the literary development of "true" and "fictional" ghost stories.

If you read Anderson's stories as all having himself as protagonist - which I find far the easiest reading - I think you'll conclude that he didn't hate children so much as he was oppressed by periodic self-disgust interspersed with a sense of the universe as a vast, cruel, hostile place that specifically didn't like him; both common attitudes in the talented. I suffer from them both myself, a bit.

The beauty of Protestantism, it appears to me, is that it is organized very much on the old hunter-gatherer lines that permits endless schisming without destroying the core identity. I know plenty of Protestants who believe in ghosts, more or less. The number of positions you can't argue from a Biblical basis is so finite as to be functionally non-existent.
 
Sorry, haven't tracked down the secondary source yet. I did look in the Night Side of Nature, and Mrs. Crowe, in the chapter on spirits asking for prayers, takes care to point out that in most of her cases those reporting the apparition are Lutheran - it being her contention that, if these apparitions were psychological or fraudulent in origin, they should be coming from Catholics, who believe in purgatory.

Her examples are primarily 18th and 19th century, though, and I don't seem to have anything in my library which collects older accounts, unless I want to go wading through the witchcraft and demonology books - which, at the moment, I do not.

I'll keep my eyes open, though.
 
PeniG said:
You might check in "The Night Side of Nature," but that's not exactly a model of organization and easy reference.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Catherine Crowe's work is one of the three books I've never yet been able to track down. The other two are Lewis Lavater's late 16th century OF GHOSTS AND SPIRITS WALKING BY NIGHT (of which I know only the title page) and Dom Augustin Calmet's seminal mid-18th Century work on vampires. (Though I've photocopied enough extracts from the latter that I could probably publish my own edition.)

f you read Anderson's stories as all having himself as protagonist - which I find far the easiest reading - I think you'll conclude that he didn't hate children so much as he was oppressed by periodic self-disgust interspersed with a sense of the universe as a vast, cruel, hostile place that specifically didn't like him; both common attitudes in the talented. I suffer from them both myself, a bit.

Thank you very much for that insight. I regard HCA as a brilliant and profound world-class author, but have always been happy that I didn't read him in any depth until I was in my late teens Those childhood nightmares were bad enough as it they were.

The beauty of Protestantism, it appears to me, is that it is organized very much on the old hunter-gatherer lines that permits endless schisming without destroying the core identity. I know plenty of Protestants who believe in ghosts, more or less. The number of positions you can't argue from a Biblical basis is so finite as to be functionally non-existent.

The difference between Catholicism and Protestantism strikes me as akin to the use of the DH or not in Major League Baseball. One league looks at the other and says, "Well it's STILL Baseball....I guess."
 
If you don't insist on a Victorian printing (which I'd think would be prohibitively expensive as well as hard to find, but I'm a Philistine among bibliophiles - if I have the text I'm happy) Abebooks has a number of 1986 and later reprints at reasonable prices. [Edit: I just looked on page two of my search and they also have earlier and even first editions. I have no idea how reasonable the prices are - too rich for my blood, but I'm a cheapskate. $2000 for an 1848 edition; only $450 for an 1850 printing.]

If I were a little more dedicated, or Crowe were a little less diffuse and a little more interested in the ghost-as-soul-in-purgatory formulation, I'd type out some passages which give me the impression that she is specifically rejecting that reading in favor of a Spiritualist/scientific interpretation. Unfortunately, she combines a laudable reluctance to set up straw men with a reluctance to sum up her own argument that makes tracking a discussion difficult - I'd probably have to reread two or three chapters to put together an excerpt that would do what I want without glazing your eyes over, and I'm not sure the game is worth the candle. I'll see if I can get back to the library early next week and track down the ghost story history, though - if it's any good at all, it'll have all the citations anyone could wish, and if it's not as good as I remember, I should stop relying on my memory of it.
 
Never heard of this one before but while on my recent US vacation we visited Universal Studios and part of their Halloween Horror Night was 'La Llorona'. I assumed this was some Mexican horror movie I had never heard of but the truth is much more interesting.

Seems very much a cautionary tale designed to frighten young Catholic women into not running off to have affairs but interesting to research some of the cases. In a roundabout way it has also led me to discover the phenomenon of 'crybaby bridges'.

just when you think you have heard it all. Thats why I love Forteana.

EDIT: Incidentally, i can't read about this particular legend without singing it's name to the tune of 'My Sharona' in my head. :lol:
 
PeniG said:
this (rare) variant links her to San Antonio's donkey lady, a lover's lane monster whose husband and children were burned and who now runs mad on all fours (her hands and feet mere charred stump) seeking revenge and making donkey noises with her smoke-damaged respiratory system.

:shock:

WTF! Remind me never to visit San Antonio!
 
Oh, c'mon, nobody ever really saw the Donkey Lady any more than any other Lover's Lane monster. The Donkey Lady is related to La Llorona via the Lamia; myth all the way. Similarly, the Devil in the Cantina happens here at least once a generation, in whatever the hot dance venue happens to be; but good luck finding a person who actually saw that poor schoolgirl dance with the man with chicken feet.

It's not like the Tracks, where people line up every night to see the kids from the school bus push their cars uphill; or downtown, where you're as likely to have a ghost in your hotel or business as not. Come stay in the old part of the Menger Hotel. Maybe the ghost maid will deliver towels to you, or you'll meet a Rough Rider in the bar, or see the lady in blue sitting quietly in the lobby, or look out your window and see campfires in the Alamo next door.

Gee, I love this town!
 
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