"La Llorona" and Related Themes

Abstract

PROBABLY THE LEGEND OF Llorona-The Weeping Woman-has permeated Mexican folklore more thoroughly than any similar theme. So pervasive is the legend and so diverse are its forms that the geographical distribution of its variants was -one of the key problems investigated by scholars attempting to define provisionally the folklore areas of Mexico.' Not only are stories of La told in all parts of Mexico, but emigrants have carried forms of the legend to contiguous lands. In the United States, for instance, Llorona has been recorded in Texas,2 Colorado, California,' and in Southern Arizona, a region where the legend proliferates. Llorona is known also in Costa Rica and, apparently, a related form of the legend occurs in Guatemala. A systematic examination of the relevant literature from all parts of Hispanic America almost surely would reveal versions of the theme from still other neighboring areas. The role assigned to La by Hispano-American folklore is dual. First, she is the principal figure of a floating legend, one which depicts her as the pathetic and almost blameless victim of a lover's betrayal and of her own subsequent insane grief. Stories of this category contain a nucleus of details which occur in version after version and they form a narrative type (the word is used in the sense intended by folk tale students). This legendary type emphasizes the tragedy which La experienced as a living woman and explains why she became a malevolent earthbound phantom. Second, La exists in folklore as an image of supernatural danger and as the antagonist of others' ghostly encounters, rather than as the subject of a deliberately biographical narration. Persons recounting their meetings with the Wailing One in deserted midnight streets or by dark and lonely rivers may allude incidentally to her history as a mortal woman-in the offhand way that