Yesterday's post, about the remarkable similarities between mythological gods and goddesses in cultures widely separated in space and time, prompted my cousin Carla, who lives in New Mexico, to ask me if I'd ever heard of La Llorona.
I responded that she sounded familiar, but I couldn't recall any details.
"It's a legend all over the Spanish-speaking parts of North, Central, and South America," she explained. "I think there's a version in Spain, too. Each culture has a slightly different take on her, but basically, she's the Weeping Woman' -- someone who was involved in a tragedy, and now as a ghost can be heard crying in the night. Sometimes, rarely, seen as well. If you hear her, you're in deep trouble. So next time y'all come visit, if you're out for a walk at night and hear a woman crying, haul ass right outta there."
Like the gods I wrote about yesterday, La Llorona has astonishingly deep roots. The 1519 Florentine Codex, one of the most important extant documents about pre-colonial Mesoamerican history and beliefs, speaks about a crying woman as a fearful portent:
The sixth omen was that many times a woman would be heard going along weeping and shouting. She cried out loudly at night, saying, "Oh my children, we are about to go forever." Sometimes she said, Oh my children, where am I to take you?"
There's an even earlier parallel in Aztec mythology, the goddess Cihuacōātl -- who gave birth to a son Mixcōātl but abandoned him at a crossroads. Cihuacōātl comes back to the spot at night, hoping to find him but only finding a sacrificial knife instead. She can be seen and heard there weeping for him. (It ended happily enough for Mixcōātl; he was rescued, and grew up to be the god of the hunt.)
La Llorona has, like the gods I discussed yesterday, evolved a bit from her presumed roots -- although wherever you find the story, there are plenty more similarities than differences. In a typical version, she was the wife of a rich ranchero who found out her husband was cheating on her, and in a fit of insane rage drowned their children in a river. Immediately remorseful, she threw herself in as well, but her spirit is unable to find peace -- she now haunts the riverbank, clad in a dripping white dress, wailing miserably.
The regional differences are fascinating. In Mexico, she's mostly considered a monstrous figure, and her sin of drowning her children unpardonable (despite her provocation). Interestingly, the rise of feminism in Mexico has led to some women identifying with her, and considering her the victim rather than the villain -- further evidence that attitudes toward beliefs can change over time. In Guatemala, the legend has it that La Llorona was a married woman who got pregnant from another man, and drowned the baby when it was born to avoid her husband finding out. In Ecuador, she's a tragic figure whose lover died, and she went insane and drowned their children -- and now, her disembodied spirit searches perpetually along the riverbank for them. In Venezuela, she's a bereft mother whose children died of a sickness, and was driven so mad by grief that she's still looking for them in the afterlife.
Carla was right, there's even a version in Spain, which I find curious if the legend has Indigenous Mesoamerican roots; a woman named Elvira (not that Elvira) who led such a tragic life that she gradually becomes a wraith-like, weeping specter. There's no mention of children or water -- common themes in the other iterations -- so I wonder if this one is "genetically" connected to the others, or only related because of there being an image of a crying woman.
After all, there are also parallels to similar legends in other cultures, particularly the Slavic Rusalka -- a malicious water-spirit sometimes said to be the lost soul of a drowned woman, who will grab handsome young men while they're swimming and drag them to their deaths -- and the Bean Sí (usually anglicized to Banshee) of Irish mythology, a wailing woman whose cries herald the death of a family member. Unlikely these have any direct connection to the La Llorona stories, although considering how far back the roots of cultural cross-fertilization sometimes go, I do wonder.
In any case, there's another example of the evolution of folklore for your entertainment. Something to keep in mind if you're ever out on a dark path near a riverside, and you hear crying. Me, I still haven't quite recovered from finding out about the Black-eyed Children (I was so traumatized by this urban legend that I wrote an entire trilogy of novels about it so you can be traumatized, too). In fact, given all the creepy things that supposedly roam at night, maybe it's better you just stay inside your house where it's safe.
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