Of the book HISTORY, TRADITIONS AND LEGENDS OF CALLES DE MÉXICO
for Artemio de Valle-Arizpe.
Who was the fearless one that for more valiant than it was, does
dare to leave passing ten in the night down the street? It sounded the
it is in Cathedral and all the inhabitants from Mexico tossed bolts, shutter-bolts,
colanillas, put crossbars and other sure defenses to their doors and windows.
They closed up shut tight. They didn't dare to appear neither half at least
eye. Until the old soldiers conquerors that demonstrated their value well
in the war, non go beyond the threshold of their habitation when arriving
that terrible hour. Scared and possessed the whole people was of the fear;
he had snatched them the spirit; it was as if brings a nail crossed in
the soul. The men were cowards and fearful; to the women they trembled them
the meats; they could not give neither a single step; they fainted or,
at least, they left the waters. The hearts got dressed from fear when hearing
that long, sharp lament that she came of very far and go bringing near,
little by little, loaded with pain. There was not a strong heart then;
to all, when listening that mourned, it dominated them the fear, set the
goosebumps, bristled them the hair, and it cooled the marrow in the bones.
Who could conquer the cowardice before that lingering and plaintive cry
that crossed, night to night, for the whole city? The Whiner!, they clamored
the trasient among shiver of teeth, and you grieve if they could murmur
a brief sentence, with trembling hand they were crossed, they oppressed
their rosaries, crossings, medals and scapulars that hung them of the neck. Mexico was terrified by those distressing wailings. When you began
to hear, many came out to make sure of who she was the being that she cried
in that way so mourner and painful. Several people affirmed, certainly
that was thing for the other world because it was a human cry, to distance
of two or three streets it was drowned, it was no longer heard; but this
passed over with their force a great extension and it arrived clear, different,
to all the hearings with their bitter complaining . They not left few to
investigate, and some died from fright, others were crazy of it finishes
off and very few had that they could narrate what they had contemplated,
between chills and frights. They were full with terror very brave chests. A woman wrapped in a floating white dress and with the face covered
with light veil that fluttering in his lathe to the fine blow of the wind,
crossed slowly parsimonious for several streets and squares of the city,
some nights for some, and other, for different; it raised the arms with
desperate anguish, it twisted them in the air and that trembling scream
that put terror in all the chests rushed. That sad one oh!, undulant and
shouting to rise in the silence of the night, and then that she disappeared
with their cohort of distant echoes, they ran off with the wailings in
the night still again, and they were such that they discouraged any audacity. This way, for a street and then for other, it surrounded the squares
and small square extending the stream of their wailings; and at the end,
it will finish off with the most aching scream, more loaded with affliction,
in the biggest Square, everything in still and in shades. There that mysterious
woman, turn toward the East knelt down; bowing like kissing the floor and
she cried with big longings, putting her unknown pain in a long and penetrating
cry; later she already left in silence, slowly, until she arrived at the
lake, and in her banks she got lost; vanished in the air like a vague
fog, or she dove in the waters; nobody arrived him that is; the case is
that there it always disappeared before the amazed eyes from those who
had had the valiant audacity of following it, to distance, that yes, because
that forbidden deep terror to come closer to that strange woman that made
big cries and she came undone of pain. This spent night with night in Mexico by the middle of the XVI century,
when the Whiner, like all gave in call her, it filled the air of clamors
numberless. The conjectures and the statements went and they came for the
city. Some believed a thing, and other, another very different one, but
each who it assured that what said was the pure true, and that, therefore,
to be due to give whole faith. With certainty and stability many that woman
had died far from the husband to who loved with strong love, assured and
that she came to see him, crying without lineage of relief, because she
was already married, and that of hershe erased all memory; several they
affirmed that she could not be able to never espouse with the good gentleman
to who wanted, because the death didn't allow it to shake hands him, and
that alone to look at it to this low world, crying desperate because he
walked lost among bad habits; many referred that she was an unhappy widow
that complained this way because its orphans were sunk in the blackest
in the misfortune, without achieving help of anybody; not few they were
those that sustained that he/she was a poor mother to the one who all the
children murdered him, and that it left the tomb to make them the I plant;
great number of people was in the firm belief that she had been an unfaithful
wife and that, as it didn't find still neither peace in the other life,
it returned to the earth to cry of regret, lost the hopes of reaching pardon;
or numerous people counted that he put an end a jealous husband to a dagger
the calm existence that took, only pushed by unjust suspicions; and it
didn't lack who is persuaded that the such Whiner was not other but the
celebrated one Mrs. Marina, the beautiful Malinche, concubine of Hernán
Cortés that came to this floor with divine permisión to fill
the air of clamors, in sign of a great regret to have betrayed those of
her race, putting on beside the Hispanic soldiers that so brutally subjected
it. Not only for the city of Mexico this strange woman walked, but rather
she was seen in several populations of the Kingdom. It crossed, white and
aching, for the solitary fields; before their presence the livestock was
frightened, the scattering ran as if pursues him; along the roads full
with moon, it passed its scream; hearing its plaintive complaining among
the vast rumor of sea of the trees of the forests; someone looked him at
it to cross, full with desperation, for the aridity of the hills; they
had seen it fling to the foot of the crosses that they ran off with in
mountains and paths; she walked for deviated sidewalks, and he sits in
a rock to sob; it left mysterious, of the grottos, of the caves in that
the ferocious vermins of the mount lived; she walked slow for the banks
of the rivers, adding their wailings with the rumor without end of the
water. This story is very old in Mexico; it already existed when the conquerors
entered in the great Tenochtitlan of Moctezuma, because brother Bernardino
of Sahagún when speaking of the goddess Cihuacoatl, in the chapter
IV, of the book I of its General History of the things of New Spain, writes
that she appeared many times like a lady made up with some gears like they
are used in Palace; they also said that at night she shouted and she bellowed
in the air... The gears with which this woman appeared they were white,
and the hair played them in such a way that had as some crossed ergots
on the forehead", and in the XI book he puts, also, to the one in numbering
the omens with those that was announced in Mexico the arrival of the Spaniards
and the destruction of the Aztec city that the sixth presage was that at
night voices many were heard as of a woman that broken-hearted and with
cry he/she said: ¡Oh, my children that your destruction has already
arrived! And other times she said: ¡Oh, my children, where will I
take you so that you have just gotten lost?" Until the first years of the XVII century the Whiner walked for
the streets and fields of Mexico; later she disappeared forever and she
didn't hear her long and distressing groan in the still of the nights again. ches.
