The oldest story of La Llorona appears to go back to the days
of the Aztecs in Mexico. In those stories, she was said to be a beautiful young woman who fell in love with a handsome
warrior of great wealth. She was supposedly very vain and he had to pursue her for a long time to win her love. Eventually
they married and she gave birth to two children. But after a few years he decided he didn’t
want her anymore and he went looking for another wife. In anger she drowned the two sons he
loved.
In other versions the story is much the same but the man is
a Spanish Conquistador who eventually spurns her for someone else. In fact there is also a story that La Llorana
was originally the woman who was interpreter for Herman Cortez, the Spanish
conqueror who defeated the Aztecs. In
one version she didn’t drown her children but was so sad about losing her
husband that she didn’t pay attention and the children accidentally drowned.
In later versions, the man became a rich rancher who owned
many cattle and much land in the Southwest. But they all have the same tragic ending. He leaves
her and her children die. Whether they were drowned by her or just fell in the river by accident differs in various stories. In some
versions she must search for the children before she can enter heaven. In
others she has realized what she has done and she tries to find them. But she
is still a cruel woman, because the belief in many of the stories is that she
drowns the real children she finds because they are not hers.
What has amazed me so much about this story is that it is so
similar in so many ways in so many areas. And to think it has been spread for
years, long before the days when everything was written down. It has been
passed down through the years mainly by people telling their children and
passing it on. Yes, it is on the internet now and was in books, but it was
originally passed down by word of mouth. It was told in Mexico and yet it was
also in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. But it was always a Mexican or Hispanic
woman.
The story was well known to both my mother and father, told
to them as children, even though they grew up separately. Both lived in the same general part of southern
Colorado. However, even some of my friends in California had heard of her and
the legend.
And some people have sworn that they have seen her or heard
her near rivers – much like the woman who told my college friends and me the
story. She is said to moan and weep as
she prowls the river banks, and that is what people say they hear or they claim
to have seen a tall long haired woman in a flowing white gown.
Many people hadn’t heard of it until it became one of the
“monsters of the week” on the NBC television show Grimm several years ago. In
that story, the creature was a woman who was killing children at the forks of
rivers, three at a time. She was eventually vanquished.
La Llorna has also appeared in movies in various forms, so
the legend lives on.
One more personal note – our family seems to have only
humorous encounters. When my sister read yesterday’s blog, she
reminded me that her own experience with the weeping woman was just as
frightening and just as silly. We lived near the Arkansas River
while I was growing up and then moved to a point where the Arkansas actually
meets the Purgatory River or the River of the Lost Souls.
We were living near farm land and the first week we were there
she began to hear crying in the night. It was downright scary, and it wouldn’t
stop. Her immediate thought, of course, was La Llorna. Our dad didn’t seem to
notice or pay any attention even though he worked late at night. She was scared
for a week, until he finally took her for a drive and showed her the peacock farm
located down the road. To this day she hates the sound of those birds. I
remember that sound and if La Llorna cried in the night, it would have
resembled the call of the peacock.
So be careful near water… especially if you’re in the
southwest.
I hope you’ll check out the other blogs on the Snarkology
Halloween blog hop. You could win a prize!
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