La Llorona

“pues la llorona es una senora que se volvio loca despues de que su marido se fue a la Guerra. El fue soldado en la independencia de Mexico, entonces creo que se murio el senor en la batalla y como nunca regreso, la senora se termino de volver loca. La senora al ver que su esposo no iba a regresar, decidio matar a sus hijos porque pues ya no los podia mantener. Ella los llebo al rio y los ahogo. Ahora, la senora pasa por todo el rancho buscando a sus hijos que perdio. Si uno escucha a la llorona se tiene que esconder, especialmente si es un nino porque lo puede matar o llebarselo con ella… esta historia no la contaba mi mama. Nos contaba esa historia especialmente cuando hibamos al baile de noche, y aveses si se escuchaba que alguien lloraba y lloraba asi que lo que asiamos nosotros era que le ciramos para la casa.”

“Well la llorona is a woman who went crazy after her husband left to the war. He was a soldier in the Mexican independence so I think that he died in that battle and since he never returned back home, the woman went completely crazy. The woman once he saw that her husband would not be returning took her children to the river and drowned them. So now the lady haunts the village looking for her dead children. If one hears la llorona, one has to hide, especially if one is a kid because she can either kill you or take you with her… my mother used to tell us that story all the time. She would especially tell us that story when we would go out to dances at night and sometimes we would actually hear someone crying so what we would do is to hurry back home.”

The informant is an 85 year old male who has lived all his life in Mexico. He has been brought up on tales of the land. He never attended school, so all his knowledge has been passed down by his parents and other family members in his life. Since he has no other knowledge, he doesn’t really question the information, but rather takes it as the only truth. He has also never left his hometown village so the only information he knows is the information that pertains his village in particular.

This was interesting because the way the informant told this story was as if he knew that this story was 100 percent true. There was no doubt in his voice that this could somehow be a made up story, so one can infer from this that for older people, whatever stories were passed down, have made their way into a part of their daily life reality. Also, the fact that this individual had no other education also makes me think that it can serve as the reason as to why he did not question this story’s reality one bit; it’s all he knows that is to be true. However, when checking with other people, I have found that there are many more variations of la llorona, so technically, my informant can be wrong with his story, but regardless, it is one that he is very fond of. To look at aother variation of this legend, you can refer to: http://www.literacynet.org/lp/hperspectives/llorona.html