What happened
In the most popular version, La Llorona is a woman who, in despair or in revenge on an unfaithful man, drowned her own children and after death is condemned to search for them forever along rivers and lakes. Dressed in white, with loose black hair, she wails “¡Ay, mis hijos!”, and anyone who hears her cry brings misfortune upon themselves. Children were forbidden to go near water after dark. The earliest traces of the story were recorded around the mid-16th century by the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún: among the evil omens before the fall of Tenochtitlan he lists a woman who went about weeping at night, crying, “My children, where shall I take you?” In colonial times residents of Mexico City told of a phantom in white who crossed the Plaza Mayor, looked to the east and vanished at Lake Texcoco.
Witnesses
Folk accounts passed down for generations; the earliest records are in Bernardino de Sahagún's work on ancient Mexico (the Florentine Codex, 16th century) and in colonial chronicles of Mexico City.
Explanations and hypotheses
Folklorists see La Llorona as a blend of pre-Hispanic beliefs – especially the goddess Cihuacóatl and the spirits of women who died in childbirth and wailed at crossroads at night – with European tales of weeping white ladies. She has also been linked to La Malinche, Cortés's interpreter. The story served as a warning to children and women and is still alive in Mexico, Central America and the US Southwest. It is a legend that cannot be verified.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Library of Congress, Folklife Today – La Llorona: Roots, Branches, and the Missing Link from Spain (2021)
- Alberto Martos García, Aitana Martos García, Nuevas lecturas de la Llorona: imaginarios, identidad y discurso parabólico (Universum, 2015)
More: Wikipedia (en)