Folk Tales of Venezuela continues with a single legend of Mérida and the Venezuelan Andes, gathered by Tulio Febres Cordero in his Tradiciones y leyendas (Mérida, 1911) — traditions he collected, as he writes, from old chronicles, documents, and the living voices of the people. It is read here in a fresh English translation made for this shelf.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In The Madwoman of Ejido, Lorenzo, the young master of a hacienda at Ejido, must leave his betrothed Marta and go into Mérida with his mother for Holy Week; her own mother is ill, and she cannot go. On Maundy Thursday, in the middle of the solemnity, the great earthquake of 26 March 1812 strikes the city. Marta runs barefoot through the night to the ruins and learns there — as the legend reports it in a single clause — that Lorenzo lies buried beneath the fallen temple of San Francisco. The knowledge strikes her mute. Every Holy Week after, she wanders the streets of Mérida, followed by the children, and spends her nights moaning over the ruins, until she is found there dead of cold and grief. No one in Mérida remembers her now; the ruins became a grassy hill crowned by a pine. The legend is presented complete, exactly as Febres Cordero wrote it in 1911, closing with his own note, written in 1891, that the hill and the pine are gone.
From Tradiciones y leyendas (1911) by Tulio Febres Cordero — public domain. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.
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