Corecturi

*It's a traduction of a fragment of a legent of my city, originally written and compiled by:Teresa Mora de Valdivieso from the book: Loja de Ayer.

Relatos, Cuentos y Tradiciones.

I'm not the owner of any of the ideas or characters here presented.

This traduction is for academical purposes.

PART I People who lived at the end of the last century and one or two of them that- for our luck- still remember the real or fictional characters of their epoch, said that the mourner was the symbol of terror for stray children and even more for the oldest ones who were looking for love adventures in the outskirts of the city, where they used to see her jumping behind the fences.

Loja city was at that time a stretch rectangle limited at the north by Quito Street, at the south by Lourdes Street, at the east by Bernardo Valdivieso and at the west by Sucre Street, and although there already were extensions of these streets toward the four cardinal points, they didn’t stop being simple alleys that guided people to the two rivers surrounding and the traditional access roads for the North and South.

Limiting these alleys there were orchards and “stables” of manholes Lojan’s houses where was cultivated from corn and beans to sugar cane, coffee and delicious fruits as: peach, quinces, and so on.

Of the majority of these houses located along Sucre Street their orchards were extended until Malacatos River, and likewise not few properties of Bernardo Valdivieso Street came over until Zamora River banks.

Boundaries of fences were limiting these stables and orchards, they were made of stones and in some cases plants as cactus, “pencos” or “méjicos”, tree that gave the popular “mishque”, drink that even new generations don’t know what it is.

And justly behind these fences was where the Mourner used to be spying to her victims, to whom she was going to attack.

Who was and what did the Mourner do?

They said that nobody could see her face because she always wore a black blanket that capped her from her head to her waist and she only left a small chink for her eyes.

She also wore a wide black skirt, which length was until her ankles, and because of all her black attire she was called the Mourner, word derived from mourning.

People ensured that under the blanket she carried a sharp dagger, and that she nailed it without piety in the heart of lovers who ventured themselves to find the loneliness of the alleys for their love scenes.