Legends of the City of Mexico/Accursed Bell (Notes)
NOTE VI
LEGEND OF THE ACCURSED BELL
This legend affords an interesting example of folk-growth. As told by Señor Obregón, the story simply is of a church bell "in a little town in Spain" that, being possessed by a devil, rang in an unseemly fashion without human aid; and for that sin was condemned to have its tongue torn out and to be banished to Mexico. As told by Señor Arellano, the story begins with armor that was devil-possessed because worn by the devil- possessed Gil de Marcadante. This armor is recast into a cross wherein the devils are held prisoners and harmless; the cross is recast into a bell of which the loosed devils have possession—and from that point the story goes on as before. As told in verse by Señor Juan de Dios Peza, the armor is devil-forged to start with; and is charged still more strongly with devilishness by being worn in succession by an Infidel and by a wicked feudal lord before it comes to Gil de Marcadante—from whose possession of it the story continues as before.
A fourth, wholly Spanish, version of this legend is found in Becquer's La Cruz del Diablo. In this version the armor belongs in the beginning to one Señor del Segre, whose cruelties lead to a revolt of his vassals that ends in his death and in the burning of his castle-amid the ruins of which the armor remains hanging on a fire-blackened pillar. In time, bandits make their lair in the ruined castle. While a hot dispute over their leadership is in progress among them the armor detaches itself from the pillar and stalks into the midst of the wrangling company. From behind the closed visor a voice declares that their leader is found. Under that leadership the bandits commit all manner of atrocities. Again the country folk rally to fight. for their lives. Many of the bandits are killed, but the leader is scatheless. Swords and lances pass through the armor without injuring him. In the blaze of burning dwellings the armor becomes white-hot, but he is unharmed. A wise hermit counsels exorcism. With this spiritual weapon the devil-leader is overcome and captured; and within the armor they find—nothing at all! In true folk-story fashion the narrative rambles on with details of the escape and recapture of the devil-armor "a hundred times." In the end, following again the wise hermit's counsel, the armor is cast into a furnace; and then, being melted, is refounded—to the accompaniment of diabolical shrieks and groans of agony-into a cross. A curious and distinctive feature of this version is that the devils imprisoned in the cross retain their power for evil. Prayers made before that cross bring down curses; criminals resort to it; in its neighborhood is peril of death by violence to honest men. So leaving the matter, Becquer's story ends. The scene of these marvels is the town of Bellver, on the river Segre, close under the southern slope of the Pyrenees.[1]
Señor Obregón gives what is known of the bell's history in Mexico. It was of "medium size"; the hanger in the shape of an imperial crown supported by two lions; on one side, in relief, the two-headed eagle holding in its talons the arms of Austria; on the other side a Calvario-Christ, St. John, the Virgin; near the lip, the words "Salve Regina," and the legend: "Maese Rodrigo me fecit 1530." From the unknown time of its arrival in Mexico until the last quarter of the eighteenth century it reposed idly in one of the corridors of the Palace. There it was found by the Viceroy (1789-1794) the Conde de Revillagigedo; and by that very energetic personage, to whom idleness of any sort was abhorrent, promptly was set to work. In accordance with his orders, it was hung in a bell-gable, over the central doorway of the Palace, directly above the clock; and in that position it remained, very honestly doing its duty as a clock-bell, for more than seventy years. During the period of the French intervention, in December, 1867, a new bell was installed in place of it and orders were given that it should be melted down-possibly, though Señor Obregón gives no information on this point, to be recast into cannon, along with the many church bells that went that way in Mexico at about that time. Whatever may have been planned in regard to its transmutation did not come off-because the liquid metal became refractory and could not be recast. As this curious statement of fact has an exceptional interest in the case of a bell with so bad a record, I repeat it in Señor Obregón's own words: "Entonces se mandó fundirla; mas al verificarlo se descompuso el metal!"
- ↑ "La Cruz del Diablo," with other stories of a like sort by Becquer, all very well worth reading, may be read in English in the accurate translation recently made by Cornelia Frances Bates and Katharine Lee Bates under the title Romantic Legends of Spain (New York, Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.); and in the original Spanish, with the assistance of scholarly notes and a vocabulary, in the collection prepared for class use by Dr. Everett Ward Olmsted under the English title Legends and Poems by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (Boston, Ginn & Co.).