NOTES
"Brother Mendo is dead because he has confessed the dead!"
NOTE VIII
LEGEND OF THE LIVING SPECTRE
The theme of this legend—the transportation by supernatural means of a living person from one part of the world to another—is among the most widely distributed of folk-story motives. In The Arabian Nights—to name an easily accessible work of reference—it is found repeatedly in varying forms. In Irving's Alhambra a version of it is given—"Governor Manco and the Old Soldier"—that has a suggestive resemblance to the version of my text. Distinction is given to the Mexican story, however, by its presentment by serious historians in association with, and as an incident of, an otherwise well-authenticated historical tragedy.
That Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, Governor of the Filipinas, did have his head badly split open, and died of it, in the Molucca Islands, on the 25th of October in the year 1593, and that on that same day announcement of his so-painful ending was made in the City of Mexico, are statements of natural and of supernatural fact which equally rest upon authority the most respectable: as appears from Señor Obregón's documentation of the legend, that I here present in a condensed form.
Guarded testimony in support of the essential marvel of the story is found in a grave historical work of the period, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, written by the learned Dr. Antonio de Morga, a Judge of the
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