I. La Mulata de Córdoba
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An A2 retelling of Mexican legends
Legends of Mexico Leyendas de México
Mexican folk legends
This is a MovaReader retelling in simple Spanish, not the original text: five traditional legends of colonial Mexico, retold in prose from the versions that Vicente Riva Palacio and Juan de Dios Peza printed in verse in 1884, for readers who already know the past tenses. In the catalog it is A2: about 5,400 words, 10 words per sentence on average. 10 chapters lead from La Mulata de Córdoba and La Llorona to Don Juan Manuel, the woman shod like a mule and the street of Olmedo.
- A2
- 5 379 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
A1
Earlier
At A1 the past tenses will stop you: the narration runs in the pretérito indefinido and imperfecto (vivía, oyó, salió, dijo), at 10 words per sentence on average.
A1A2
This text
You can manage it at A2: sentences are short, the story stays in the past tenses you know, and the colonial words (virrey, herrador, cadalso) are explained by the text itself.
Check this passageB1
With room to spare
At B1 the adaptation reads with room to spare, almost without translation: in about an hour you get through all five legends before moving on to longer adaptations such as Don Juan Tenorio, which starts at 11 words per sentence.
Start readingThe average sentence has 10 words: the story is told in the past, with events in the pretérito indefinido and background in the imperfecto, and about a fifth of the words are lines of dialogue in Spanish quotation marks. A word of 9 letters or more comes up about once in 38 words, and the most frequent are inquisidor and herraduras; the few old words are explained by the text itself: Un herrador es un hombre que pone herraduras de hierro a los caballos y a las mulas. The difficulty is even: each of the 10 chapters has 9-11 words per sentence. The catalog’s other Spanish A2 books run from 8 to 10 words per sentence (Hansel and Gretel has 9, Legends of Bécquer in adaptation 10), A1 books stay at 5-7, and B1 adaptations begin at 11 (Don Juan Tenorio 11, Count Lucanor 12). Hence A2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 5 379
- words
- 10
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Internet Archive
What it is about, without the ending
Colonial Mexico: a viceroy governs in the name of the Spanish king, the Inquisition watches over souls, and by night people tell these stories. In the town of Córdoba a beautiful young woman, the Mulata, is said to be a witch, and an old mayor who loves her in vain sends the Holy Office after her. In Mexico City a woman in white cries through the streets at midnight, and the old people know who she was. A rich man kills a stranger at eleven every night, and always asks the hour first. At midnight two strangers bring a black mule to a blacksmith, and a friar follows a man into a house in the street of Olmedo to hear a confession. How these five stories end is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Leyendas de México
V. Las once de la noche
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Choose an underlined word.
Background and events
The scene is built from two past tenses. The imperfecto paints the background: vivía, corrían, decían, cantaba, llegaba, each one a state or a habit that goes on. The pretérito indefinido moves the story: pasó, vio, oyó, salió, each one a single event. Decían unos / decían otros means “some said / others said”. A medianoche is “at midnight”, and desde la selva hasta su casa is “from the forest to her house”.
A polite question, a dark joke
Perdone usted and ¿Qué hora es? are how a stranger politely asks the time: usted is the formal “you”, and perdone is a polite command, “excuse me”. The answer is short: Las once. Then comes the cruel joke: Dichoso usted, que sabe la hora en que muere, “lucky you, who know the hour at which you die”. The same words return later in the story, so they are worth remembering. Que sabe is “who knows”; en que muere is “at which one dies”.
Chapters
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
Reader translates whole sentences, and here that helps most with the lines that carry the legend’s irony, like the murderer’s grim joke: Dichoso usted, que sabe la hora en que muere.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
A learner adaptation, not the original: MovaReader retold in prose five traditional Mexican legends as they appear in Tradiciones y leyendas mexicanas by Vicente Riva Palacio and Juan de Dios Peza (1884), a collection of rhymed verse in the public domain; the page linked on this book is a 1927 edition on the Internet Archive. These are traditional legends retold by MovaReader, so the words are not the authors’. The language and form have changed: modern Spanish in the past tenses, 10 words per sentence on average, 10 chapters and about 5,400 words instead of long poems in rhyme. Five stories remain, La Mulata de Córdoba, La Llorona, Don Juan Manuel, La mujer herrada and La calle de Olmedo; the collection’s opening poem about the royal inspector Muñoz is left out. The verse original is not in the catalog.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audio version of this adaptation: MovaReader gives you the text, read on screen with tap-to-translate. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears next to it; here that will mostly be words of the old city and its fears, such as puñal, horca, herraduras or cadalso.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
The Reader plan translates whole sentences. Here they are short, 10 words on average, so you will seldom need one translated: mostly lines with a twist or an old form, like Dichoso usted, que sabe la hora en que muere, and the crier’s call Haced bien por hacer bien, y rezad un Padre Nuestro por el alma del que llega esta noche al patíbulo. The free plan also translates single words, up to a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole adaptation takes about 1 hour at the pace of someone who still translates new words, and up to an hour and a half if you stop often. A chapter averages about 540 words, or 5-9 minutes of reading; chapter II, the longest, has about 890 words, so one evening easily covers several chapters.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is fairly even: each of the 10 chapters averages 9-11 words per sentence. Only long words vary: chapter VII, “Tres noches bajo la horca”, has the most, one word in 23 with 9 letters or more, while chapters III and VI, the story of La Llorona’s beginning and Don Juan’s confession, have about one in 70.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes, once you sign in: the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so next time you carry on from there. The contents on this page also take you straight to any chapter, say III, “La mujer de blanco”, where the legend of La Llorona begins.