My first winter in Mexico, twenty-five years ago, was spent in Monterey; and there, in a small way, my collection of Mexican folk-lore was begun. My gathering at that time consisted mainly of superstitious beliefs--omens, house-charms, the evil eye, the unlucky day--but it included a version of the story of La Llorona essentially identical with the version, here given, that I later found current in the City of Mexico. The sources from which I drew in Monterey were three or four old, and old-fashioned, women with whom my wife established such friendly relations as to win them into freely confidential talk with her; the most abundant yield coming from a kindly old Doña Miguelita (she was given always the affectionate diminutive), who was attached loosely as a sort of brevet grandmother to the family with whom we were lodged. Had I been alone I should not have been able to extract any information from these old people. It would have been impossible to convince them that such matters could be regarded with anything but contempt by a man.
In like manner, later, from a most valuable source in the City of Mexico, my information was to be had only at second-hand. This source was our dear Joséfa Correa, who during four successive winters at once was our washer-woman and our friend. Joséfa's semi-weekly visits gave us always a warm pleasure; and her talk--of which she was no miser--gave us always much of interest to ponder upon: she being a very wise old woman, with views of life that were broad and sound. As she was precisely of the class in which the folk-stories of the city originated, she was the best of authorities for the current popular versions of them: but always was it through my wife that her tellings of them came to me. Various other old women, encountered casually, similarly were put under contribution by my wife for my purposes. One of the most useful was a draggled old seller of rebozos; another, of equal value, was a friendly old body whom we fell in with at a railway station while waiting through two hours for a vagrant train. To me all of these women would have been sealed books; I could have got nothing from them without my wife's help.
For that help, and for the help that she has given me in searching and in collating my authorities for the Legends and for the Notes relating to them, I am very grateful to her.