The Fortune Teller and the Children Tax May 19, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This appeared in a news report from 1888
A remarkable trial has been opened in the city of Mexico [i.e. Mexico City]. During the past year an old woman, living in a little town near the capital, has been exacting a monthly tax trom the fathers of families to prevent her from taking the lives of their children by sucking their breath in some mysterious manner, her pretence being that she was a witch, and had a mysterious power over life and death. Recently a child died suddenly, and, as the father had refused to pay the monthly tax to the witch, it was rumoured that she had bewitched the child, an impression which grew stronger and stronger. Finally the godfather of the child, a man named Medina, met the woman in a street of the village and said to her, ‘Why did you kill my godchild’. The witch replied, ‘Because its father did not pay me my tax.’ ‘Well, neither will I pay that infamous tax,’ he replied. ‘Then,’ said the witch, ‘I will kill your child.’ Medina replied, ‘Well, you will not kill it, for I will kill you.’’ He then beat the woman to death. He was arrested, and is to be placed on trial for murder.
This is a fascinating story and suggests slightly more energetic witch belief than examples found in Britain and France and the US in the second half of the nineteenth century. The problem is that supplementary material is hard to come by. Google searches just don’t bring up any information in English or Spanish. Can anyone help me here: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com The name of the town/village (described too as a suburb of the capital) would be particularly useful. A separate report from the UK includes some modest extra details. The children died by bleeding from the nose: I feel an Agatha Christie novel coming on. How does that relate to the witch taking their breath (see report above)? The witch lived with ‘cats, owls, and other birds reputed to bring ill-luck’: it might be shallow but I just keep imagining cat-owl relations in her sitting room. She also often repaired to a nearby hill ‘which overlooked the village, making all sorts of mysterious gestures, uttering lugubrius sounds, or remaining for hours staring into vacancy’. Finally, she was known as ‘the fortune teller’: not sure how that would work in Spanish.
