Amorous Anxiety in Feminine Sorcery
The long tradition and repeated practices of the cants, rites, and conjurations in the Middle Ages and the following centuries amassed so many possibilities for the woman in search of a stable companion that without having to analyze all the categories previously mentioned, and examining only the most frequently recited phrases and refrains,[6] we
penetrate the very heart of "feminine magic," discovering the most intimate aspects of the sorceresses and their clients during these rituals. Judging from the cants recited by the sorceresses in order to attain the secret desires of their clients, love was the chief aim of these women of the Habsburg regime, who so readily solicited "love magic."
Despite their assertions, these enamored women were not satisfied merely with having their love reciprocated. Their aspirations and amorous passion extended to the total control of the beloved's will, and the reasons for desiring such control had little to do with the admired mystical sighs of their religious sisters' passion. Our enamored women, practitioners of magic, were essentially pragmatic souls who realized that they must obtain masculine support at all costs, so as not to be socially devalued.
Yet the purely amorous or erotic aspect of most of these practices is undeniable. Refrains of a basically impassioned nature are recited in all the rites and conjurations. In a client's name, a sorceress entreated the immediate appearance of the man, they ordered him to return if he had gone away, and repeated, through various chants, the desire that he be consumed with passion. This was only one facet of love magic, however, and we need to examine and learn about the others. Let us first examine the emotional characteristics of our foremothers.
The usual divinatory practices with beans or cards tell us very little regarding feminine emotions. The expert restricted herself to telling fortunes and inquiring about the possible appearance of the man. The extremely long conjuration of the beans recited by a sorceress named Castellanos who was tried by the Toledo tribunal contains only one enlightening phrase. After a tedious conjuration in which the beans were tossed to reveal the future, and after naming the Virgin, the saints, and such elements as the sea, the sands, the ground, and the seven heavens, the conjuration included only the following phrases:
Así como esto es verdad
me declaréis lo que os fuere preguntando . . .
habas que me digáis la verdad
desto que os fuere preguntando
si hubiere de venir fulano[7]
[Just as this is true
You will tell me what I ask . . .
Beans, tell me the truth
About this which I ask you
If (man's name) will come]
Other sorceresses stated the case even more concisely. Isabel Bautista, also tried by the Toledo tribunal,[8] recited a long conjuration, repeating only:
Si fulano ha de venir
salga en camino
[If (man's name) is coming
Let him be on his way]
In spite of their complexity, neither the conjurations recited before tossing the beans nor fortune-telling with cards offers much information about the emotions of the women tried by the Inquisition, except for their desire to conjure a man who would take an interest in them.
Fortunately for us, the conjurations and practices of love magic were so numerous that other sorceries and cants reveal, little by little, the most recondite thoughts of these enamored women as well as the extent of their desires. Love magic is a process through which we can observe the various stages of love as well as the diverse psychological states which the lovers—men or women—experienced in their erotic-emotional relations. The sorceries of the beans and the cards would have been useful only during the initial anticipatory phase when the beloved had not yet appeared, or resisted doing so. The professionals would employ these sorceries only for women wishing to know whether or not they were to achieve this essential goal, but they still reserved a vast repertory for future situations that might occur once the coveted suitor had been trapped, such as the need to arouse a passion not overly potent, to achieve the beloved's constancy, and—admittedly—to calm the anxieties and thirst for revenge of a rejected woman. The professional sorceress applied each phrase on the conjurations, according to the specific needs and circumstances of the women, since they hid nothing regarding their personal situations. This specificity created an entire range of psychological nuances that must also be taken into account.
Clients requesting the appearance of a man, therefore, consulted the beans or the cards—a common occurrence, judging by the frequency with which these conjurations were solicited. But the woman visiting the sorceress was not always lonely or frustrated, and almost as frequently we encounter in the trials other sorceries, such as the oranges and the rosary, which confirmed that love had finally arrived, albeit without the desired intensity. Once again the enamored woman had to resort to an expert who could change the course of her future by bringing the will of her man to a more complete state of submission.
The phrases in the sorceries requiring a rosary or some oranges as the divinatory instrument allow us to understand the second stage of the amorous process. Esperanza Badía, for example, tried in Valencia, held a rosary and recited a long and complicated conjuration in which she invoked various demons and other magical characters, ending with the following phrase:
Venga el corazón de fulano
atado, preso y enamorado[9]
[Let the heart of (man's name) come
Bound, captured, and enamored]
The same phrase also appears in the conjuration employed in the sorcery of the oranges, in Castile as well as in Valencia and the rest of the peninsular regions. It thus constitutes a veritable leitmotiv expressing the central message of such apparently diverse practices. The preliminary phrases vary, the conjured "diabolical" beings may be different, but the essential phrase is always the same: "Let the heart of [man's name] come / Bound, captured and enamored" [Venga el corazón de fulano / atado, preso y enamorado].
The fundamental goal now became retaining the male lover. The conjuration accompanying the sorcery of "the palms" was recited with this goal in mind. The sorceress would pat the length of her arm with the palm of her hand in order to uncover the intentions of the absent man and would again recite a very similar phrase. Laura Garrigues, a sorceress in the 1655 Valencian auto de fe, stated quite bluntly:
Fulano,
donde quiera que estés,
te envío este clavo
te doy este martelazo
Por mi amor presto vengas
por mi amor, preso y atado[10]
[(man's name,)
Wherever you are,
I send you this nail
I strike you with this passion
Soon you will come for my love
For my love, captured and bound]
Like the other sorceries, the sorcery of the palms circulated in multiple versions over the entire Iberian peninsula, but the variations occurred principally at the beginning of and in addition to, the mantic
practice.[11] The central phrase, however, is very similar in all cases and confirms that this sorcery belongs to the second amorous phase together with the sorceries of the rosary and the oranges. In Castile, María Castellanos recited it as follows:
Yo, María, te llamo Francisco,
que vengas por mi amor gimiendo y llorando[12]
[I, María, call you, Francisco,
To come for my love, moaning and crying]
With this variant, this singularly interesting woman, to whom we shall refer again, introduces us to a new phase in love magic beginning with the conjurations and rites in which the symbolic value of fire intervenes: conjurations of salt and alum and sorceries of "pans" and "flasks" or "phials." In the latter, the name varies in different regions according to the language, but the examples all reveal the intimate feelings of women in search of love.
The conjurations of alum and salt were recited in order to divine the future. The sorceress threw a fistful of salt or a bit of alum into the fire so that she could interpret the flame. In all cases the sorceresses began to reveal a state of mind in which impatience appeared to have played an important part. The woman reciting the conjuration did so on behalf of someone whose anxiety was much more intense than in the former cases. In the simplest versions, as in Gerónima González's case in the Valencia auto de fe, the invocation is simple:
Sal, salida . . .
assi como moros ni cristianos
pueden estar sin ti
que Fulano no pueda estar sin mi[13]
[Salt, pouring forth . . .
Neither Moors nor Christians
Can be without you
Nor can (man's name) be without me]
However, the use of fire seemed somehow to stimulate and to contribute to a new psychological state in those women who resorted to the help of sorceresses, as we can clearly observe in the conjuration of alum. María Antonia de Neroña, also from Valencia, explicitly indicated her desire to inflame her beloved's heart:
No pongo alumbre
sino el corazón y entrañas de Fulano[14]
[I do not use alum
But rather the heart and soul of (man's name)]
Gerónima González uses a very similar phrase in the same alum ritual:
Así queme el corazón de Fulano
y arada en amor mío[15]
[Thus burn the heart of (man's name)
and plow in my love]
The formula is repeated in Castile (in the version of our friend Castellanos) in even more explicit form. The beloved must be consumed with love and visit the woman who loves him.
. . . Que así como te has de quemar
se queme el corazón de Fulano
porque me venga a ver[16]
[Just as you will be burnt up
(man's name)'s heart must be inflamed
So that he comes to see me]
Of course, all of these imprecations, which are in general quite poetic, were accompanied by flames and were directed toward the powers of Avernus, who conferred upon them their magical aspect; we are, however, more concerned with analyzing their psychological content and scope.
As we can see, the emotional temperature of the love-magic enthusiasts rose quite a few degrees thanks to the use of fire, and we begin to understand their real intentions toward their suitors. The enamored women of the Habsburg regime wanted absolute control over the will and movements of the men they had snared, and this wish is an essential chapter in their magic manipulations and anxieties, clearly manifested in the fact that the experts' conjurations employed no instrument or ceremony. The unadorned word is the fundamental factor here, and it is an indispensable key to our elemental "psychoanalysis" of love magic.[17]
When the professional sorceress resorted to magic cants, the relationship had apparently reached its worst state. The man was scornful, he missed assignations, and the woman also suspected the presence of another woman on the scene. To revive his interest, it now became necessary to resort directly to evil forces. St. Marta, Marta "the wicked," and the entire chorus of devils already familiar to the client—Satan, Barabbas, the Lame Devil—were invoked directly or indirectly, but with almost no instruments or paraphernalia.
At this point the enamored woman had to placate her companion's anger, and the sorceress placed at her disposal a wide variety of "appeasing conjurations" to rekindle his passion, mainly through the influence of St. Elena or St. Marta. The sorceress would also endeavor to reinstill in the man the need to see his abandoned lover. The conjurations aimed at changing the man's angry attitude were usually short and extremely graphic. No doubt the women of the Habsburg regime feared their companions' violent tempers, proof of which is frequently documented in the declarations. Prudencia Grillo, tried by the Toledo tribunal, justifiably resorted to magic because she was afraid of being locked in a castle by the man on whom she depended.[18] Other women also speak of the bad treatment they received at the hands of their husbands or lovers, and of attempts on their lives in various forms. One woman even stated that she was fed ground glass in a murder attempt.[19] Given the men's violence and mean temperament, it is not surprising that these women viewed sorcery as a far more satisfactory recourse than the customary Christian prayers and resignation recommended by their confessors.
In any case, a brief reading of one of these women's versions confirms their obvious fears. Undoubtedly the man's presence is as much feared as desired. Laura Garrigues, for example, tried in Valencia in 1655, would conceal her hand inside her clothes when she saw her angry lover approach, and pulling her public hairs, would repeat:
Furioso vienes a mí
furioso vienes a mí
tan fuerte como un toro
tan fuerte como un horno
tan sujeto estés a mí
como los pelos de mi coño
están a mí[20]
[Furious you come to me
Furious you come to me
As strong as a bull
As hot as an oven
You will be as subject to my will
As the hairs of my cunt
Are to me]
The best-known and most widely spread refrain, however, contains a somewhat mysterious formula—surely a synthesis achieved after centuries of use—that gives it even greater poetic charm. Most likely its obscure meaning and brevity contributed at the same time to its enor-
mous divulgation and popularity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries:
Con dos te miro
con cinco te ato
tu sangre te bebo
el corazón te parto[21]
[With two I watch you
With five I bind you
Your blood I drink
Your heart I rend]
Laura Garrigues also knew a version of this conjuration which reveals more clearly the need to control an overly impetuous man:
Con dos te miro
con tres te ligo y ato
la sangre te voto
el corazón te parto
con las parias de tu madre
la boca te tapo
¡Hale, asno!
sobre ti cabalgo[22]
[With two I watch you
With three I bind and tie you
Your blood I curse
Your heart I rend
With your afterbirth
I cover your mouth
(The sorceress covered her mouth here)
Come along, ass!
I'll ride you]
It is not difficult to infer, after reading this brief imprecation, that the magic enthusiast believed she would shut the mouth that insulted her, subjecting it to her will in the same way as women dominated the little asses that so frequently served as ladies' mounts precisely because of their inferior strength and docility. The version Isabel Bautista used in Castile confirms and expands my point:
Con dos te miro
con tres te tiro
con cinco te arrebato
calla, bobo, que te ato
tan humilde vengas a mí
como la suela de mi zapato[23]
[With two I watch you
With three I toss you
With five I captivate you
Quiet, fool, I'll bind you
(At this point the sorceress would slap her knee as a sign of command, and finish:)
You will come to me humble
As the sole of my shoe]
As shown above, enamored women understood quite well the mean temperament of their companions, but surely this formed part of the rules of the game. It was extremely important to placate their tempers in order to achieve a reconciliation. The amorous encounters and visits—which were most likely at night, judging by the extramarital nature of the majority of the relationships—rekindled the love interest. Without a doubt, the man's return constitutes an important motive for anxiety. His arrival is impatiently awaited, but he does not appear. The lover goes to her window, opens the door and looks down the street. He is nowhere to be seen; feeling exasperated, she nevertheless continues to wish for his presence, perhaps with increased anxiety. The conjurations of the door and the window reflect perfectly the scene I have just described.
In the conjuration of the door, like that of the window, the woman who recited went outside and looked down the street, where she supposed the man she wanted to attract would appear. Laura Garrigues did not object to going outside in broad daylight to call her lover:
Fulano
ni tú me ves
ni yo te acíerto
yo te llamo con el Padre . . .
tan humilde
tan sujeto
vengas a mí
como mi señor Jesucristo
subió al santo árbol de la cruz
a morir por ti y por mi
Amén
[(man's name)
You do not see me
Nor have I found you
I call you in the name of the Father . . .
(Here the sorceress invoked the powers of the Holy Trinity, and this was followed by the supplication and command:)
so humble
so subjected
You will come to me
As my lord Jesus Christ
Climbed the Holy Tree of the Cross
To die for you and me
Amen]
Evidently the sorceress tried to evoke the sacred figure's proverbial docility and resignation before a superior will. But, as the reader can imagine, the inquisitors were not partial to complex poetic associations.[24]
María Antonia de Neroña, also of the Valencian tribunal, preferred to act at night, apparently at ten o'clock sharp. She would then invoke the lover, calling him three times, imagining him with a noose around his neck, that is, bound like a prisoner pleading for help:
Fulano, Fulano, Fulano,
por la calle abajo te veo venir
una soga de ahorcado traes a la garganta
a grandes voces diciendo
Fulana, váleme . . .
[(man's name, man's name, man's name,)
from down the street I see you coming,
A hangman's noose around your neck
Clamoring in a loud voice,
(woman's name,) help me . . .]
Repeated again and again, the refrain emphasizes not only the attempt to draw the companion's attention, but the woman who is to help him as well. The woman then denies him her aid, however, and turns him over to the conjured demons so they may penetrate the man's heart, provoking the same anxieties and pain she has suffered, as she recites this magic prayer:
. . . No te quiero valer
válgate Barrabás y Satanás
y todos los diablos que allá están
todos os juntaréis
y en el corazón de Fulano entraréis
y este cuchillo de cachas negras
por el corazón le clavaréis
tantas ansias le daréis
que a mi casa le traeréis
[I don't wish to help you,
Let Barabbas and Satan help you
And all the devils who are there
You will all gather together
And this black-handled knife
You will plunge into his heart
You will cause him so much anguish
That you will lead him to my house]
The basic intention is evident, but the woman is not satisfied with this wish alone, and she adds one of the refrains frequently repeated when the woman's anxiety led her to the brink of desperation:
. . . Y no le dejaréis
reposar, ni comer, ni dormir
ni en la cama reposar
sino conmigo pensar
[ . . . And you won't let him
Rest or eat or sleep
He will not rest in bed
But will think only of me]
The rest of María Antonia de Neroña's conjuration is explicit in this invocation "of the window":
. . . Que venga con ansias y pena
en su corazón
por verme y hallarme
[ . . . Let him come with anguish and sorrow
In his heart
To see me and find me . . .]
The only instrument the woman employed during this ceremony was the black-handled dagger that was to be thrust in the windowsill at the opportune moment—an obvious symbol of the forgetful lover's heart.[25]
María Antonia de Neroña was one of the women who best expressed her love frustration in these cants. Her trial summary included a similar cant bidding the man to visit her again. On this occasion María Antonia was even more decisive: the man should appear bound and held fast by his most delicate parts:
A Fulano veo venir
soga de ahorcado trae tras él . . .
estas le traeréis
de su coxón
de su riñón
de su baçón
de las telas de su corazón[26]
[I see (man's name) coming
A hangman's noose after him . . .
(At this point she conjured the demons who were in this case, interestingly enough, feminine.)
You will bring him
By the balls
By his kidney
By his spleen
By his heartstrings
Yet most of the sorceresses are not as explicit or rhetorical as María Antonia de Neroña. Gerónima González conjured the street and called the demons, limiting her entreaty:
¡Ah de la calle!
¡ah, so compadre!
. . . Satanás, Barrabás y Lucifer
que me den a saber si Fulano vendrá[27]
[Hey, the street (repeated)
Hey, mate!
(The invocation of the demons continued and was much longer than in Neroña's version, surely because Gerónima González emphasized the ceremony's magic aspect rather than merely stating her desires, which were limited to one phrase:)
. . . . Satan, Barabbas, and Lucifer
Let me know if (man's name) will come]
Laura Garrigues employed a brief and disconsolate imprecation to make her man return. She then entreated him by invoking such magic characters as María de Padilla, of the so-called Circle of the Castilian king Pedro I, who bewitched men and subjected them to her will with a ring containing an enchanted demon, and condemned the souls to hell, diabolical figures, like the "desperate souls":
Vecino y compadre,
gran señor de la calle
Fulano solía venir a verme
y ahora no viene
yo quiero que venga
y me lo has de traer
yo te conjuraré
[Neighbor and mate,
Great lord of the street,
(man's name) would come and see me
And now he does not come
And you are to bring him to me
I will entreat you . . .]
As with María Antonia de Neroña, Laura also added her wish that the demons penetrate this man's heart to induce such anguish that he would not rest until he had sought her out.[28]
At this precise psychological moment, these semi-abandoned women employed very simple ceremonies, whose symbolic value was as evident as the use of fire. In general, the rites associated with the door, the place where one awaits the appearance of the beloved man, were limited to sweeping the threshold and conjuring him. Laura Garrigues awaited nightfall, left the door of her house ajar, and recited:
Conjúrote, puerta y quicial
por donde Fulano ha salido
ha de volver a entrar[29]
[I conjure you, door and side-post
where (man's name) went out
He must enter again]
The pleas of the sorceresses and their clients directed to the stars, the moon, and the sun follow the same pattern we have seen during this
stage, as the woman attempts to retrieve her man but also desires to avenge herself for his absence. These cants addressed to the stars praise their beauty—"Maiden star, the highest and most beautiful . . ." [Estrella doncella, la más alta y la más bella]—and entreat them to penetrate the ungrateful heart painfully. One of the most ancient is the prayer by the beata of Huete, from the Cuenca tribunal of 1499; she invokes nine stars in all and then proceeds to the cant's central message:
Al monte Synay iréys
e nueve varas de amor me saquedes
por la cabeza de Santa Cruz las hinquedes
e de la cabeza al coraçón al riñón
y al taso o al baço
y a las andas del espiñaço
e las tresientas coyunturas
que en su cuerpo son
que no pueda comer ni beber
hasta que a mí venga a bien querer
e a aver plaçer[30]
[You will go to Mount Sinai
And bring me nine staffs of love
You will drive them into the head of the Holy Cross
And from the head to the heart
And from the heart to the kidney
And to the taso or the spleen
And all along the spine
And the three hundred joints
in his body
So that he can neither eat nor drink
Until he comes to love me well
And to take pleasure in me]
The conjuration of the stars appears frequently in the Castilian tribunals at Cuenca and Toledo, and the well-known refrain from this conjuration, "So that he can neither eat nor drink . . ." [que no pueda comer ni beber], constantly accompanies other invocations throughout the following centuries. The Castilian Juana Dientes disrobed and let down her hair before reciting it, perhaps as a means of invoking the physical encounter with the lover; we must not forget that during this time, nudity and untied hair had sinful erotic connotations. Her conjuration was even more forceful than that of the religious devotee from Huete, who does not invoke the demons Beelzebub and Satan conjured by Juana:
Y con la fragua de Belzebú y Satanás
siete rejones le amolad
e con el coraçón de Fulano las lançad
para que ningún reposo pueda tomar
hasta que venga a mi mandar
Diablos del horno
traédmelo ayna
diablos del peso
diablos de la plaça
traédmelo en dança
diablos de la encrucijada
traédmelo a casa[31]
[ . . . and with the forge of Beelzebub and Satan
You will sharpen seven daggers
And thrust them into (man's name)'s heart
So that he shall have no rest
Until he answers my command
Devils from the furnace
Bring him to me now
Devils of the scales
Devils of the plaza
Bring him dancing to me
Devils of the crossroad
Bring him to my house]
The proceedings against Isabel Bautista contain another conjuration to the stars recited by the Castilian sorceresses as early as the sixteenth century. Isabel added a brief and surprising ritual difficult for us to interpret. She measured the door jamb and door of her house with a cord, threw salt into one of the door jambs and placed a broom in the other, conjured the nine stars just as the other sorceress did, and then specified her desire that the man not forget her:
Tres varas de mimbre me traeréis
por las muelas de Barrabás las afiléis
por las calderas de Pedro Botero las pasaréis
una la hincareis por el sentido
que no me eche en olvido
otra por el coraçón
que vaya a mi afición
otra por las espaldas
que venga por mis palabras[32]
[Bring me three willow rods
Sharpen them on Barabbas's molars
Carry them through hell
Drive one into his mind
So that he won't forget me
Another into the heart
So he will come when I desire
Another into his back
So he will answer my call]
The conjurations that employ the stars, the sun, and the moon as the magical motifs, as well as others we will examine below, are basically all the same. The sorceress varied the invocation to the evil spirits, increased or reduced the form of the cant, but always concluded by supplicating the same thing: the recovery of lost love.
We can observe this wish clearly in the cants invoking the sun and the moon, which are usually quite brief: " . . . so that [man's name] cannot live without me" [que Fulano no pueda estar sin mí], or simply, "so that [man's name] loves me" [que Fulano me quiera]. The cant to the moon recited by doña Juana de la Paz, tried in Valencia in 1655, demonstrates the features of these conjurations, actually the laments of abandoned women expressed aloud:
Luna clara
bella y hermosa
tan clara y tan bella
como me paresces a mí
tan bella y hermosa
paresca yo a mi galán
como la estrella que está cerca de ti[33]
[Bright moon
Lovely, beautiful
As bright and beautiful
As you appear to me
So bright and beautiful
May I appear to my man,
As the star which is near to you]
To express simultaneously their frustration and attempt to recover lost love, the sorceresses not only resorted to profane elements like the stars; their repertory also included the Church's intercessors, certain saints, whose relation to the golden legend associated them with the basic purpose of the sorceresses' love magic. The sacred figures most fre-
quently invoked include the "Lonely Soul" [Anima Sola], who requires prayers because of her destitution; San Silvestre, magical because of the date of his feast day; and Santa Elena and San Onofre.
The prayer to the Lonely Soul, generally quite beautiful, nonetheless sheds very little light on the situation of these enamored women. After the ritual invocation, the woman simply repeats a wish very similar to that which we have already seen. Doña Juana de la Paz recited thirty-three Our Fathers, Hail Marys, and the accompanying Glorias, standing by her window, and enumerated the conditions of her plea to the spirit:
Esto que he rezado os ofrezco
os encomiendo
ánima sola
para que me traigas y me déis
buena señal desto que os pido[34]
[I offer you this prayer
I commend you
Lonely soul
To bring me and give me
A hopeful sign of what I ask of you]
In other cases, the prayer is even more similar to previous conjurations. The preambles employed to conjure the Lonely Soul are not prayers but rather diabolical entreaties to such various elements as "Lucano's blood" [la sangre de Lucano], "the heart of the man who was stabbed in cold blood" [el corazón del hombre muerto a hierro frío], and the "twelve tribes of Israel" [las doce tribus de Israel] to cut nine wicker staffs:
Tres me las clavaredes a Fulano por el corazón
que no pierda mi amor
tres por el sentido
que no me eche en olvido[35]
[You thrust three of them into (man's name)'s heart
So he won't forget my love
Three of them into his consciousness
So he won't forget me]
Still less original are the invocations in the prayers to Santa Marta, San Onofre, San Silvestre, and Santa Elena, yet they are beautiful compositions that would naturally impress a woman in need of help. As in the former case, all of these cants are simply assorted preambles fol-
lowed by familiar refrains employed on other occasions. In the case of the prayer to San Onofre, the sorceress limits herself to entreating:
Como atastéis y encontrastéis
a todos estos—la Draga y el Dragón—
así venga Fulano
tan humilde,
tan rendido, tan prostrado
tan atado y tan encortado
como todos estos se rindieron
y prostraron a vuestros santísimos pies . . .
[As you bound and encountered
All of these—the lady Dragon and the Dragon—
Thus will (man's name) come
So humble
So surrendered, so prostrated
So bound and tied
Like all of those who surrendered themselves
And prostrated themselves at your holy feet]
The conjuration ends with the refrain, "May he not eat, or drink, or rest," and so on [Que no pueda comer, ni beber, ni reposar, etc.].[36]
All the petitions to San Onofre are very similar. First, the sorceress evoked his harsh penitence in the following manner:
Así como estas palabras son verdad
santo glorioso
me cumpláis esto que os pido
de traerme a mi marido[37]
[Just as these words are true,
Glorious saint
Do what I ask of you
And bring me my husband]
The prayers to Santa Marta, Marta "the Wicked" [La Mala], and Santa Elena usually repeat familiar refrains ("May he not eat or drink . . ." [Que no pueda comer, ni beber . . .]) and various entreaties to make the man appear or to "resuscitate" his heart.