WHERE THEY DO NOT BOIL THEIR HAIR SHIRTS.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9606, 22 December 1896, Page 3

WHERE THEY DO NOT BOIL THEIR HAIR SHIRTS.

. —». Westminster Budget. It was a remote valley of Northern New Mexico : the blazing sun poured down upon its huge encircling precipice walls and on its little dusty squares of ploughed ground in between the irrigating ditch and the river, as it had done any time during the last three hundred years. The valley dwellers were of mingled Spanish and Indian blood ; I had known them only a short while, but the conclusion I had come to was that in those three hundred years they and their forefathers had lived so completely out of the world that they were now nothing less than a fossil stratum of the Middle Ages. As I neared the village of sun-dried brick on that bright morning in April I could see quite a number of people standing about apparently watching something that was going on. Through the intervals in the crowd I caught glimpses of what I took to a whi,te animal dragging itself along with a curious gait. " Now what can they be up to this time ? " I asked myself. "It is some wretched calf they're busy tormenting, or what ? " Then as I came closer I caught for one moment a full view of the object. It was a human being walking half crouched, dragging first one leg and then the other after it. The creature wore voluminous white drawers, and had its whole head tied up in a white bag ; for the rest, it was naked, and its back was red. As it took each long dragging step forward I saw it raise both hands to one shoulder with a jerk and a knotted bloody scourge fell with a whish-h-h on the scarified back. " Great Scott !" said I, " this must be self-torture going on. I always thought these people were capable of a good deal, but who would have dreamed of this ? Why, there are a lot of them at it. Here are half a dozen self-torturers in a gang !" Sure enough, there was a string of these ghastly figures, flogging themselves, a yard or two apart in each other's wake, across the little plaza, of the village. It was evident that the white bag which enveloped each head and acted effectually, as a mask was transparent enough to let each see sufficiently well to be able to follow the figure in front of him. In front of the foremost walked a man in ordinary dress, with no bag on his head, and he held a book open in his hands, from which he read or

pretended to read some mumbling litany or other. He was the guide. Among the lookers-on I caught sight of •Take Wallack. H© was an American soidisant 'pioneer who traded in these parts, and was about the only white man besides myself who ever set foot in Cabroncito. I slipped up quietly alongside him. " What do_3afl this mean anyhow, Jake?" I asked. " Hello !" he answered, " you thar' ? Why, them thar' 's the Pentitenl..., of course. Didn't you never see 'em afore ?" " Never," said I, " never heard of them I before. What on earth do they do it for anyway ?" | " They're just taking it out of their own hides," ho answered, " to pay for all their sins for years past. And, what's more, they need it too, some of 'em," ha continued, j *• need it bad, they do." He paused reflectively and gave me a halfsuspicious glance. Then apparently he decided to enlighten me a little further, and he went on, " Now just you look at that son of a gun thai*' that's walking No. 2. He ain't letting into himself not one quarter as bad Jis he deserves. I wish I was behind him with my black-snake whip. Dad burn me ef I don't believe that he's the skunk that stole my grey mule up Conojos way. I can't see his mug for the blamed rag that he's got wrapped round it; but it's the exact make of him." Jake had a name for being a coolly desperate man ; lie knew the country; my curiosity concerning the Penitentes was whetted, and I went on with my questions. "Now, could you tell me," I asked, " how often they do this thing, and how do they settle who's to be Ihe victim aud get the whip?" -'Ah," said he mysteriously, "I can tell you about that. They do this thing once every year, just before Easter. Thar's a big secret society of 'em all through this country. They call 'emselves Hermanos Brothers, just like the Freemasons, with passwords and secret lodges and so forth. They know each other, but outsiders don't know them. Why, two-thirds of these folks that's looking on, and some of 'em sniggering and cutting jokes on 'em too, ia Penitentes. That's the sort of way they like to pretend. But, you bet, they've got the marks of the whip on their backs, half of 'em." " I ain't no Penitente, me," he added, looking at me sideways with a curious grin on his cunning face, " not ef I knows it, I ain't, but I know some as is, pretty well, and I've hearn a lot about it. I can tell you this much." They all take it by turns who's to get -whopped, and they all have got to take it when it comes to thoir turn, too, some time or another. But they keep mighty dark about it when they do; that's how they come to have their heads tied up so that you can't tell who's who. I can make a dashed close guess, though, myself," and he grinned at me again knowingly. We followed slowly with the crowd, in the rear of the processiqp. of self-torturers which filed along down the valley, the whish-whish of the falling lashes never ceasing for a moment. " Where are they bound for ?" I inquired. " Do you happen to know ?" " Wal," answered he meditatively, " they may be going out. to their Calvary. That's the big pile of stones you may have noticed on a little hill below the village with three or four big crosses of logs nailed together laying around loose, or else I reckon likely they're making for the shrine of Santa Guadalupe over 3-oader. Thar's a great long weatherstain over thar', up on the face of that big cliff, that looks part like a human, and these damphool idjits swear as it's a miraculous image of their patron saint, and they go and flog 'emsel-.es all the way down thai*' aud back again. Ef you stay on a bit likely you may see some women Penitentes come out." " Never !" cried I. " You don't mean to tell me that the women here do such a thing as that?" "But I do mean it," he replied positively; thar's women in all the lodges, and they take their little dose of whish-whish " —he imitated the sound of the scourges falling on raw flesh that still unceasingly assaulted our ears—*' just the same as the men folks." " You seem to me to know an uncommon lot about it, Jake," I remarked. " It's a pity if I don't," he returned. " I hain't been trading up and down this country for ten years for nothing. And I can get anything I want to know out of the women. Now, just you look at here," and he showed me tlieTb-b-: of his horny fist, across which ran a long, angry-looking, half-healed scratch, as if made by a cat with one claw. " Would you like to know how I got that ?•' " Of course I would," I naturally replied. "Wal then," Baid Jake, "thar's a gurl round here, La Prieta—you know her, mebbe —that's sorter friendly with me. And three days ago I was looking on here at this same tomfoolery, and I'm jiggered et I didn't see four women come out of the lodge over thar' and start off towards Santa Guadalupe, all a-doing of their fancy flogging of 'emselves in style. All of 'em had their heads tied up in bags; but I knowed which one of 'em was La P.ietja, you bet your boots, and she was just a-letting into herself like fury. 'Course I couldn't say nuthin' to her right thar'; these folks 'd have torn me into little pieces ef I'd dared to interfere ; but I made out to see her next day, and you better believe I gave her a talking to. She owned up to it to me ; she couldn't help herself, you understand ; but when I slated her for it she cried, and promised she wouldn't do it no more. But now you'll never be able to believe this—she just swore to me that it never hurt her none when she was doing it —swore she liked it. " ' Lemme show you how,' sez she, and with that she took hold of my hand here with her left, and slipped her other into the bosom of her gownd, and whipped out a little piece of black flint like a bit of broken glass. And then she drawed it like lightning acrost the back of my hand, here where you see the mark, and slit the skin in a moment, and of course the blood flowed. And then she looked up in my fice, half laughing, half crying, and sez she, 'Now you're a Penitente too." 'The blazes I am,'sezl. ' Not much, Mary Ann. You can't rope me in for no Penitente like that.. I'll just trouble you, young woman, to mop up that I blood, and say nothin' about it to nobody. [ I don't want none of your Penitente friends to come a-crucifying me next week.'" , "Crucifying!" I exclaimed in amazement. "You don't mean to say they'd go so far as that ? " /"Yes, but I do mean it," Jake retorted. " That's what them crosses is for that you seen down to their Cavalry. Next week's Easter. They'll crucify somebody on Friday night. They allers do. Sometimes the chap dies of it and sometimes he don't. I'm going to be thar' myself to look on, but I don't propose.to furnish ~fciie corpse, not exactly. Say, 'd you like to come _" ' ..." Thanks, no," I said hurriedly. ''The fact is, I've got an important engagement in Santa F_, and I left my horse standing at I that house just below here. Good-bye. ! I've got to go." R. Thompson.