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Basque (3 stories)
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> The Legend of the Vitória Régia
> The Creation of Guaraná
> The Sleeping River
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The Legend of the Vitória Régia
A young Indian girl, belonging to one of the Brazilian tribes, was told by her father of an ancient belief: that a fearsome, but extremely handsome and powerful warrior-god lived in the moon. As time passed, the young girl came to believe in the tale and the more she pondered on it, the more in love she fell with the warrior-in-the-moon and soon no boy of her tribe seemed worthy of her affection.
All of her family’s desperate efforts to marry her with a noble and respectable young man of the tribe failed.
The young girl waited patiently for her true love in the days when the moon was not visible or was only a crescent. And when the moon emerged in its full splendour each lunar cycle, she would spend hours awake staring into the sky, trying to see the face of her imagined love. Many times she was seen running through the jungle in the dead of the night, arms outstretched, as the moon shone at its fullest, trying to catch its rays and embrace her warrior love. But chasing moonbeams was then, as now, a hopeless task, and the great love of her life remained a distant dream.
Her parents, her friends and her relatives despaired of ever convincing her that the passion she felt was a mere illusion.
The months passed, and the young girl still chased the moon’s rays without ever once coming nearer to her loved one. Then, one very clear night when a full moon shone in all its splendour in a cloudless sky, high above the tallest Jacaranda trees, the youn girl again went into the jungle, this time determined to embrace the moon-warrior and be with him forever.
She raced further in the jungle and came upon a glass-like lake, many kilometres from her village. And in its deep mirror-like waters she saw the brilliant reflection of the moon, “At last”, she thought, “my beloved has come down to Earth, to bathe in a pool”.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she plunged into the lake to meet him but, of course, it was just an illusion. Too late she discovered her error, for her strength had departed. The poor girl drowned in the lonely jungle pool, far from her village, her parents and friends.
The tale does not end here. The warrior-in-the-moon, so goes the legend, did indeed exist, and took pity on the beautiful young girl who had loved him so much that she had died in desperation trying to embrace him. Filled with remorse, but without the power to bring her back to life, he resolved to make her a star on Earth. He transformed the dead girl into a star of the fresh flowing water of the Amazon River. That star is now a giant flower which reigns supreme as queen of all aquatic plants.
The young Indian girl was transformed into the giant water lily, the Vitória-Régia, whose flower opens only at night. It is said that the Vitória-Régia opens itself to its utmost only on those nights when the moon is full and the sky over the Amazon jungle is cloudless and particularly clear.
And who is to say this story is not true?
*Extracted from Brazilian Legends series - Editora FTD
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