Mind telling me a bit of lore, on this spirit, and the overall vibe...? I've so far have seen nobody look at this with some in depth analysis, id love to hear whatever ya willing to tell me!
Viewing post in The Wailing of the Forest comments
Hi!! The tale of this spirit differs on who is telling it/ which area it's told, so there are many tales as it was passed on orally. From the description, the tale takes it on from Costa Rica, which may differ from what I will tell you, as I am Mexican, and am going to tell you what I have heard.
Overall, there was this beautiful women, Maria(that's what some people say is her name), who one day fell in love with a man (usually he was a merchant, ranchero, or conquistador) from outside her town. The two eventually married( or not in some tales) and had two children (number of children vary in some places, but there's at least 1 kid). Here's the part where the story changes depending who's saying it:
-One version goes that over time, the man started to fall out of love with Maria, and only starts to dote on their children, but ignores Maria completely
-Another says that the man starts to lose interest in Maria and his family overall and pretty much cheats on her, with some saying that he at one point completely abandons the family to go marry a richer women
Either way, Maria is overcome with a blind fit of rage and ends up drawing her child(ren) because of it, yet, she immediately regrets it and tries to save them, which she fails to do so. Because of this, she ends up drowning herself out of guilt, but because of her actions, she can't enter the afterlife and is forced to roam the earth until she finds her children. Because of this, she usually takes any children she comes across, which is near any body of water.
It's interesting that the game puts in the tales that have been told onto here, like for example, in one of the endings (MINOR SPOILER)
when la llorona jumps into the river, it's just like how the tale goes, as well as residing near bodies of water, although this take of la llorona is very interesting, as usually, people depict her in white clothing, so seeing her in all black was interesting! I have never heard of the Costa Rican tale either, and many people associate la llorona with Mexican roots, which isn't a lie, but I like how it's more diverse with the settings instead!
I dunno how the mexicans retell the story, but this is the version told in Costa Rica:
As most of the older legends, it's set in the early towns where spaniards, amerindians and mestizos lived in defined areas. Legend goes that a creole (white born in the new world) fancied a tawny (common slang for amerindians and more-tanned mestizos) girl.
He fooled around with her but once she got pregnant he ghosted her (heh). Having kids out of wedlock was still a big deal, so the girl concealed her pregnancy. The rainy night she felt herself ready to give birth, she went out into the forest and had her child (gender varies). She threw it into the river and went back home. Eventually, the guilt got to her, and a few nights later she went downstream looking for her baby. She didn't come back home, so she was assumed to have been taken by the currents.
As a punishment for murdering her child, the girl's ghost is bound to the river, cursed to search for a baby she'll never find.