Rafael Escobar Contreras introduces us with this brief and new Toledan legend the narrative thread that follows the novel of the same name, which we have already commented in these pages previously. A novel proposed for the origin of the best known legends of the city.
In the middle of the 6th century an old wizard lived in Toledo. He lived in a cave whose entrance was located on a hill close to the city.
For several generations their ancestors had been preparing a potion that protected and gave strength to the Goths kings, making them invulnerable against their enemies and endowing them with a special wisdom to govern. To do so, they followed a ritual, always at dusk, and used relics that formed part of the treasure that Alaric, in the year 410, had taken from the Romans.
It was the year 653, the year of the coronation of Recesvinto, and the old wizard was preparing the potion for the new king at the entrance to his cave, when suddenly, from the shadows, a gigantic black raven appeared and with the flapping of its wings the old cauldron overturned, bubbling with a viscous liquid.
A little time had passed since the liquid element was absorbed into the deepest part of the earth, when a lightning bolt from nowhere struck the same place, producing a tremendous explosion that opened a huge hole in the ground.
Before the eyes of the surprised sorcerer, from among the thick cloud of dust produced, spectral figures appeared, like an infernal parade: the beheaded head of a blackberry, the stone face of a young Saracen prince, a naked young woman submerged herself in the waters of a river, a warrior with a pierced hand, a man’s head on a tray, a Christ with his hands uncovered, a Virgin with seven pins nailed to his heart…
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Cerro del Bú in Toledo
Photo: Franciscorg on flickr.com
The terrified wizard took refuge inside the cave, but, far from calming down, his terror increased even more when he contemplated that on the rock of the walls the images he had seen minutes before on the outside had been engraved next to strange inscriptions.
Without time to react, the roof began to collapse and within minutes he was buried, with all its secrets, inside the cave.
For fifty years no one dared to set foot on that hill, until one day the brave and daring D. Rodrigo, the last king Godo, opened the cave. The wizard and his relics had disappeared, but the engravings were still intact. The king told his people what he saw there, although no one found a meaning.
These events passed from word of mouth through the centuries, without anyone interpreting those engravings until, at different times, were happening in the city certain events that made it understand that the engravings predicted the origin of numerous legends occurred in the city and that have lasted to this day.
Author: Rafael Escobar Contreras
Cerro del Bú in Toledo
Photo: sepulpr at flickr.com
Published in Leyendasdetoledo.com on January 20, 2008, under permission of its author.
All rights to the current Legend are owned by Rafael Escobar Contreras. Any publication of the same must be authorized by its author.
