Returning bridegroom (Calvun’s telling)

Overview

Calvun’s story opens with a man’s death and burial. His horses are killed and his riding equipment and other possessions placed with him. More than ten days later he visits his lover at dusk. Confronted with the report of his death, he dismisses it as a lie. While lodging with a boy, he asks not to be embraced because his side hurts. Lenz conjectures in a note that an incomplete body might otherwise betray him, but the narrative itself supplies no visible wound, missing organ or revealed skeletal form.

After the household sleeps, he tells the woman they will marry and leave that night. She asks how he can retrieve his buried saddle; he answers that he knows how. He saddles a horse unseen and takes her away. During the ride he sings of the blue land to which they are travelling. When she questions him, he presents singing as the practice of earlier bridegrooms. They reach his grave, where the Spanish rendering describes her as losing her reason. His destination is therefore the burial place, not an expressly described kingdom of the dead.

Two days later the woman’s father visits the man’s father to inquire after her. Learning that the supposed bridegroom is dead, they go to the cemetery and find her weeping on his dead horse. They bring her home, but she cannot settle or remain there. The final section has her purchased and put to death at the dead man’s grave. Lenz’s note identifies the purchaser as the groom’s father and explains the act as intended to provide companionship for the deceased; that explanation is editorial. The telling gives no later reunion or account of her afterlife.

The account’s unnamed returning man is preserved as a particular narrative figure. Lenz compares the theme with the European Lenore story while allowing an Indigenous origin; resemblance alone does not establish borrowing. The narrated killing and the editor’s broader statements about marriage and burial are not independently verified evidence that the episode occurred or that all Pehuenche households followed such a practice.

Origins & earliest records

Calvun (Segundo Jara), La novia del muerto, in Lenz’s Estudios araucanos VII,223–225,15sections. Volume title1895–1897; surrounding collection history names Lenz and Víctor Manuel Chiappa but no exact date is attached to this telling.

Records & interpretation

Complete15sections and all accompanying notes read, with original225 ending checked in scan. The painful-side explanation, purchaser identification and after-death companionship are distinguished as Lenz’s commentary.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Estudios araucanos, VII: Cuentos míticos

   Rodolfo Lenz; narrative by Calvun (Segundo Jara) · 1897

   VII no1, La novia del muerto,223–225, complete15sections and notes; title1895–1897. Narrator Calvun (Segundo Jara), bilingual transcription and Spanish translation in Lenz.

Family & connections

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References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Primary textInternet Archive: Lenz Estudios araucanos original collected volumeResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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