Don't get me wrong: I love the law. It's a fascinating field, and the academic study of law holds a deep fascination. But it's not the only thing that fascinates me, and one concern I have is that as I get further into the profession, my rather eclectic magpie-nest of knowledge will get ever more narrowly-focused. I'm deeply resenting having to stop reading The Hebrew Goddess in order to focus on Property this week. Not because there's not interesting things in Property, but because the last two weeks have been a bit law-heavy.

I'm addicted to little bits of useless knowledge, things that spice up a world-view and keep one's wonder at the breadth of experience alive. In order to share a bit of this, every so often I'm going to post a "Study Break" on here: a link to some source of obscure trivia that won't help you at all with law, won't change your political perspective, but might just be a bit of fun. How will this differ from my other trivialities? Who knows--but maybe you'll enjoy it.

So for the first topic, let's try La Llorona, a bit of hispanic legend. The link above has various versions of the legend, with a fair degree of background. It's a sort of tying-together of ghost stories, each involving a few common features: a wronged woman, a murdered child, and in most cases a river. Many versions have much in common with Medea: the concept of killing one's child to spite a powerful but wrongful man. Another version of the story, from my old haunt of El Paso, can be read here.

In true magpie fashion, I tie my interest in this legend together with my recent commentary on Philip Pullman and his anti-Christian children's story, as the first version of the story I ever heard tied it in with a similar revolt against a Patriarchal figure. She figures prominently in children's tales from homeless shelters in Miami, where she has been merge with other figures from another pantheon. On the other hand, the mythological revisioning of these children is far less comforting than Pullman's.