Week 7 Storytelling: Escaping the Hacienda

Once long ago, in a little town that lay in the midst of a valley in middle Mexico, there lived a wealthy family in a hacienda. The owner of the hacienda was a well-respected man throughout the region and the people of the town treated him as royalty. The hacienda provided the town with work and food for the families so it was no surprise that the people of the town were loyal to the owner and would inform him of any news in his interest.

One day, a little boy and his father were walking next to a stream just outside of the town in search of deer tracks. As his father was a little more focused on the tracks, the little boy spotted two horses and quickly let his father know. They both noticed that the horses were not just any ordinary horses, but horses of the hacienda. The father of the boy knew that something was out of the normal since the horses were never ridden to this part of the town. They approached the horses and glanced over beyond them to see the daughter of the hacienda owner wrapped around the arms of a peasant showing affection to one another.

In great astonishment, the father quickly sent his son to the hacienda to deliver the news to the owner. Once the boy got to the hacienda he started shouting for the owner to come out while trying to gasp for air. Once the owner received the news of his daughter, he was greatly depressed and disappointed but in fury at the same time. He decided to wait for the two to get back to the hacienda as the sun was already coming down. They arrived shortly after and the peasant got a hold of both horses to take them back to their stalls. The owner stopped the peasant as soon as he started his walk to the stalls and ordered some of his men to capture him.

Everyone from the hacienda knew what was to happen to the peasant. The number one rule that the owner established whenever the hacienda was made, was that no peasant or villager would be allowed to converse with his family without his consent moreover have any relationship with any member of his family. The punishment for disobeying the owner’s laws was a death sentence. The men placed the peasant against a wall and had three gunmen in front of him ready to receive the execution order from the owner. The owner’s daughter quickly ran to the peasant and latched onto him as to protect him from the gunmen and pleaded to her dad that if he would just banish him from the town, she would accept any man he choose for her to marry.

The owner quickly became delighted by hearing her say this as he had already a person in mind from a very wealthy family. He agreed to banish the peasant from the town and even let him take the worst horse from the stables, for he wanted the peasant to go far away. The daughter of the owner was relieved at seeing the peasant go free because earlier in the day whenever they were together, they had planned to escape the very same night.

When the night came around and the moon was shining bright as can be, the daughter of the owner gathered her sheets and tied them together from her room balcony. As she threw down the end of the sheets, she saw her peasant waiting at the bottom on top of his horse. She mounted the horse and they rode of together, in search of a new life together.

By the time her family from the hacienda noticed she was missing, it was already mid-day and they were long gone.

(Hacienda in Mexico: Wikimedia Commons)

Author's Note:

This story follows the same principle as the story "The Lovers' Leap" by Katherine Neville Fleeson. Both of the stories consists of a daughter choosing to run away with her lover due to the negligence of consent by the father of the daughter. In the original story the setting is in Asia, and I decided to make mine in Mexico. There are numerous stories that my father and other friends have told me where the father does not approve of a certain individual for his daughter, and the man ends up taking her away without consent. It is something that to this day still happens so that is why I decided to base the story in Mexico. In the original story the couple is forced to go without seeing each other for a long time until the father of the girl is convinced that she has forgotten her lover so he makes a feast for her planning to find her a husband. During the feast she ends up running away with the boy but they are spotted so the father and the men chase them onto the edge of the cliff. Thinking they have captured the couple, they both decide to jump with the horse over a cliff and die together. I wanted to switch the ending up to where the couple lives on together and escape successfully so that is what I did in my story. 

Bibliography:

"The Lovers' Leap" from Folklore of Laos by Katherine Neville Fleeson. Web Source.