I consider the poem one of undoubted antiquity and
purely native in thought and language.
The destruction of the Mexican state was heralded
by a series of omens and prodigies which took place
at various times during the ten years preceding the
arrival of Cortes. They are carefully recorded
by Sahagun, in the first chapter of the 12th book
of his history. They included a comet, or “smoking
star,” as these were called in Nahuatl, and
a bright flame in the East and Southeast, over the
mountains, visible from midnight to daylight, for
a year. This latter occurred in 1509. The
song before us is a boding chant, referring to such
prognostics, and drawing from them the inference that
the existence of Mexico was doomed. It was probably
from just such songs that Sahagun derived his information.
1. toztliyan, I suppose from tozquitl,
the singing voice, in the locative; literally, “the
quechol in the place of sweet-singing.”
2. iquiapan, from i, possessive prefix,
quiauatl, door, entrance, house, pan,
in.
5. An obscure verse; tequantepec, appears
to be a textual error; tequani, a ravenous
beast, from qua to eat; tepec, a mountain;
but tequantepehua occurring twice later in the
poem induces the belief tequani should be taken
in its figurative sense of affliction, destruction,
and that tepec is an old verbal form.
7. Xochitecatl, “one who cares for flowers,”
is said by Sahagun to have been the name applied to
a woman doomed to sacrifice to the divinities of the
mountains (Hist. Nueva Espana, Lib.
II, cap. 13).
8. amaxtecatl, or amoxtecatl, as the
MS. may read, from amoxtli, a book.
This seems to be a song of victory to celebrate an
attack upon Atlixco by the ruler of Tezcuco, the famous
Nezahualpilli. This monarch died in 1516, and
therefore the song must antedate this period, if it
is genuine. It has every intrinsic evidence of
antiquity, and I think may justly be classed among
those preserved from a time anterior to the Conquest.
According to the chronologies preserved, the attack
of Nezahualpilli upon Atlixco was in the year XI tochtli,
which corresponds to 1490, two years before the discovery
by Columbus (see Orozco y Berra, Hist. Antigua
de Mexico, Tom. III, p. 399).
My MS. closes with a Christian song in the style of
the ancient poetry. It is valuable as indicating
the linguistic differences between these later productions
of the sixteenth century and those earlier ones, such
as XXVI, which I have not hesitated to assign to an
epoch before the Spaniards landed upon the shores of
New Spain.
