Encantada

Also Known As: Catalan for “enchanted woman”; plural encantades; Valencian also encantà; called reina mora, “Moorish queen”, in parts of the Valencian country; in Catalonia the same word is also one of the names of the dona d’aigua, the water-woman
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Catalan Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: An encantada is held inside a cave, a spring, a ravine or a ruin by a spell, keeps or stands beside a hidden treasure, and is let out only at a fixed moment such as the midnight of Saint John’s Eve.
Role in Mythos: She is the spellbound woman of Catalan and Valencian legend, the keeper of a place and its buried wealth, waiting for a stranger whose choice or courage would release her.
Relation to Humans: She offers the person who meets her a test, most often a choice between herself and her gold, and the right answer would free her and enrich them both. The people in the stories nearly always choose wrongly or run, and they go home cursed or exactly as poor as before.

Midnight on the eve of Saint John, one of the shortest nights of the year, and below the ruined castle of Font-rubí a small red lantern is moving toward the spring of Llinars. Whoever carries it has washing to do. By morning there may be white linen hung out near the water, cold and wet, and nobody in the village will claim it.

The washer is an encantada, an enchanted woman, and Font-rubí, in the Alt Penedès, tells how she became one. The village was dancing on the threshing floor of Can Fàbregues when the priest came through with the last sacrament for a dying neighbour, three altar boys with him ringing a small bell. The musicians stopped. Everyone knelt except one of the three daughters of the house, who went on dancing. A voice out of the sky condemned her to live as a snake among the castle ruins, let out one night a year to do her laundry, for as long as any descendant of Can Fàbregues remains. It is a long sentence for one dance.

The word is plain Catalan and it does two jobs that do not quite fit together. In the Pyrenees and other parts of Catalonia it is one more name for the water-women, the dones d’aigua, goges and aloges of the pools and torrents, who were never human and are nobody’s victims. The folklorist Joan Amades lists the encantades beside the others without any distinction: on the night of the twenty-third of June all of them bring out their washing, white as snow, and spread it at the mouths of their caves and beside the pools where they live. A mortal who gets away with one piece has happiness and wealth for life. One who is caught may be thrown into the water and drowned.

Two villages keep a more modest account. At Pessonada a man took a towel from the encantades who washed in the river of Vilanova, and as long as his house keeps it the house cannot be ruined, though it cannot grow very rich either. The encantades of the Forat de les Encantades at Salcedo lost a sheet to a man from Son, and told him in a fury that his house would neither rise nor fall. As curses go, a guaranteed middling income is hard to resent.

The other sense is the literal one, and it is what sets the encantada apart from the water-woman. Here she is a woman, often born mortal, fixed to a place by a spell that somebody else could break. The Valencian country, which calls these figures encantades or sometimes reines mores, Moorish queens, tells this kind of story about them, and its best known example has a ravine named after her.

The Barranc de l’Encantada runs down past Planes to join the Alcoi river near Beniarrés. In its gorge there is a round stone about five feet across, set like a shuttered window some twenty feet above the water. The botanist Cavanilles described it at the end of the eighteenth century and reported, with open irritation, what the local people said about it: that it was the mouth of a mine where the Moors had hidden their treasure and left a maiden enchanted, and that she comes out once every hundred years and goes back in the same day. He called it a fable unworthy of sensible men. The fable outlived him comfortably.

As it was still being told in Beniarrés at the start of this century, she appears to the first person she meets, well dressed, with gold combs in her hair, and asks a single question: which do you want more, me or the combs I am wearing? Had anyone ever answered “you”, the spell would have broken. A local poet of Planes, Miquelet d’Elena, set the scene in verse with a woodcutter and a silver necklace carrying a diamond and a ruby. He took the jewel. She told him he would be wretched for ever, that an enchanted palace stood in the high crag and its fortune would have been theirs to share, and at first light she was gone and he was no richer than before. The teller in Beniarrés added something in the woodcutter’s defence. The encantada is young, but she comes out wearing a very old and very ugly face, and some in the village simply call her the güela encantà, the enchanted granny.

Other places give her other shapes. In a cave in the Serra de l’Albir, known as the cave or mine of Ocre, a princess lives as a serpent, large, ugly and fearsome, and shows herself first as a beautiful woman to a shepherd named Pere Joan. He is to hold three pieces of blessed bread, one in each hand and the third between his teeth, and keep his nerve while she takes them. He managed the hands. When the snake reached for the bread in his mouth he ran, and she became a princess again just long enough to curse him with bad luck. At Pinyana, a castle rock above the river Gaià, charcoal burners told a summer visitor in the 1920s about a girl who followed a pine cone into a cave with her dog. An enchanter lived at the bottom. The pine cone turned to gold and girl and dog were held there. Her rescuer must go down with a skull in one hand and a lit candle in the other, and the dog savages anyone who comes for the gold instead of the girl. Several young men have gone in. None has come out. Some tellers add that the attempt must be made on Saint John’s night, or on the stroke of twelve.

How she came to be enchanted depends on where the question is asked. At Font-rubí it was a sin and at Pinyana an accident. In the Valencian tellings it was a Moor. The Encantada of Planes is said to have been the favourite of the Moor who held the district, who was displeased with her and turned her to stone. At Tavernes de Valldigna the Reina Mora of the castle of Alfandec threw herself from a window sooner than renounce her faith, and a spring rose where she fell. The people behind these stories were real. The Moriscos, Valencians of Muslim descent, were expelled in 1609, and legend after legend has them burying what they could not carry in the hope of coming back for it. Only two years later the chronicler Gaspar Escolano printed a tale from Benidoleig in which two Moriscos led two Christians into a cave at midnight, by torchlight, to lift an enchanted treasure, and were stopped by a woman in Morisco dress, spinning, who rounded on the guide in Arabic and asked why he was giving the treasure to his enemies. The Moorish princess of the caves is the previous owner as the next owners imagined her: rich, wronged and still on the premises.

What an encantada can do follows from what she keeps. She can make a house prosperous for good or pin it in place for generations, and a refusal earns a curse that sticks. She can change her body, from stone to flesh, from snake to princess, from girl to crone.

What she cannot do is leave. She is tied to one cave or spring and to a calendar, one night a year in Catalonia, one day a century at Planes, and every release requires a stranger to choose correctly without being told how. The strangers have a poor record. By the Beniarrés count, nobody has ever said “you”.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an encantada in Catalan folklore?

An encantada is an enchanted woman of Catalan and Valencian legend, bound by a spell to a cave, spring, ravine or ruin. She usually keeps or stands beside a hidden treasure and can only be released by a stranger who passes a test. In the Valencian country the same figures are sometimes called reines mores, or Moorish queens.

Is an encantada the same as a dona d’aigua or aloja?

Partly. In the Pyrenees and other parts of Catalonia, encantada is simply another name for the dona d’aigua, the water-woman who washes linen by night, and Joan Amades lists the two together. The word also has a narrower sense, strongest in Valencian legend, of a woman trapped by a spell and waiting to be freed, which is not a trait of the water-woman.

When does an encantada appear?

Catalan tellings tie the encantada to the night of Saint John, the twenty-third of June, when the encantades spread their white washing by their caves and pools. The encantada of Font-rubí comes out only at midnight on that feast to wash at the spring of Llinars. The Encantada of Planes appears just once every hundred years.

How do you break the spell on an encantada?

Each place has its own rule. At Planes the encantada asks whether a person wants her or her gold combs, and choosing her would free her. At the Albir a shepherd had to hold three pieces of blessed bread while a serpent took them, and at Pinyana the rescuer must enter the cave with a skull in one hand and a lit candle in the other. In each of these tellings the attempt fails.

Why are encantades called Moorish queens or princesses?

Valencian legends explain the encantada as a woman enchanted by a Moor, or as a Moorish queen, and place her beside treasure the Moors are said to have hidden. These stories grew up around the Moriscos, Valencians of Muslim descent who were expelled in 1609. A tale printed by Gaspar Escolano in 1611 already has a woman in Morisco dress guarding an enchanted treasure in the cave of Benidoleig.