Headless Mule

Also Known As: Portuguese: Mula sem Cabeça; also called Mula de Padre, Mulher de Padre, Mula Preta and, in the interior, Burrinha
Region/Culture: South America
Mythos: Brazilian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Undead/Cursed Beings
Mythical Attributes: A woman who has taken a priest as a lover is turned every Thursday night into a headless mule, shod in iron or silver, with fire pouring from the place where her head should be.
Role in Mythos: She is the parish scandal let loose on the roads, a punishment that everyone in a Catholic farming settlement can hear coming.
Relation to Humans: She hunts nobody in particular, but she tramples and bites whatever stands in her road, and country wisdom said the safe response was to get indoors, lie face down and keep still until the noise had passed. Anyone willing to tear away her bridle or draw a single drop of her blood breaks the spell and hands the woman back her own life.

The sound comes first, and it is the wrong sound. Not the loose scuff of a horse walking a dirt road at night but a hard ringing gallop, iron striking packed earth, far too loud, far too fast, and going past the house and away and then somehow coming back. The dogs do not bark. Nobody in Goiás or Minas Gerais needed to be told what was outside on a Thursday night. They barred the door, put out the tallow, lay down on the boards with their faces to the floor, and waited for the neighing, which was not quite a neigh, and had a woman’s crying underneath it.

She is a mule with no head. In the place where the head should be there is fire, a torch of it, burning out of the neck and streaming back over her shoulders as she runs, and in some tellings the flame gouts from nostrils she no longer has. Her hide is brown, or black in the versions that want her darker. Her hooves are shod in iron, or in silver, which is what makes the racket so unbearable and so unmistakable. Strapped over the fire, absurdly, is a bridle. Someone has put a bit in a mouth that does not exist, and that single detail says more about the story than anything else in it, because the bridle is not there to steer her. It is there because she is owned.

Her origin is a sin, and the sin is always the same one. A woman has been intimate with a priest. For that she is cursed, and on Thursday nights, at the hour the week turns over into Friday, she loses her head and her name and goes out on four legs to run it off. She covers seven towns before dawn in the standard version, or seven parishes, wrecking what she meets on the way. At the third crowing of the cock the fire goes out and the woman is standing there in the road, exhausted, bruised, sometimes bleeding, wholly herself again and expected to walk home before the light finds her.

The legend crossed the Atlantic. Its bones are Iberian and medieval, carried into Brazil by Portuguese and Spanish colonists and put down in the country’s rural interior, where it took root and spread into Goiás, Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Paraná and Mato Grosso, and out across the Spanish-speaking republics under other names, Mula Ánima in Argentina, Alma Mula, Mula sin cabeza. Luís da Câmara Cascudo, who spent a life mapping these things, offered the simplest explanation for why the animal is a mule at all: the priest rode one. The mule was the clergyman’s mount on the parish rounds, the animal tied at his gate, the animal seen with him. From there it is a very short step in the popular imagination from the priest’s mule to the priest’s woman, and then to a woman who is a mule. And a mule is a hybrid, a crossbred thing that cannot breed. It was a hard little joke to make of a woman.

None of this was abstract. Clerical concubinage was a fact of Portuguese life long before it was a fact of Brazilian life, common enough that the medieval crown legislated against it and that pardon letters survive from the women themselves, the barregãs and mancebas of clergymen, petitioning for relief from penalties they had incurred simply by living with the men they lived with. The Church demanded celibacy of its priests and the priests, being men in villages, frequently did not manage it. Somebody had to carry that. The priest is never punished in these stories.

So the fire was pointed at the woman, and the story went to work. Parents in the settlements told it to daughters, and it was not subtle: stay away from the padre, stay away from all of them, or the whole district will hear what you are on Thursday night. It made the girl the monster and the noise the verdict. Whether anyone truly believed she was out there is another question. The hoofbeats were reported for centuries, and reported by people who had barred their doors.

There is a way to end it, and this is where the legend turns strange and briefly merciful. If somebody stands in the road as she comes, and gets a hand to the bridle and rips it off, the curse breaks. Or he can prick her, once, with a new pin that has never been used, and draw blood, and one drop is enough. The mule shudders, the fire dies, and a naked woman drops into the dust at his feet, bleeding from a wound the size of a pinhead, and she is free. She is also, at that moment, entirely exposed to whoever it is that has just saved her, which is not a comfortable thought and is probably not meant to be. Countrymen who lacked the nerve had a fallback: hide the teeth and the fingernails, keep the face down, offer her nothing hard or bright to strike at, and let her go by.

Her power is all momentum and terror, which is what a punishment is supposed to be. She is faster than any horse and stronger than she has any business being, she cannot be outrun, and the fire she carries is not a torch anybody can put out. But she is also a creature on a very short leash. She cannot leave her one night. She cannot cross the third cockcrow. She cannot resist iron and a steady hand, and one small deliberate act of blood undoes her permanently, which is a curious weakness for a monster and a very old comment on how these sentences were understood: the curse is not the woman’s nature, it is a thing laid on her, and things laid on can be lifted off. Come the daylight she has a house to walk back to, and a week to get through, and next Thursday.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Headless Mule?

The Headless Mule, or Mula sem Cabeça, is a creature of Brazilian folklore: a woman who has had a romantic or sexual relationship with a Catholic priest and is cursed to turn into a headless mule with flames burning from her neck. The transformation happens on Thursday nights and lasts until the cock crows, when she becomes a woman again.

Why does the woman turn into a mule?

The curse falls on her for being a priest’s lover. The folklorist Luís da Câmara Cascudo argued that the animal is a mule because mules were what parish priests rode, so the mule was the animal most closely associated with a clergyman in rural Brazil. The story was also used to frighten young women away from priests, which is how it was told in the settlements of the interior.

What does the Headless Mule look like?

She has the body of a mule, usually brown or black, shod in iron or silver horseshoes that make a deafening gallop. In place of a head there is fire, and despite having no mouth she wears a bridle and still neighs, a sound often described as carrying a woman’s cry inside it.

How do you break the curse of the Headless Mule?

Tear the bridle from her, or prick her with a pin that has never been used before and draw a single drop of blood. Either act ends the enchantment for good and returns the woman to her human form. Anyone unwilling to try was advised to lie face down, hide their teeth and fingernails and stay silent until she had passed.

Where does the legend of the Headless Mule come from?

Its roots are in Iberian folklore and it was carried to Brazil by Portuguese and Spanish colonists, taking hold most strongly in the rural interior, particularly Goiás, Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Paraná and Mato Grosso. Related versions exist across Latin America under names such as Mula Ánima, Alma Mula and Mula sin cabeza.