She then threatens the serpent with the water she is about to use to wash the eye.
“Jade-Skirted One” is the Nahuatl name for the female water deity: The water here is
being treated as a supernatural force.Well now, please come forth,
1 Serpent,
2 Serpent,
3 Serpent,
4 Serpent:
Why do you harm
The enchanted mirror,
The enchanted eye?
Lie down I know not where,
Remove yourself to I know not where.
But if you do not obey me,
I shall call the Jade-Skirted One,
The Jade-Bloused One:
For she will scatter you,
She will disperse you,
Upon the plain
She will leave you dispersed. (Coe and Whittaker 1982:234)In a spell for setting broken bones, a curer named Martín de Luna cast himself
in the role of the god Quetzalcoatl. According to a myth recorded in the sixteenth
century, this god had stolen one or more bones from the Lord of the Underworld
with which to create the human beings of the present age of creation. In one version
of the myth, quail startle the fleeing god and he stumbles, breaking the bones. The
spell seems to allude to such an episode:I am the Priest,
I am the Plumed Serpent,
I go to the Land of the Dead,
I go to the Beyond,
I go to the Nine Lands of the Dead;
There I shall snatch up
The bone of the Land of the Dead.
They have sinned—
The priests,
The dust-birds;
They have shattered something,
They have broken something,244 UNIT 2 COLONIAL MESOAMERICA