"These legends of the City of Mexico are of my finding, not of my making. They are genuine folk-stories. Each one of them is a true folk-growth from some obscure curious or tragical ancient matter that, taking hold upon the popular imagination, has had built up from it among the people a story satisfying to the popular heart.
"Many of them simply are historical traditions gone wrong… distorted by the sheer perversions of successive generations of narrators through the passing centuries. Others of them have for their kernel some unaccounted-for strange happening that has been explained variously by various imaginative people."
- Thomas A. Janvier