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MEXICAN BORDER BALLADS
La madre de un adventurero'
Le pregunta al caporal:
-Oiga, d6me raz6n de mi
hijo,
Que no lo he visto ilegar.-
--Sefiora, le voy a decir
Pero no se vaya a llorar,
A su hijo le mat6 un novillo
En la puerta de un corral.
Trienta pesos alcanz6
Pero todo limitado,
Y trescientos puse yo
Pa' haberlo sepultado.
Todos los adventureros
Lo fueron a acompafiar,
Con sus sombreros en las
manos,
A verlo sepultar.
The mother of a driver
Asks the foreman:
"Listen, give me news of my
son,
As I have not seen him
arrive."
"Lady, I will tell you
But don't go and cry,
A steer killed your son
On the gate of a corral.
Thirty pesos were left over
But it was all owed,
And I put in three hundred
To have him buried.
All the drivers
Went to accompany him,
With their hats in their
hands,
To see him buried."
In the Corrido de Kansas we find in the thin line of con-
tinuity running from verse to verse the story of a group of
cowboys taking a herd of cattle up the trail, probably some-
time in the 1880's when the chief outlet for Texas cattle was
the trail to Kansas.
Around the beginning of the twentieth century the rail-
road had reached South Texas and had become a part of
the lives of the Mexican folk living in this region. Into the
stories and ballads that were heard around the stoves in
the ranch-houses there crept a note of modernism. Talk ceased
to be centered around the problems of driving cattle up the
trail; instead they spoke of loading cattle into railroad cars,
shipping schedules and sidings.
Modern industrialism had dipped far enough south to
touch this group of people heretofore confined to a pastoral
economy, and to affect their songs. Not only did the railroad
bring the world of the north to their doorstep, but it opened
up for them distances which previously had been looked upon
as impossible barriers. The great mad world of northern in-
dustrialism was now accessible, and although few took ad-
vantage of this new mode of travel, those who did so reacted
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