How the Water Lilies Came in the San Marcos River1
[This sentimental legend is not an invention of Bella French Swisher’s, who was given to turning legends to literary uses, but not to manufacturing them. I have heard of it from a lady who grew up on the San Marcos and was familiar with the story of the Indian lovers forty-five years ago. It is akin to another Indian legend of the same flower, Castalia elegans, according to which a star maiden fell in love with the red people of the earth and came down to live among them in the form of a water lily. This latter legend is quoted from the Grolier Society’s The Book of Knowledge, by Kate Peel Anderson in the Houston Chronicle, September 16, 1923, page 8. The San Marcos version is probably appropriated from some other stream.—Editor.]
All pearly and bright, by the day and the night,
(Beautiful, beautiful river)
Reflecting the sky and the clouds passing by,
Flows the San Marcos forever.
The lilies arise in their damp paradise,
And they open their petals in glory;
But on every leaf is written, in brief,
Such a sweet little Indian story!
Far back in a day when the red men held sway,
On the banks of the beautiful river,
An Indian maid of the world grew afraid,
And gave back her sweet life to the Giver.
A princess was she of a royal degree.
Who had loved far beneath her high station;
She suffered the blame, the sorrow and shame,
Like a maid of some wealthier nation.
But her heart-strings were torn, when one bright April morn,
He was slain—her most worshipful lover.
On the green banks he lay, all the long, weary day,
With only the sky for a cover.
But just at the night, when the star-beams were bright,
Her despair gave her power to sever
The terrible bands, that imprisoned her hands,
And she fled to the banks of the river,
To the spot where he lay ’mid the shadows so gray,
Colder still than the bright pearly water.
Just a prayer and a breath, and they met there in death,
The slain lover and the chieftain’s mad daughter.
But the breath and the prayer, as a seedling fell there,
Though the waters were ever so chilly.
They discovered her not, but morn found on the spot
Where she died, a white water-lily.
Since then, waxen and white, in the sun’s golden light,
And as well in the evening glooming,
May ever be seen, ’mid their foliage green
In the water, the white lilies blooming.
And e’er since that day, tradition doth say,
Have the Indians shunned the fair river;
Though pearly and bright, by day and by night,
Flows the San Marcos forever.
Notes
1 Reprinted from The American Sketch Book (Texas Pioneer Magazine), Vol. I (Vol. IV), 1879, p. 146; “republished by request” in Vol. II (Vol. V), 1880, pp. 91–92.