The Mouras Encantadas: The Enchanted Maidens Under the Stones of Iberia
Scattered across Portugal and Galicia — thicker on the ground there than churches — stand the old stones: the dolmens the Portuguese call antas , the hill-forts the Galicians call castros , the standing stones, the strange rocks, the springs that never fail. Ask the old people of any parish who made them and who lives in them, and for a thousand years the answer has been the same: as mouras — the enchanted Moorish maidens. Under this dolmen, a moura; in that spring, a moura; inside the great rock on the ridge, a moura — each one supernaturally beautiful, each one combing her long hair (golden in most tellings, black as night in others) with a comb of pure gold, each one guarding a treasure vaster than any king's — and each one waiting . For the mouras are not spirits and not exactly fairies: they are, the tradition insists, maidens under encantamento — enchantment — imprisoned in the stones and waters since time out of mind, and every one of them can be freed. That is the unbear...