Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

The image that returned alone to the marsh tree

Almonte, Huelva (Spain) (15th century)

In the heart of the Huelva marshes, in a wooded area called La Rocina, tradition places a discovery at the beginning of the 15th century. A hunter—a resident of Almonte, according to the most widespread version—was crossing the undergrowth when his dogs began barking at an area of thick brambles, not daring to enter. The man made his way through the thorns and found, on the trunk of a tree, a beautiful image of the Virgin and Child, miraculously intact despite years of exposure to the elements.

He carried it to Almonte to make it known. But the journey was long, and the hunter stopped to rest and fell asleep. When he awoke, the image had disappeared. He retraced his steps to La Rocina and there he found it again, in the same spot in the woods where he had first discovered it. He told the priest and the neighbors; they all came, verified that the Virgin was still there, undamaged, and understood the sign: the Mother wanted her home precisely in that marsh. They built a hermitage on the site of the discovery, using—according to tradition—the very trunk of the tree as a pedestal.

We must distinguish between affection and rigor. The entire story of the hunter, the dogs, the tree, the dream, and the return of the image is a pious tradition, widely disseminated and cherished, but it is not documented as a fact in contemporary sources. What is documented, however, is solid: Alfonso X the Wise ordered the construction of a hermitage dedicated to Santa María de las Rocinas between 1270 and 1284; the Book of Hunting of Alfonso XI already mentions the mountain "of Rocinas"; in 1653 the Virgin was proclaimed Patron Saint of Almonte; and on June 8, 1919, she was canonically crowned by a bull of Benedict XV.

Even the sweet name "del Rocío" has its own legend: a great drought in 1653, a local resident praying for rain, and water falling upon the image like dew from heaven. The patronage of that year is documented; the "dew of the rain" as the exact origin of the title is a devotional tradition. Regarding the connection with the Rosary, let us be cautious: there is no record of a specific foundational link between El Rocío and the Holy Rosary, although the Hail Mary, as in all Marian devotion, resonates in the lives of the Rocío brotherhoods who make their pilgrimage to the White Dove every Pentecost.