Song LI — The War-Fire Flower
Song LI opens the Quauhacayotl — the Eagle Song section of the Cantares Mexicanos. The genre header "Quauhacayotl" (literally "the eagle manner" or "after the fashion of the eagle") marks a decisive shift in the manuscript: the Chalca trilogy of war, flower, and orphan songs has ended, and the great war-song cycle begins.
In six compressed sections, a warrior-singer is invoked to sing and grieve — even in the place of abundance, sorrow is the obligation. God's flowers turn golden; eagle warriors and macuahuitl bearers come draped in quetzal feathers, scattering sustenance-flowers for Quauhténcatl and Tozquecholtzin; a kinsman arrives from Chiapan; the singer speaks from his home at Nine Mountain, where the sun goes to set. Then the war-fire flower — tlachinolxochitl, the great Nahua metaphor for war — unfurls and foams. The obligation is named: the arrow and the shield. The place is named: Cholula and Huexotzinco. The singer offers himself.
Song LI occupies folios 36r through the beginning of 36v, sections 684 through 689. Nahuatl source text accessed from the UNAM TEMOA digital platform (temoa.iib.unam.mx). Translated directly from Classical Nahuatl by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
Quauhacayotl.
[section 684]
Come, sing!
Bright Sun, Shield-Bearer, Singer —
in the maguey-land,
come feel sorrow.
Yao ayiahue maya huichale ocnale maço çeya huichile ele.
[section 685]
They turn golden —
with this I see: they are your flowers, God!
My heart rejoices.
Let me taste jade — I, a Chichimec!
Perhaps from here,
from the flower-land,
he comes bringing them.
My heart rejoices —
he scatters them,
he parts them with his hands.
[section 686]
And they, the eagle-warriors,
and they, the macuahuitl-wielders —
they come draped in quetzal-feathers,
they come scattering sustenance-flowers —
for Quauhténcatl, for Tozquecholtzin —
one is their destiny.
[section 687]
O Chiapan, O Chiapan!
From there comes the noble one,
my kinsman —
how does he come to see it?
How does he come to hear it?
He who lies beside us.
[section 688]
There is my home.
There I speak —
upon the painted grass,
at Nine Mountain,
where the sun goes to set.
[section 689]
Now unfurling,
now foaming forth —
the precious flower,
the war-fire flower!
Now our obligation:
the arrow, the shield —
here at Cholula,
at Huexotzinco.
I offer myself.
Colophon
Song LI of the Cantares Mexicanos, folios 36r–36v, sections 684–689 (six sections). The first Quauhacayotl — Eagle Song — opening the war-song genre section of the manuscript.
The Quauhacayotl header marks a turning point in the Cantares Mexicanos. The first fifty songs encompass flower songs, grief songs, historical songs, and the Chalca war-orphan-flower trilogy. Song LI announces what comes next: the eagle. The shift is immediate — the first word after the genre header is an imperative: xoncuica, come sing.
The song's central image is the tlachinolxochitl — the war-fire flower, literally "the flower of the burning field." This is the great Nahua metaphor for war. When paired with the quetzalaxochitl (precious flower), it creates the difrasismo in xochitl in tlachinolli — the flower and the burning, beauty and destruction — the Nahua understanding of war as both horror and offering. The other great difrasismo appears in §689: mitl chimalla (the arrow, the shield) — the standard Nahuatl kenning for warfare.
Named figures: Quauhténcatl and Tozquecholtzin (section 686) — warriors for whom the eagle- and macuahuitl-bearers scatter sustenance-flowers. Chiucnauhtecatepetl (section 688) — Nine Mountain, the singer's home in the west where the sun sets.
Translated directly from Classical Nahuatl via the UNAM TEMOA transcription of the Cantares Mexicanos (MS 1628 bis, Biblioteca Nacional de México). Lexical verification via Molina's Vocabulario en Lengua Castellana y Mexicana (1571) and Karttunen's Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (1983). No existing English translation was consulted or followed. The León-Portilla Spanish translation was used solely as a cross-reference after independent Nahuatl parsing. This is the first free literary English translation of this song.
Good Works Translation by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Scribed by Xochitl.
🌲
Source Text
Cantares Mexicanos, folios 36r–36v, sections 684–689. Classical Nahuatl text from the UNAM TEMOA digital transcription. Footnote markers from the León-Portilla critical edition removed.
Quauhacayotl.
§684 Yn ma xoncuica tlauhtonatiuh chimale cuicani meetla tla xonicnotlamati yao ayiahue maya huichale ocnale maço çeya huichile ele
§685 Yn coçana ypan aya a Yca ya a niquita ya moxochiuh Dios noyoliool paquini huanca no huee yoo man chalchihuitl nicmati a nichichimecatl yio ya ye mach a nicaan a xochitla quitquitihuitz noyolliol paquini huan çann o hue yoo yyaoo aye aya auh y yehua ynhuaaya ya quimoaya ya quimaxelo ayoo
§686 Auh in yehuan quaahuaque auh y yeehua maquahueque in conquetzalmantihuitze contonacaxochimoyauhtihuitze aya Quauhtencatli a Tozquecholtzin yce ytonal a yao
§687 Chiappan oo Chiappan o ompa ye huitz yn yectli nomache quen quihualitta queen quihualycaqui tonahuac onoc o etcetera
§688 Nee nochaa nee nitlatoa o çaca cuilolpa Chiucnauhtecatepetl a ycatya tonatiuh yaquian an o
§689 Ye mimiliuhtiuh ye popoçontiuh quetzalaxochitl i tlachinolxochitl aya in axca i ye tonahuatil mitl chimalla aya nican Cholollan ye Huexotzinco tla ninoma'mana O
Source Colophon
Source text from the Cantares Mexicanos (MS 1628 bis), Biblioteca Nacional de México, sixteenth century. Transcription accessed via the UNAM TEMOA digital platform (temoa.iib.unam.mx). The manuscript transcription is made available by the Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas, UNAM, under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Reproduced for non-commercial archival use under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
🌲