May Day Eve by Nick Joaquin: Summary, Themes and Ending
Quick answer: May Day Eve by Nick Joaquin (1947): summary with the ending, Agueda and Badoy at the mirror, the devil and the witch, how the two tellings meet, themes and craft notes.
At midnight on May Day Eve in an old Manila house, a girl named Agueda goes alone to the mirror with a candle and speaks the charm that is supposed to show her the man she will marry. What appears is Badoy Montiya, who has followed her down; she bites his hand; and forty years later each of them will describe that night to a grandchild as a meeting with the devil, or with a witch.
Nick Joaquin (1917 to 2004) published May Day Eve in 1947, and it is the most anthologised of all his stories. He is in copyright, so this page summarises and analyses without quoting. It is set in the 1840s.
The story in brief
A party in the Montiya house has run all night. Upstairs, the old servant Anastasia tells the girls of the mirror rite: stand before a mirror at midnight on May Day Eve, holding a candle, say the words, and you will see the face of your future husband, or the devil. Agueda, defiant, goes down to the sala alone. In the mirror she sees Badoy Montiya, who has crept in behind her. He seizes her, she bites his hand, and they part furious and disturbed.
Years later Agueda tells her small daughter the story, saying she saw the devil, and describing him with Badoy's features and the scar of her bite. Later still, Badoy, an old man, catches his grandson at the same mirror and tells him he once saw a witch there, and describes Agueda. He learns that Agueda, now dead, had called him the devil. Alone at the end, Badoy weeps for the girl in the mirror and for the bitter marriage that followed.
The characters
Themes and meaning
Exam readings name love turned to hatred, the persistence of superstition, and the way memory rewrites a single night into legend. Joaquin sets it in the Spanish colonial 1840s, and the mirror rite carries the folk Catholicism of that world.
The sharper observation is that both tellings are true. Agueda did see a devil and Badoy did see a witch, because the story shows what they became to each other. The mirror was not lying; it was showing the marriage in advance.
The craft
The turn is Badoy's discovery of Agueda's version, which lets two private legends meet and cancel. Joaquin frames the night twice, once through each teller, so the reader holds both descriptions and sees one couple.
The technique worth stealing is the twice-told incident. Narrate one event through two rival memories separated by decades, and place the moment they collide near the end. A story can carry a whole marriage in the distance between two descriptions of the same face.
For class and essays
What writers can take from this
- Set the story in the 1840s and name the folk rite.
- Argue that both tellings are accurate accounts of the marriage.
- Use the two grandchildren as the structural frame in any essay.
- For your own fiction, narrate one night through two memories decades apart.
- Let the collision of the two versions be the climax.
- Describe a lover in the language of legend to show what love became.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which one charged encounter is recounted twice, by each participant to a child, many years later and in incompatible terms, and end at the moment one of them hears the other's version.
Questions
What is the summary of May Day Eve?
On May Day Eve in the 1840s, Agueda tries a mirror charm to see her future husband and sees Badoy Montiya, who has followed her. They marry and grow to hate each other. Decades later she tells her daughter she saw the devil; he tells his grandson he saw a witch, then learns her version and weeps.
What is the theme of May Day Eve?
Love that turns to bitterness, and memory that rewrites a night into legend. The mirror shows the truth of the marriage before it happens.
Who is Anastasia in May Day Eve?
The old servant who tells the girls about the midnight mirror rite and warns them they may see the devil instead of a husband.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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