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Saci Pererê
The
Saci (IPA: [sa.'si]) is arguably the most popular character in
Brazilian folklore. He is a one-legged black or mulatto youngster with holes in the palms of his hands, who smokes a
pipe and wears a magical red cap that enables him to disappear and reappear wherever he wishes (usually in the middle of a
dust devil). Considered an annoying prankster in most parts of Brazil, and a potentially dangerous and malicious creature in others, he will nevertheless grant wishes to anyone who manages to trap him or steal his magic cap.
There are several variants of the myth, including:
- Saci Pererê. black as coal.
- Saci Trique. mulatto and more benign.
- Saci Saçurá, with red eyes.
Saci Pererê is also the name of a Brazilian
cocktail consisting of 1/4 cup of
cachaça and 3
tablespoons of
honey, which is said to be good for the
common cold.
Contents
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[edit] Powers, weaknesses, and habits
An incorrigible prankster, the Saci will not cause major harm, but there is no little harm that he won't do. He will hide children's toys, set farm animals loose, tease dogs, and curse
chicken eggs preventing them from hatching. In the kitchen, the Saci would spill all salt, sour the milk, burn the bean stew, and drop flies into the soup. If a
popcorn kernel fails to pop, it is because the Saci cursed it. Given half a chance, he will dull the
seamstress's needles, hide her thimbles, and tangle her sewing threads. If he sees a nail lying on the ground, he will turn it with the point up. In short, anything that goes wrong in the house, or outside it may be confidently blamed on the Saci.
Besides disappearing or becoming invisible (often with only his red cap and the red glow of his pipe still showing), the Saci can transform himself into a
Matitaperê or
Matita Pereira, an elusive bird whose melancholic song seems to come from nowhere. One can escape a pursuing Saci by crossing a water
stream: the Saci will not dare to cross, for then he will lose all his powers. Another way is to drop ropes full of knots; the Saci will then be compelled to stop and undo the knots. One can also try to appease him by leaving behind some
cachaça, or some
tobacco for his pipe.
He is fond of juggling
embers or other small objects and letting them fall through the holes on his palms. An exceedingly nimble fellow, the lack of his right leg does not prevent him from bareback-riding a horse, and sitting cross-legged while puffing on his pipe (a feat comparable to the
Headless Mule's gushing fire from the nostrils).
Every
dust devil, says the legend, is caused by the spin-dance of an invisible Saci. One can capture him by throwing into the dust devil a
rosary made of separately
blessed prayer beads, or by pouncing on it with a
sieve [1]. With care, the captured Saci can be coaxed to enter a dark glass bottle, where he can be imprisoned by a cork with a cross marked on it. He can also be enslaved by stealing his cap, which is the source of his power. However, depending on the treatment he gets from his master, an enslaved Saci who regains his freedom may become either a trustworthy guardian and friend, or a devious and terrible enemy.
[edit] Origins of the legend
While some claim that the Saci myth originated in
Europe in the 13th century, it probably derives from the
Yaçi-Yaterê of
Tupi-Guarani mythology, a magic one-legged child with fire-red hair who would spell-bind people and break the forest's silence with his loud shouts and whistles. He was originally a creature of the night, and indeed the
Yaçi (ja'si) means "Moon" in
Old Tupi.
This indigenous character was appropriated and transformed in the 18th century by the
African slaves who had been brought in large numbers to Brazil. Farm slaves would tell Saci stories to amuse and frighten the children, black and white. In this process the creature became black, his red hair metamorphosed into a red cap, and like the African elders who usually told the tales he came to be always smoking his clay-and-reed pipe. His name mutated into various forms, such as
Saci Taperê and
Sá Pereira (a common
Portuguese name), and eventually
Saci Pererê.
His red cap may have been inspired on the
Phrygian cap which was at one time worn by Portuguese peasants. The Saci-Pererê concept shows some
syncretism with
Christian elements: he bolts away when faced with crosses, leaving behind a sulphurous smell classical attributes of the
Devil in Christian folklore.
The concepts of imprisoning a supernatural being in a bottle by a magically marked cork, and of forcing him to grant wishes in return of his liberty, have obvious parallels in the story of
Aladdin from the
Arabian Nights. This may be more than just a coincidence, since many slaves were
Muslims and thus presumably familiar with the Arabian tales. Moreover, the occupation of parts of the
Portuguese territory (namely in the south) by the Muslim
Moors, between the years 711 and 1249, provides another possible path for Arabian influence on the Saci legend.
[edit] Saci in art and entertainment
The character remains quite popular in present-day urban culture, mainly due to the immensely popular children's book
O Saci by
Monteiro Lobato (1932).
In the 1960s, the one-legged gnome by now "domesticated" into a prankish but inoffensive and lovable creature was chosen by premier Brazilian cartoonist
Ziraldo as the leading character of his comics magazine,
O Saci Pererê. This original publication, the first of its genre to feature entirely "national" characters, was short-lived, but paved the way for other more successful Brazilian cartoonists like
Angeli,
Laerte, and
Mauricio de Sousa.
Tom Jobim's hit song
Águas de Março mentions the
Matita Pereira.
[2]
Nei Lopes's samba song entitled
Fumo de Rolo tells a tale of a fisherman being accosted by the sací while collecting reeds in the forest. The sací demands some tobacco for his pipe, but the poor fellow has lost his.
[edit] The Saci in science
A novel species of
dinosaur, discovered in 2001 at
Agudo (southern Brazil), was named
sacisaur because the
fossil skeleton was missing one leg
[1].
The names of the Brazilian
satellites SACI-1 and
SACI-2 were
backronyms on the character's name.
Four
retrotransposons in the
DNA of the
fluke Schistosoma mansoni were named Saci-1, Saci-2, Saci-3, and Perere, for their ability to jump around in the parasite's
genome [2]
[edit] See also
[edit]