LIFE IN THE SERTAO...

 LIFE IN THE SERTAO...

I don't change my ranch

liana tie

For a house in the city

Not even a bungalow

I live in the desert

No living neighbor

It only makes me happy when it sinks

There for those outback

It's the Inhambu Shitã

And the xororó

And so begins one of the most beautiful classics of country music, from a time that will never come back. When the caboclo got up when night was still late, he drank his little black coffee with a little corn flour, took his hoe, put it on his shoulder and went happily to the fields. Sometimes he walked two or three leagues until he reached his place of work. He met his workmates, they shared the blocks where they went to work and the sun didn't even think about rising over the horizon when they began their daily struggle. Joyful, they sang the songs they invented at the time, or that they had heard at the last church fair. From time to time one of them would take a violin along with the hoe. And when they stopped for a little lunch, around nine o'clock in the morning, they started singing, like birds thanking the heavens for another day. Yes, life was good for those who wanted it to be good. If someone got sick, the city doctor was unreachable. Then the benzedeiras went into action, with their prayers and mandingas, to cure the illnesses of their patients. And they could be children, adults, elderly people. They were all under the care of the healers, who had contact with the upstairs and were therefore able to solve most cases with their herbs and prayers. There was always a healer with more fame than the others, and at his door there were kilometric queues of people who needed his help...

When the evening arrived, and the caboclo considered his day over, as he had managed to complete the entire block entrusted to him, it was not uncommon for him to get together with his neighbors and they would enjoy themselves into the night singing, telling tales... dinner ready... usually a little rice and beans, a fish caught in the stream or some game caught when they went to get firewood... if the game was a little more robust, it was usually the man who had gone to get it ... the elders gathered the children, who in fact no longer considered themselves children, and began to tell stories as old as time itself, stories of when animals still spoke... when commoners defeated dragons and managed to marry princesses and lived happily ever after. They were oral traditions, passed from father to son and, as they say, who tells a story, adds a point. If the narrator had a gift for telling stories, he illustrated them so much that you could dream with your eyes open, you could travel through the green meadows on the back of a beautiful steed... and we could see the water mother offering her treasures for the chosen, those whom she deemed worthy of her gift.

Stories of the ox-tatá, headless mule, werewolf, witch... were the most natural thing in the world... these beings lived side by side with mere mortals. You see, "our" werewolf has nothing to do with the classic horror movie werewolves. We can say that they were more... tame! And besides, they were the equivalent of witches, who had nothing to do with the witches we know in classic fairy tales. But what do you mean, you ask me... I explain. In the interior of São Paulo, mainly in the Paraíba Valley, at the foot of the Serra da Mantiqueira, traditions were a little... different... from what we usually think they were. For example, marriage... for the caboclo, civil marriage had no value before God. The only valid marriage was the religious one, when the couple appeared before the vicar and had their union blessed by him. But there were some caveats... when the couple left the church, towards the party their peers had prepared for them, they couldn't look back towards the church. If they did, it was certain that unhappiness would be the couple's eternal companion... when the child was born, it would have to be baptized immediately, so that it would be protected against the attacks of the witches, who loved to suck the blood from the navel and from the baby's feet. newborns... and where did these witches come from, you ask me... well, usually they were the seventh child of a group of girls. That is, if the couple had had seven girls, the seventh would be born with the curse and every night of the full moon she would transform and go out into the countryside, looking for a house where there was a newborn to attack. How to prevent the girl from being hit by the curse? The eldest daughter of the family was supposed to baptize the youngest, becoming her mother's bedpan. Ah, werewolves had exactly the same origin. They were always the couple's seventh child, and in order for them not to be cursed, the eldest son had to baptize the youngest, becoming his parents' godfather. For some reason the werewolf was calmer than his witch counterpart. While the witches attacked mainly, but not exclusively, infants, invading their homes on moonlit dawn, werewolves were the terror of the... chicken coop. His favorite meal was chicken entrails and their droppings. After reveling in such an unusual feast during the night, both witches and werewolves would wash their stomachs, taking a cauldron of warm water, to vomit everything they had ingested during their nocturnal wanderings...

And the oxen? Well, these were those couples who got together... got together, as they used to say... and for some reason didn't receive the church's blessing, living in sin. And so, on full moon nights, the couple would transform into the creature, which was basically a ball of fire cutting through the skies in the craziest trajectories. The horses in head? They had a similar origin. But it was a little more complicated. The headless horse was created when two cronies... the man and the woman, of course... came together in a carnal relationship. Because it was considered the most sacred relationship that could exist between people, when an outside person was invited to be part of a family nucleus, baptizing someone's child and becoming a second father... or mother... of the child , if that person were to break this sacred bond by getting sexually involved with the person whose godfather, or godmother, the punishment for both would come on horseback, literally. The couple was condemned to ride on full moon nights and haunt the people of the community. Encountering a tata ox or a headless horse on a full moon night in the wastelands of life was a death sentence, without appeal. Both the one and the other killed their victims with the fire of their sin...

It's seven hours and thirty minutes into this beautiful and wonderful Tuesday that is starting. Thermometers are showing 23ºC right now, with the possibility of reaching 30, like yesterday. And there is always the possibility of localized rain...

Stay with God and see you tomorrow, if he allows it. May He bless us all and grant us the best of all Tuesdays that we have lived until today....