Le Folklore Brésilien
Cette page est mieux visualisée dans un navigateur Web sur votre ordinateur
Légendes de Terra Brasilis
s'il y a un bruissement de feuilles, mais en le cherchant, vous ne trouvez rien d'autre que de empreintes de petits pas; si une belle femme à la peau cuivrée te chante du milieu d'un fleuve ; si vous pensez voir des milliers d'yeux brillants errer entre les arbres la nuit
méfiez-vous des dieux et des esprits parmi ces bois, et soyez prévenus - ceux qui ont la chance de voir leurs merveilles et de survivre ne seront plus jamais les mêmes.
Le folklore brésilien regorge de personnages merveilleux et mystiques, prêts à aider ou à détruire le voyageur imprudent. Ici, vous apprendrez à connaître un peu certains d'entre eux - spécialement ceux qui étaient si présents dans mon enfance et qui ont toujours fait partie de mon imaginaire.
“The forest cried, but in the ears of the small minded men it just sounded like the wind. A gust shook the leaves sending birds of every colour scattering across the sky, and then fell silent. The men stood there, watching with dull eyes and empty souls as the fire moved forward, a glowing cloak of destruction. As they watched, something moved between the ancient trunks and over the soft layers of sacred, fertile ground, and soon they saw there was another flame. But this one was coming towards them.”
Un esprit de la forêt, une présence sauvage que de nombreux habitants prétendent ressentir ou entendre même lorsqu'elle reste invisible à l'œil. Parfois, de longs sifflets aigus peuvent être entendus à travers les arbres – un avertissement à tout homme qui vient porteur d'ignorance et de brutalité, et oublie son respect pour la Forêt. Curupira est l'une des légendes les plus connues du Brésil, même si son apparence physique peut changer d'une région à l'autre et qu'il se confond parfois avec Caipora.
I grew up reading stories about a short man with fiery hair and backward feet, who tricked hunters, poachers and arsonists into getting lost deep in the jungle by confusing them with his inverted foot prints and a shrill whistling that eventually made people insane. The indigenous people are said to have had the ritual of making offerings to him when going hunting, so he’d know they came in good faith and would not confuse them. Like with other natural spirits though the story changed through the years and contact with other cultures and, as it’d probably suit best the “modern” man, eventually all you had to do was bribe him with some sugar cane spirits or tobacco – that would suffice to make him leave a person alone by any means, no matter what their business in the forest was.
“The betrayal was bigger than she could bear. The envy and loathing of the tribe, the misbelief of the father, the unfair sentence. Jaci would have none of it, not against one so undeserving of that horrific end. She would take the young warrior as a gift, fix her broken body with the help of all the creatures she touched with her reflexion. The waters shall be her air, her sustenance, her home. And there, forevermore, she shall be queen.”
La légende de Y’Îara, comme beaucoup d'autres du folklore brésilien, est un entrelacement de personnages et de contes de plusieurs cultures - l'Ipupiara des peuples indigènes, l'Iemanjá du candomblé et la sirène européenne. Loin de la jeune fille séduisante qui attire les pêcheurs dans les eaux, la Ipupirara était un monstre brutal et redoutable qui écrasait les hommes à la mort ou les noyait et les mangeait - des choses qui, à l'époque coloniale, auraient très bien pu arriver à de nombreux chasseurs et pêcheurs attaqués par la faune locale, donnant à la légende une forte emprise sur l'imaginaire des gens.
En effet, il y a même un récit de l'historien Pero de Magalhães Gândavo in which he describes how the creature attacked a man, terrified a woman, and was finally taken down by the brave Captain Baltazar Ferreira – after which fact the body was supposedly hung in the village for all to see, in order to “avoid exaggerated beliefs and superstitions amongst the common folk”.
Hunting was becoming more difficult by the day. Her grandfather had said that life would not be so easy anymore, the world had changed and the spirits and powers that humanity had abandoned were returning. When the cities collapsed she was grateful to know at least a little of what it’s like to live without the comforts of modern civilization and manage to survive, but she never took the fantastic part of the old man’s teachings seriously.
Even when the signs were clear she resisted. She’d grown up in the city and, despite having learned a lot from her grandfather, she always thought that these things were nonsense, beliefs of old folk who’d lived too long in fear of the unknown and in superstition. But how to explain that bad luck? She took the way back, contenting herself with the roots and leaves she had found and losing herself in her thoughts.
She almost didn’t see the swift shadow that passed toward the forest, but the movement made her turn. She watched in astonishment as the deer she had opened and cleaned the day before walked gracefully through the door of the shed where it had been hung, and leapt in the same direction as that shadow, as if the gash in the abdomen and the severed ribs had no effect on it. Paralyzed, all she could do was remember her grandfather’s words: the caipora roams these parts, girl, if you want to eat, you’d better learn to respect him.
“The forest cried, but in the ears of the small minded men it just sounded like the wind. A gust shook the leaves sending birds of every colour scattering across the sky, and then fell silent. The men stood there, watching with dull eyes and empty souls as the fire moved forward, a glowing cloak of destruction. As they watched, something moved between the ancient trunks and over the soft layers of sacred, fertile ground, and soon they saw there was another flame. But this one was coming towards them.”
Un esprit de la forêt, une présence sauvage que de nombreux habitants prétendent ressentir ou entendre même lorsqu'elle reste invisible à l'œil. Parfois, de longs sifflets aigus peuvent être entendus à travers les arbres – un avertissement à tout homme qui vient porteur d'ignorance et de brutalité, et oublie son respect pour la Forêt. Curupira est l'une des légendes les plus connues du Brésil, même si son apparence physique peut changer d'une région à l'autre et qu'il se confond parfois avec Caipora.
I grew up reading stories about a short man with fiery hair and backward feet, who tricked hunters, poachers and arsonists into getting lost deep in the jungle by confusing them with his inverted foot prints and a shrill whistling that eventually made people insane. The indigenous people are said to have had the ritual of making offerings to him when going hunting, so he’d know they came in good faith and would not confuse them. Like with other natural spirits though the story changed through the years and contact with other cultures and, as it’d probably suit best the “modern” man, eventually all you had to do was bribe him with some sugar cane spirits or tobacco – that would suffice to make him leavea person alone by any means, no matter what their business in the forest was.
“The betrayal was bigger than she could bear. The envy and loathing of the tribe, the misbelief of the father, the unfair sentence. Jaci would have none of it, not against one so undeserving of that horrific end. She would take the young warrior as a gift, fix her broken body with the help of all the creatures she touched with her reflexion. The waters shall be her air, her sustenance, her home. And there, forevermore, she shall be queen.”
La légende de Y’Îara, comme beaucoup d'autres du folklore brésilien, est un entrelacement de personnages et de contes de plusieurs cultures - l'Ipupiara des peuples indigènes, l'Iemanjá du candomblé et la sirène européenne. Loin de la jeune fille séduisante qui attire les pêcheurs dans les eaux, la Ipupirara était un monstre brutal et redoutable qui écrasait les hommes à la mort ou les noyait et les mangeait - des choses qui, à l'époque coloniale, auraient très bien pu arriver à de nombreux chasseurs et pêcheurs attaqués par la faune locale, donnant à la légende une forte emprise sur l'imaginaire des gens.
En effet, il y a même un récit de l'historien Pero de Magalhães Gândavo in which he describes how the creature attacked a man, terrified a woman, and was finally taken down by the brave Captain Baltazar Ferreira – after which fact the body was supposedly hung in the village for all to see, in order to “avoid exaggerated beliefs and superstitions amongst the common folk”.
Hunting was becoming more difficult by the day. Her grandfather had said that life would not be so easy anymore, the world had changed and the spirits and powers that humanity had abandoned were returning. When the cities collapsed she was grateful to know at least a little of what it’s like to live without the comforts of modern civilization and manage to survive, but she never took the fantastic part of the old man’s teachings seriously.
Even when the signs were clear she resisted. She’d grown up in the city and, despite having learned a lot from her grandfather, she always thought that these things were nonsense, beliefs of old folk who’d lived too long in fear of the unknown and in superstition. But how to explain that bad luck? She took the way back, contenting herself with the roots and leaves she had found and losing herself in her thoughts.
She almost didn’t see the swift shadow that passed toward the forest, but the movement made her turn. She watched in astonishment as the deer she had opened and cleaned the day before walked gracefully through the door of the shed where it had been hung, and leapt in the same direction as that shadow, as if the gash in the abdomen and the severed ribs had no effect on it. Paralyzed, all she could do was remember her grandfather’s words: the caipora roams these parts, girl, if you want to eat, you’d better learn to respect him.
Voulez-vous en savoir plus? Eh bien, surveiller les dieux et les esprits de la forêt c'est un travail de patience.
But don’t worry, one by one we’ll get to see them, they’ll come. In the meantime, I invite you to me suivre sur Instagram, where I’ll post every time I add a legend to this page.