Informant was a 45 year old female who was born in Brazil and currently lives in Brazil. I talked to her over Skype.

Informant: Saci-Perere is like a story of a black boy that has only one leg and he always carries a pipe and a red cap that gives him magical powers. And he’s a very mischievous boy, and he loves to do mischievous things like burn food or wake people up with laughter. This was in a tv show for kids called Sitio do Pica Pau Amarelo (The Farm of the Yellow Woodpecker) that I used to watch when I was a kid.

Collector: Do you know where the story came from?

Informant: I heard that it started like an Indian story, and that was at first an Indian boy that was a curomim – a type of indian. But with the African influence, he became a black boy that lost his leg fighting capoeira, which is a mix of fight and dance typical to brazil. The red cap came from European influence, like a lot of Europeans would wear them because Brazilians wouldn’t wear it in the heat.

Collector: So you said you saw it in a TV show, did the TV show create this character or did it take the pre-existing tale and make it into a character?

Informant: This was something that was in our folklore and Sitio do Pica Pau Amarelo used the story and I knew it through Sitio do Pica Pau Amarelo. Sitio do Pica Pau Amarelo was a story, not a soap opera, but was a story of a boy and a girl. And this girl had a doll called Emilia, who was a talking doll. They lived with their grandmother in this farm, and they had lots of stories that was placed in the country side of Brazil. So in the show it happened a lot of things that kids usually play in the country side. Another character was Cuca, who was like a monster like an alligator and all the kids used to be afraid of and had other characters from folklore. Cuca was the villain, and every time Saci-Perere came he was funny, and we used to laugh.

Collector: Why do you like this particular piece of folklore?

Informant: I liked Saci-Perere because he was fun, and everytime he came on the show he would make funny things and we used to laugh. It was a very big part of my childhood, we would talk about it a lot at school.

I personally like the story of Saci-Perere because I remember from my childhood in Brazil watching the same show that my mother watched “Sitio do Pica Pau Amarelo,” and seeing him in it. As a young child, I never really registered who he was or thought about the reasons why he was the way that he was. He was just a form of comic relief, and I very much enjoyed watching him on the show. I think it’s interesting that the true story of Saci-Perere came from a mixture of a lot of Brazil’s cultural history, such as the original indian tribes and the slavery of African Americans and capoeira, which is really famous in Brazil.