A Caipora — a short story in easy Portuguese

The Caipora is the guardian of the animals of the forest. Her name is Tupi, caá-pora, the one who lives in the forest, and in the Northeast of Brazil she is usually a she: small, very hairy, with wild long hair, riding a huge wild pig. Hunters leave a little tobacco, fumo, on a tree stump at the edge of the forest to be let through. Without it the hunt goes wrong: the gun jams, the dogs get lost, there is no game. From this comes an expression Brazilians still use, mostly older people and in the countryside: estar caipora, to be unlucky. Most people today say estar com azar.

Couto de Magalhães, in O Selvagem (1876), describes the spirit to whom the game of the forest is entrusted, a big hairy figure riding an enormous wild pig, and explains the phrase. Monteiro Lobato, in O Saci (1921), has a hairy imp who rides the wild pigs and stops travellers to demand tobacco, and in his 1918 inquiry readers from the Northeast say the Caipora leaves the traveller in peace at dawn. This retelling keeps the pig, the offering, the bad luck for the stingy brother, hunting in moderation (one paca, for dinner, as in O Curupira), and the phrase.

Like the Curupira, she is an Indigenous figure told as a guardian, not a monster. In the Portuguese, notice tudo dá certo and tudo dá errado (everything goes right, everything goes wrong), and a arma falha (the gun misfires).