O Saci — a Brazilian legend in easy Portuguese

The Saci, or Saci-Pererê, is Brazil's best-known legend: a boy-sized imp with one leg, a red cap and a whistle, who lives inside the whirlwind. Nothing that goes wrong in a Brazilian house is too small for him. The milk turns sour, the scissors vanish, the thread tangles, the beans burn, and in the morning the horse has braids in its mane. He does no real harm, and he has no real malice; he loves mischief for its own sake. Brazilians still say "é coisa do Saci" of anything that goes missing, and 31 October is his day, the Dia do Saci.

The legend has three roots. The figure began as an Indigenous (Tupi-Guarani) forest spirit; the red cap and the pipe came with the stories of enslaved Africans, and the Saci is Black in every source, which is part of who he is and of Brazil's African heritage; and the Portuguese brought the trickster imp. Couto de Magalhães mentions him in O Selvagem (1876). Monteiro Lobato collected reader letters about him in a newspaper inquiry of 1917, published as O Sacy-Pererê: resultado de um inquérito (1918), and then wrote O Saci (1921), the book that fixed the details most Brazilians know: the cap is his power, and whoever takes it commands him; he is caught by throwing a sieve over a whirlwind; and he is freed by giving the cap back.

This telling keeps the one leg, the cap, the whirlwind, the sieve, three of his pranks and the whistle, and leaves out the pipe and the bottle he is kept in. Its ending is Tião's: a Saci without his cap is like a bird without wings, so he gives it back. Two things to notice in the Portuguese: não … mais means no longer ("o Saci não assobia mais"), and virar means to turn into ("ele vira um redemoinho").