Stories of Maria Adelina

During our research into the villages around the freguesia of Vila Nova do Ceira, we were repeatedly told about a very popular blind accordion player called António, who used to play at all the dances and festas in the area. Although António is no longer alive, we were fortunate enough to meet his younger sister, Maria Adelina, who spent an afternoon sharing with us a few of the great store of memories she has from when they were young, some 50 years ago.

Dances and festas

“In the past there were many young people living in the locality and my brother António played accordion for the dances from a young age. As our grandmother Guilhermina’s house had a big room, António would often ask to hold dances there. Our grandmother was not always keen, but António was very persistent. So the room was emptied and chairs were put around the walls where people could sit down after dancing. But since people from outside the village used to come along too, there were usually not enough, and in any case most of the chairs  were occupied by mothers come to chaperone their daughters dancing with the boys.
 Outside the room was a ‘verandinha dos vidros’ (little balcony) and here our father Ramiro had a clay pot filled with wine that was sold to the visitors. There was one particular character called ‘o Bichano’ (‘pussy-cat’) that used to get very drunk at these dances. By the end of the night he could hardly manage to walk, so he was allowed to sleep overnight on the maize straw, and if it was cold they also gave him a blanket, made of old rags by a woman of Poiares.
Similarly once my brothers were on the way home after a ‘festa’ (party) at Povorais when it started to rain very heavily, and it was cold and windy. They kicked a door open to a hay store to get shelter in the dry. The owner that lived upstairs heard their voices and came down, asking them what they were doing there. When they explained their situation the owner made coffee and brought them wine and blankets - and so they stayed overnight and took the bus home the next morning.”

The ‘demon’ drink

“My father went to Brazil to work after my brother António was born and came back in 1948, 20 years later. Having lived for so long in Brazil he wasn’t used to drinking wine any more, as they had only beer there, and after only one or two glasses he got drunk. His friends knew this, and always gave him one glass after the other to see him sway. It was very bad when they took him to the ‘wine house’ of Fonte do Soito. Our mother knew when he was drunk before he got in the house, because he always came back singing loudly: “Ai, Samuel, Samuel, Samuel” and playing guitar with a wooden stick. She was really not amused on these occasions!

Sr. Fino was our little brother Serafim’s godfather and our father used to help him with his ox on his fields. He went down a track to “Seireal” where Sr. Fino’s house stood in Sacões de Baixo. Sr. Fino always liked to see everybody happy and gave all his visitors lots to drink. Once my father was on his way back home when he staggered and fell into the brambles and furze bushes. Sr. Fino asked him innocently the next day: “Compadre - what happened to you? Your face is all scratched!” And our father replied: “Yes - thanks to you!!”

We could only speak with our neighbor Ti Filipe in the morning, because by the afternoon he was always drunk. On his way back from Vila Nova do Ceira he would arrive in our village with a wooden stick ‘guitar’, singing very loudly. Our mother always told us to turn off the lights and be quiet so that he would think we were not at home. He was not a bad man but when he was drunk he was a great bore. He knocked on the door and shouted:” Sr.ª Maria, Sr.ª Maria, Sr.ª Maria!” As nobody opened the door and he could hear nothing, he would always say: “Nem Sr.ª Maria, nem Ramíro, nem Pedro, nem Paulo, ninguém abre a porta ao Filipe Ribeiro!” (nobody opens the door for Filipe Ribeiro!). So he went away singing and usually fell into the brambles that grew near our house. Sometimes when this happened he shouted my father’s name and my father went out to help him back on his feet. Ti Filipe died very old- the wine must have preserved him!”

Jokes and tricks

“Sr. Fino, Serafim’s godfather, also very much enjoyed a joke. One day two policemen were in the village and he invited them in to have a little refreshment. He offered them some olives that he had just prepared with plenty of ‘piripiri’ (chili sauce). The two policemen began to sweat and Sr. Fino asked innocently if they would like a glass of wine, which they eagerly accepted. But he had also prepared the top of the glasses with the same hot sauce. The policemen left the house with their mouths on fire! Another neighbor asked if they would like a drink and they told him what happened. He brought them some olive oil to soothe their mouths.

My mother told us a story about two boys who lived in Sacões de Baixo who also loved to play tricks. At this time the houses had no bathroom or WC and people used to go outside to relieve themselves. It was Carnival time, and the two boys made a life-sized puppet with straw and sticks and dressed it up, hung a paraffin lamp on its arm, and placed it outside the house of their uncle and aunt. When their aunt went outside for a pee that night, dressed only in her underwear, she saw this strange “man” with the lantern, and running as fast as she could into the house she shouted to her husband: “There’s a man! There’s a man!”  Their uncle went out and found the two boys - he was not amused at their joke at all!
Another time the two same boys made a skull from a pumpkin and lit it inside. My mother was sitting at the window feeding my brother. When she looked outside she was really scared and shouted out: “Help! The devil is here!” Her brother in law ran to her aid shouting: “I’ve got my axe!” The two boys came out looking very scared, but were forgiven.

We had a neighbor called Ti Maria Batoja. All through the year she collected oak apples, and at Carnival time she would put them all into a clay water pot. Then, disguised in men’s clothes, with some stockings on her hands for gloves, she came and knocked on our door. When my mother opened the door Ti Maria dropped the pot into our house where it broke and the oak apples rolled out all over the floor. This always made us laugh!”

Hearth and home

“On Friday and Saturday nights our mother Maria used to tell us stories in the kitchen, sometimes until 2 o’clock in the morning.

Once our mother had baked the ‘broa’ (corn bread) and cleaned the oven and was taking away the glowing coals. A spark flew out that she didn’t see and slowly set fire to the chestnut beam where it had landed. António and I were the first to notice the strange smell coming from the kitchen and told our mother. When she saw that the beam was smoldering she took the pot with beans and water that she had prepared for the soup and threw it with all its contents at the fire, putting it out.

One day, the miller came to our home when our mother was feeling very sick with the flu. The miller used to smoke snuff rolled into dried maize peels and he said to her: “Smell a little bit of my snuff, this will make you feel better.” It had a very strong smell and it made her sneeze and sneeze. But he was right - she really did start to feel better afterwards.

My brother António taught me to walk. He tied a string on my wrist and pulled lightly when I should take a step. This is how I learned walking at the age of three years. We had a very strong bond between us since we had the same problems arising from our blindness. António would often play his accordion at home and I would sing along with him. My older brother was responsible for me and my younger brother as our parents worked hard.

I was three years old when my brother Serafim was born.  I was very upset with this situation and shouted at my mother: “I don’t want him here, he should go back where he came from!” My mother was tired of hearing me complain and told António to take me out, so he put me into his hand cart, and went with me to the woods. We came back at night, and eventually I got used to having a little brother.”

Working life

“Our mother sometimes went to work on the fields in Vila Nova do Ceira,  where she worked from sunrise to sunset earning only 4$ (Escudos) a day, and her lunch used to be a sardine and a little bit of ‘broa’ (corn bread).

Many apple trees grew In Sacões in the past with the most wonderful apples. António used to go with his hand cart that he made, to pick the fruit. When the apples were picked some of them were stored in chests together with the maize - every time the chest was opened it gave off a wonderful smell of apples. The other apples were stored on racks over maize straw in the coolest and darkest part of the house.  They kept that way for a very long time.
Our family also used to rent some strawberry trees on the “mata do Sobral”, and with the fruit we made ‘aguardente’ (spirit) and sold it.

My father grew a lot of maize and grapes. During the maize peeling all the people of the village gathered in our house to help, and after work, whether it was 1 o’clock or 3 o’clock in the morning, we all went to sit under the huge fig tree, eat figs and ‘broa’ and drink ‘aguardente’ from the bottle.
Rag blankets were used for drying the maize. First the ‘eira’ (threshing-floor) was covered with ox manure to make it flat, and then the place was covered with these blankets and the maize was laid out to get dry. Every bit of the maize was used.: the ‘casulos’ (seed capsules) of the maize crops were all collected and dried and used to light the fire; the straw was used for the donkeys and the goats; and the corn was made into flour. The youngsters even used to try rolling “maize beards” into dried maize peels for smoking.
Two kinds of wheat were grown:  the “Trigo mocho”  and the “Trigo preganudo”. The “Trigo mocho” was cut and bound into a sheaf. The sheaves dried on the fields and then they were taken home to be threshed on a table. When it was cleaned it went to the mill. The “Trigo preganudo” went through the same procedures but after threshing it was put into a trough, normally used for kneading the ‘broa’ dough, and beaten by a wooden stick so that the ‘preganas’ (spikes) were separated. The wheat was cleaned and went to the mill where it was ground into flour, to be later mixed with maize flour so they could bake the ‘broa’.

Potatoes used to be set into the holes of the oxen’s hoof prints after they ploughed the field. The potatoes were stored under the bed and sometimes during the night, my mother told me, you could hear the rats chewing on them. Two or three baskets a year used to be the harvest, and it was only many years later that people started to cultivate potatoes in greater quantity.

We use to kill our pig around the day of All Saints (1st of November). When we killed the pig, we shared it with our friends and neighbors and they did the same with us when they killed their pig.  The first thing we did was drain the animal’s blood and cook it with garlic and bay. Then everyone gathered at the ‘adega’ (cellar) where the dead pig was lying on a table, and we drank the pig’s cooked blood from a plate placed on its body. We also ate a special soup on this day, made with parts of the pig’s spine, turnip-heads, potatoes and rice, called the “sopa da matança” (slaughter-soup). The main dish was fresh pig meat with potatoes, cabbage and turnip heads. “Torresmos” (a speciality of this region made of several different parts of the pig  including the liver) were eaten during the work of cutting up the pig."

My brother António      

“My brother earned his money by playing accordion at the ‘festas’. My sister in law, António ‘s wife, sold bread from a basket on her head for the Padaria Ideal in Góis. Every day António took some coins out of his wife’s purse and saved it up to buy a clock, because he very much wanted one. He eventually bought his clock in Arganil, and told his wife that someone had given it to him! His wife had her doubts about this, but she could never prove otherwise – if it had been bought from somewhere closer to the village everyone would have known and someone would have told her!

António was once at a dance in Lomba de Alveite and as always was accompanied by his dog Laica. He needed a break from playing the accordion and sat down on a chair with the dog lying between his feet. My brother had a problem with one of his legs since he was ten years old, and as he was sitting there, a couple of dancers went past and touched his bad leg - whereupon the dog leapt up and bit one of them! The dancer told another man what happened, but knowing Laica quite well, this man couldn’t believe that the dog would bite anyone. So he tried touching António’s leg too, and the dog bit him! So this man announced in a loud voice: “Nobody had better touch António, because his dog guards his owner better than a lion!”
Before Laica, António had a dog called “Piloto”. He was a very clever dog that used to warn António if there was some obstacle on the road by beating his tail on the floor.”

School years

“At nine years old I started at a school for children with visual handicaps in Lisbon: the girls’ school ‘António Feliciano de Castilho’ at Campo Ourique. Two years before I had been asked if I wanted to go there but my mother refused to let me go as she did not want to lose me. But with the advice of several people, she agreed that it would be good for me. The priest of Vila Nova do Ceira dealt with the enrolment and got together all the papers that were necessary. It was almost impossible to get to this school without the help of some priest or doctor. So I started school on 24th of January 1960, on a day when it was raining so hard in Sacões that several chickens drowned in the stable. My mother, who came with me to Lisbon, cried very much when we had to say goodbye. At first it was very hard for me, as it was the first time I had been without my family, and I missed them so much. I came back to Sacões only during the summer holidays. But I got used to it, and learned braille and many other things, and I made friends that are still like sisters to me.

After school I came back to my village and worked for 22 years in the paper company at Ponte do Sótão, walking every morning at 7 o’clock on the stony road to the factory, and back at night. I could tell by feeling with my hand if a ream of paper had too few or too many sheets in it. And I cared for my father Ramiro until his death.”