São Domingos berra-boi: God does not sleep

berra-boi

berra-boi: 'ox-bellow', the Brazilian name for the bullroarer. matraca: a wooden clapper or rattle used in Holy Week. rezadores: the prayer-singers.

After midnight, when São Domingos was asleep, the rezadores came. Maize grains rattled onto the roof; outside, the berra-boi roared and the matraca clattered, and the singers called: “Alert, alert, sinner, God does not sleep.” Inside, the woken family answered with an Our Father and a Hail Mary for the soul of a dead father or uncle, named at their door. The din was meant to rouse the sleepers and to drive evil spirits away. One woman remembered simply that it was frightening. An old rezador remembered a band that set out ten strong and, six nights later, had more than fifty walking behind it.

acorda e[le]s cum berra-boi, é, matraca

you wake them with the berra-boi, yes, and the matraca

Narrator N3M79, in Jozimar Luciovanio Bernardo, Dimensão mágico-religiosa da palavra (UFG, 2015), p. 112

Particulars

Object

A thin little board, bored through and tied to a cord.

Function

Sounded with the matraca outside sleeping houses after midnight in the Lenten encomendação das almas, waking families to pray for their dead and, it was said, driving off evil spirits.