168 



INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 1 2 



everyday world of human affairs ; an unseen, mys- 

 terious world. Together with other beings, the 

 latter is peopled with almas whose special time 

 of moving about is at night. Almas are the souls 

 of the dead which, under certain circumstances, 

 it is believed, return to disturb, inconvenience, 

 perhaps harm the living. 



As he finished his supper, an elderly man in the 

 village noticed that a water jar in the room was 

 empty and called out to his wife, "Josef a, go fetch 

 some water! The jar is empty." The woman 

 took up the vessel and went out. "The jar must 

 not be left empty," the man explained. "The 

 armas -'^ that come to visit the house during the 

 night may be tliirsty and it is well to leave water 

 for them." 



"Joao, our mail carrier," remarked an elderly 

 woman in the village, "has to get up at 3 o'clock 

 in the morning to go fetch the mail bags from Sao 

 Jose dos Patos. One night he awakened startled, 

 thinking he had overslept. He opened the window 

 to look out and see if it was light yet. He saw a 

 man walking along and said, 'Young man, what 

 time is it?' The man came closer and closer and 

 kept getting bigger and bigger. Joao asked him 

 again what time it was. Then my mother, who 

 lived just across the street and had heai'd Joao 

 ask the time, called out, 'It's still early, Joao ; it's 

 only midnight.' As soon as she said 'midnight,' 

 Joao knew that the man was an «r?«a." 



The appearance of an alma is said to occur any 

 time after death. "When I was a small boy," re- 

 calls a village official, "my parents took me and 

 my brother to visit my godparents in a town near 

 here. One night, we were awakened by a noise 

 above the ceiling, as if something was flying around 

 up there. I said to my brother, 'Something's up 

 there!' and covered up my head. 'There is some- 

 thing,' he said. 'I heard it too.' It kept on for 

 some time. The next morning, early, I heard my 

 godfather talking to my godmother about a noise 

 he too had heard, there, above the ceiling. He was 

 saying it must have been Joao Bispo who had died 

 and had come to tell him about his death. But 

 my godmother hadn't heard it. 'Nonsense!' she 

 said, 'You only dreamed it!' 'No,' he insisted, 

 'I'm sure it was Joao Bispo. He came to me and 

 said he wanted to thank me for all I'd done for 



=^» As indicated in the section on Languas;e, (p. 115), tlie I sound 

 is often ehanjied to an r sound in tlie ctiiitiru dialect. 



him. I'm going to write a letter to the village and 

 see if Joao hasn't died.' My godfather wrote the 

 letter and some days later came the reply. He 

 called us and told us that Joao Bispo was dead. 

 He had died at the very hour we had heard the 

 noise there above the ceiling." "Felinho was dis- 

 orderly," recalls a village official. "He was always 

 causing trouble. After he died, the father-in- 

 law of my father was at the window when a pro- 

 cession passed and he saw Felinlio dancing and 

 jumping about in the midst of the procession." 

 "If someone dies and leaves money buried in a 

 place no one knows about," said a farmer, "he will 

 have no rest until it is found. He must come and 

 get someone to dig it up. He can't have peace 

 until he does." 



One form the dead take is that of the alm.as 

 penadas. They are thought to wander about, es- 

 pecially in solitary and lonely places, until they 

 have completed punishment for sins committed 

 or something left undone, like fulfilling a vow; 

 or they may be the souls of persons who have died 

 unbaptized and who wander about the world "be- 

 cause they can enter into neither heaven nor hell." 



"One night," recalls a farm woman, "when my 

 mother had just gone to bed, she saw a faint light 

 moving in the room. She was afraid and didn't say 

 anything. The next day she told a comadre about 

 it and said she though perhaps lier mother wanted 

 to talk to her. The coma/Ire said, 'If she comes 

 back again, send her to me. I'll talk to her.' And 

 that was what my mother did. The next day her 

 comadre came to tell her that her mother had made 

 a vow to put 400 re'is in the offering box for the 

 armas^ but hadn't fulfilled it. My mother paid the 

 400 rels and her mother never appeared again." 

 "It's only the armas of the hunters that wander 

 about here," said another farm woman who lives 

 near the river. "Hunters, you know, never go to 

 Mass on Sunday ; they like to be out in the woods 

 with their dogs and their guns. At night, you 

 sometimes hear the rattle of their chains, the bay- 

 ing of their dogs, and the sound of the horn as 

 they go by. Especially on 'the Friday of the 

 Passion (Good Friday).'" "There used to be a 

 man who lived near the river," said a farmer, "and 

 took people across in his boat. At any hour of the 

 day or night he would row you over. One night. 

 someone called him. He got up and went down to 



