"O Gallo de Barcelos"
by Sam Yada Cannarozzi

You see it everywhere - on posters, in palaces, embroidered on napkins and even on the six o'clock news - the cockerel of Barcelos, the national emblem of Portugal. Interestingly, it is not only a symbol but has a direct relation to story. The tale says a poor man from Barcelos (pronunciation: Ba + trilled 'r' SHELL osse,)in northern Portugal, was condemned for a theft he denied committing. He was dragged by guards through the streets, still clamoring his innocence, and passed before the window of a rich man who had just sat down to a dinner of roast cockerel. "May the bird sing as a witness to my words!" the poor man shouted. And lo, the cockerel crowed! Ever since it has been synonymous with justice and truth.

I was last in Portugal in 1998 as part of International Book Week in a French-Portuguese cultural exchange. It was a whirlwind tour, four cities in ten days, ending in Lisboa (Lisbon,) the capital. It is truly a fairytale city, and I vowed to return to see it all one day soon. When the French International School gave me the call, I jumped at the opportunity. I had unfinished business…

In comparison to my first searchings, things didn't seem to have changed much. The Arts of Storytelling still seemed low key. I was to learn that in the popular Alfama quarter there was still a bar where storytellers met and performed, but the revival is still far as from the mainstream as it is in other parts of Europe.

With only two performances a day, I finished up by 2:30 PM, leaving me afternoons and the weekend free. What I especially soaked up this time (besides the delicious vinho verde, a white table wine, and, for my tastes, the best coffee in the world regardless of what Starbucks says!!) were the azulejos or hand painted, glazed tiles dating back to the 15th century. The Moorish influence is obvious, but the Portuguese made it over to their own version of post-Renaissance comic strips.

In the same way that stained-glass windows recount biblical episodes, so do the cerulean blue azulejos depict scenes from history, court customs, and also fantasies and eroticism, as at the Palace of the Marquis of Frontiera. Pure ceramic narration!!

This time I had just missed a three-day Festival in Viseu, northeast of Lisbon, and I also saw an ad for a young people's performance of stories from Cape Verde, a former colony. But by then it was

/Full moon, after midnight, Palm Sunday Eve, a storyteller's
rendezvous with Antonio Fontinha/

He had just flown in from the Portuguese Isle of Madeira and I was flying out the next day, but we exchanged timely words and info. Antonio began dabbling in story around 1991 and went full-fledged in 1994. At age 36, he is Portugal's only year round professional, but he mentioned two other colleagues, Angelo Torres and Horacio Santo, both elderly, from Saint Tomeo Island and Cape Verde, Africa.

He has constituted a traditional repertory, and has also begun collecting from all over the country. His research is affective, he says. He's looking for the specifics of this land's complex oral traditions. He told me he discovered two typical story environments that unfortunately disappeared thirty years ago: old women, telling mostly to children, were reputed "good talkers" and street people who, often at fairs, would hawk popular literature in the form of booklets, using story and song. (Portugal is famous for its "fade" singers, a tradition of bittersweet chants that goes back centuries!)

What an envious position to be in, an entire country to initiate back to its own roots... a magical moment!

Flying back to Lyon, France near my home, I mulled again over that gallo, the cockerel or rooster. I would think there's a link to this miraculous story and the cock in the New Testament who triply signals Peter's betrayal of Christ. But I also remembered a story ending, from the southern province of what was Occitania in France, that mentions... a rooster. (The dialect there is still spoken in Barcelona (Barcelos?) and Catalonia.) It might translate as

"Cockadoodle-doo, my story's through"

Antonio Fontinha reminded me that often stories were only told at night, and so perhaps this is a reference to the coming day and therefore it was time to stop telling. Perhaps though it could also be, as the Barcelos story teaches, a statement of veracity—"Cockadoodle-doo, my story's true!"

—posted July 2002

Back to top.