Carnival and the first carnival parties were introduced by Portuguese settlers in the 15th and 16th centuries. Among the most popular celebrations was the sawing of the old woman. In Portugal, it was staged the night of the Wednesday preceding the third Sunday of Lent. The sawing of the old woman represented a kind of pause in the rigour of fasting and Lenten penance. In this sense, young people performed parades on the streets wearing masks and costumes, collecting money and sweets, reciting poetry, singing and dancing. All this, to the sound of the triquelitraque – an instrument made up of a board and several rows of hammers that beat on it, producing a unique sound – and dragging cans.
The reading of the old woman’s will was a concurrent practice, making the beneficiaries aware of the sharing of assets. Then a young man – always a male – held up the instrument of torture (in this case, the saw), on a piece of wood, a board or a cloth scarecrow, and by the back and forth of his arm, he would pretend to saw the old woman while the other participants sang:
Estamos no meio da Quaresma,
sem provarmos o café,
Vamos serrar esta velha,
para o altar de S. José.
Estamos no meio da Quaresma,
sem vermos nado [sic] do teu amor,
Vamos serrar esta velha,
para o altar de Nosso Senhor.
Ferre-se a velha,
Força no serrote,
Serre-se a velha,
Dentro do pipote.
We are in the middle of Lent,
Without tasting coffee,
Let’s saw this old woman,
For the altar of St Joseph.
We are in the middle of Lent,
Without seeing nothing of your love,
Let’s saw this old woman,
For the altar of Our Lord.
Damn the old woman,
Strength in the hacksaw,
Saw the old woman,
Inside the barrow.
Esta velha tem malícia,
Esta velha vai morrer,
Venha ver serrar a velha,
Minha gente, venha ver.
Serra, serra, serra a velha
Puxa a serra, serrador,
Que esta velha deu na neta,
Por lhe ouvir falar de amor.
This old woman has malice,
This old woman is going to die,
Come and see the old woman,
My people, come and see.
Saw, saw, saw the old woman
Pull the saw, sawyer,
Because this old woman beat her granddaughter,
For hearing her speak of love.
The people who watched the party repeated: saw the old woman, saw the old woman, saw the old woman! Or, Saw the old woman into five-centimetre slices.
To which the sawyer continued, asking:
What punishment does the old woman deserve, tell me, sirs?
and the public, as in a collective judgment, answered:
Saw the old woman! Strength in the hacksaw! Saw the old woman! Strength in the hacksaw!
At times, the revelry ended in tragedy, when the young people decided to “saw” a certain lady of the locality, and her relatives reacted by throwing hot water on the group. In Portugal, during the staging, it was customary to offer participants a plate of sweets. Then the young people would thank them with applause and shouts of joy, and they would go on to other streets, repeating the game.
The sawing of the old woman represented an escape valve for the youth confronting certain points: 1) to relax control of the menus of the holy days, which demanded the traditional fasts and penances (the festival broke the austerity of Holy Week, and with the code of food restriction and the conventual fast, peculiar to Lent, in memory of the suffering of Jesus Christ, 2) claiming greater freedom for dating – girls were very repressed, being subjugated by mothers, grandmothers, aunts and godmothers, honour guardians and good manners; 3) to encourage the emergence of a more libertarian female model that possessed more rights; and 4) to alleviate social tensions between the generations.
It can not be stated with precision when and how these games began to be staged in Brazil, but although infrequently, they were recorded in chronicles of the early 18th century.
Câmara Cascudo (1979) highlighted the sawing of the old woman in the Northeast at the end of the 19th century, stating that event was part of the Lenten religious calendar – although there are indications of its occurrence outside of that period – and that it was even used with political intentions, in displays of displeasure, in the residence of some fallen ruler or candidate defeated in elections. According to the folklorist, a group of revellers sifted a board, shrieking and screaming interminably, pretending to saw an old woman who, represented or not by some of the group’s members, was lamented with deafening howling. Câmara Cascudo also found expressions of displeasure about the event from people who felt threatened by it, and pointed out that at the end of the 19th century, the Code of Behaviour in Papari (today, Nísia da Floresta, Rio Grande do Norte) had already forbidden its representation in that locality.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the performance was staged on the southern coast of Rio de Janeiro, and in some cities in the Northeast interior. At present, however, there are very few memories of this tradition in small municipalities in the Northeast Region. At most, there are only mere remnants of the sawing of the old woman: details so small that the passage of time itself has taken charge of eliminating it altogether.
Recife, 21 January 2008.
Translated by Peter Leamy, December 2016.
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Source: VAINSENCHER, Semira Adler. Serração da Velha. Pesquisa Escolar Online, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife. Disponível em: <https://pesquisaescolar.fundaj.gov.br/pt-br/>. Acesso em: dia mês ano. Ex: 6 ago. 2009