Lampião ... an associate of the Brazilian faca de ponta

[fernando]

Much has been said about the Brazilian knife typology, with emphasis on the large faca de ponta, a weapon used by outlaws, the so called cangaceiros, from whose class the more famous one was Lampião. It has been established in previous threads that theirs was the size of a real sword, its purpose not being that of fencing but for bleeding their enemies and victims, by means of penetrating the clavicle zone, the so called saboneteira (soap dish).

However this 'romantic' topic is about the man and not the knife.
In a national handicraft fair taking place in next town, the foreign invited stand is that of Brazilian Northeastern Ceará.
When i saw a panel with local cordel literature, my eyes immediately foccused in one dedicated to the famous Lampião. It is written in verse, some 150 seven line stanzas and, for empirical as we realize cordel literature is, the work appears rather well built and, as the author claims, it is not fictional but rather biographical; reason why i would like to share a couple parts of it, as apparently not yet known by our forum folks .
His AKA name lampião, a title that always made me wonder; we all know the term means lantern, but we may ignore that he was given such nickname due to an event in that, one of his gang lost something (a cigarrete) in the dark and Virgulino (Lampião real first name ) told him: you can search, my rifle makes a flash; and as he kept firing his Mauser to illuminate the ground for the objet search, he kept shouting: light up, light up, lampião.
Also it is not often mentioned that he became blind of an eye when a stray bullet threw a thorn at his right eye; but he, making it a joke, said: i will not need the eye, i still have the left sight, the right one is no loss that prevents me from shooting.
Amazingly in the drawing featuring him (with companion Maria Bonita) in the brochure cover, he has his right eye closed.

Such was this bandit, once promoted to the rank of Captain by the government, who designed and even made his own attire and those of his men like, for one, the typical hat inspired by that of Napoleon, after a book offered by his uncle.


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