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A mostrar mensagens de novembro, 2022

Monsters (and mystical plants) of the Portuguese Age of Discoveries

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I have an old newspaper clipping for this exhibit in the Lisbon Zoo which was in July-October 1996 as part of the 1990s Commemoration of the Portuguese Age of Discoveries which was called À Descoberta dos Bichos  ("To the Discovery of Critters"), which was around early scientific exploration of animal species from outside Europe and how often those were misrepresented as monsters. Most of the clipping of the exhibit advertisement The mythical monsters shown are (from left to right of the beginning of body of theirs, regardless of position upwards or downwards): Sea-devil (in German Meerteufel ) or She-Triton ( Tritona  in Portuguese) sea monster Ru(m)bus is a mythification of the Brill ( Rodovalho  in Portuguese) fish (scientific Latin name, Scophthalmus Rhombus ), which was believed to be a fish of the Greek sea and of the seas of Italy, round like a ring, with many red spots and full of sharp fins and spikes, being a slow swimmer because it was so big; he could go to th...

Comparing Portuguese and Malay folklores (part 8 and last one)

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 (continued from part 7 ) the  legend of the  Galo de Barcelos  ("Rooster/Cock of Barcelos") is a miracle attributed to Saint James the Greater ( Sant'Iago o Maior ), one of the  santos populares  ("folk saints") which are both saints accepted by the Catholic Church who are especially prayed too and their holidays kept in a specific folk religious (folk Christian) way (often with many pagan Christianised leftovers), and saints not accepted by the Roman Church but that the people worships as such, (among the saints of this general category are included Saint Peter, Saint John he Baptist, Saint Anthony of Lisbon, Saint James at least in towns of the Saint James Way like Barcelos, Saint George at least in the Monção, Coimbra and Batalha regions...); in this case that a pilgrim is falsely accused of a crime and taken to be trialed before a dinning judge and is given the death penalty but states that he is as surely innocent as the cooked rooster is to crow, whi...