This page is based on Franklin Joaquim Cascaes' magical universe. All information contained here has been taken from the Professor Elizabeth Pavan Cascaes Collection, name of the collection that preserves the work of the artist from Santa Catarina and is under the care of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (ufsc).
Franklin Cascaes, in more than thirty years of work, has gathered a great amount of information about the Florianopolis folklore through surveys and interviews with former residents of the Island.
..."this island, former Nossa Senhora do Desterro, was immersed until a few years ago in the mists of the legends of imaginary beings: boitatás, werewolves, ghosts, witches, witches and witches who dragged their fates in the dead hours of the night, through the forests and in the immensity of the seas"... excerpt from the tale Witch Balance.
Franklin Cascaes, the Poet of a People
Seo Francolino, as Franklin Joaquim Cascaes is known, was a man who, through art and literature, managed to translate very lightly the culture filled with legends of the people of the island.
Born in 1908, he started his work very young. As a young man he made his first sculptures, and the famous Baroque Nativity scene in XV de Novembro Square, which has been part of Christmas traditions ever since. With studies it was different. His father thought that, being from a poor family, he should work and not waste time going to school. That's why Cascaes didn't start academic life until he was in his 20s. And at 33, he would already become a professor at the Old Industrial School of Florianópolis.
But it was in the 40s that a decision in his life promoted his work; and made this arsenal of know islet. Cascaes migrated to rural life and spent years collecting information from the coast of Santa Catarina, through the fishermen, their stories, in short, entire lives of human poetry.
He left a legacy with sculptures, drawings, books, newspapers, and even old instruments used by the residents of Florianópolis. You can find all the material on display at Museum of Archeology and Ethnology or as the Professor Oswaldo Rodrigues Cabral University Museum is also known. The collection is named after his wife, Professor Elizabeth Pavan Cascaes.
Seo Francolino died in 1983, leaving not just his collection, but the meaning of belief. Unfavorable to the destruction of nature by man and its industries, he fought until the end against the witches of modernization. He makes joy and memories live in the hearts of all the little men, who paid tribute to him simply by giving his name to the Fundação Cultural de Florianópolis. Francolino is responsible for having, in times of video games and films in three dimensions, the knowledge of the characters that have always been in the imagination (or in reality) of the children of the island of magic, us, residents of the capital of Santa Catarina.
Some characters created by Cascaes:
The witches
Santa Catarina Island brings, along with its history, the legends of an enchanted and mysterious place. There are legends that speak of meetings of witches, witches who attack fishermen, who steal boats, witches who dance inside fishing nets and witchcraft brooms.
Witches knotting horse tails and manes. Madame Estória tells that witch women used, in order to carry out their witchcraft wickedness, to steal horses from pastures and paddocks, make them gallop through the air and tie insecure knots in their tails and manes. (CASCAES / Santa Catarina Island).
"Island surrounded by the immeasurable, the unknown that attracts and frightens, beating furiously against the rocks and transporting the witches on their night trips on brooms or in whaleboats stolen from the fishermen."
Legends tell about two types of witches: the earthling, a witch by choice, and the spiritual - predestined, due to the fact of being the first or seventh daughter of a couple without men. According to tradition, to avoid this curse, the older sister must baptize the younger.
"This Boitatá is strolling on the island of Santa Catarina. It is midnight. He is enjoying, from the shore, the sixty beaches that it has, white quiném jasmine. To scare him away, the person who sees him must call the other one who is closer and shout like this: zenobra brings the bell rope to tie the boitatá that he walks around here. He immediately flees the fascinating world of human fantasy."
the werewolves
Werewolves appeared in many forms. And the transformation, according to the islanders, was like that. They said that in the middle of the night, the guy would go to the place where an animal was lying. Any animal: dog, ox, cow, pig. He would then lift the animal, strip off his clothes and roll on the floor in the warmth of the other animal. Then he won the werewolf metamorphosis, because he was born with that instinct to be a werewolf, because he already had all the propensity.
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