When an elderly person from Macau is asked to recite an old poem or song from the territory, the following quatrain in Makista creole will almost certainly be heard:
Dom dom, dom dom
Sium capitám
Cô espada na cinta
Cô rota na mám.
(Dom dom dom dom
There goes the captain
With a sword in his sash
With a cane in his hand.)
This was one of the first verses I heard when I came to Macau, sung to the melody of an old lullaby which was also used for other familiar quatrains such as:
Ade pidí chua
Sapo pidí vento
Nhonhonha bunita
Pidí casamento.
(Ducks ask for rain
Toads ask for wind
Pretty girls
Ask for marriage.)
The former of these two refrains has always puzzled me, however, from when I started to research Makista creole. It seems to be a genuinely popular Macanese nursery song with its allusion to the captains who strutted around the city showing off their swanky ways in front of girls of a marriageable age, carrying their sword in their sash and a cane in their hand. It was not, however, included in an article entitled "Creole Songs - Makista Ballads" written by J. F. Marques Pereira and published in Ta Ssi Yang Kuo (ll,703).
The collection of songs presented by Marques Pereira was extensive and included the second verse quoted above which was taken, as the author put it "straight from the mouth of a person with no literary education". The material in the collection would thus seem to enjoy a certain degree of authenticity, dating from the late XIXth or early XXth century. One thing which stands out, however, is the omission from this list of the well-known "dom dom".
Recently, I was lucky enough to talk to Dr. Leopoldo Danilo Barreiros in Lisbon. He has always taken a great interest in matters relating to Macau and to the Portuguese in the Orient and contributed a good many articles in Makista creole in the magazine Renascimento (published in Macau between 1943 and 1945). One of these included the above-mentioned lullaby recorded by Marques Pereira but in a slightly different version, which also contained a modern rendering of the verse in question:
Dom dom, dom dom
Sinhô capitão
Espada na cinta
Rota na mão.
My conversation with Dr. Barreiros in Lisbon resulted in a very curious piece of information concerning this quatrain "from Macau". Many years ago, Dr. Barreiros' son studied music under a Brazilian teacher who said that the "senhor capitão" was also sung in Brazil. There were some slight alterations but even the melody to which it was performed was similar.
The proof of this was to be seen in a photocopy of the first page of a Brazilian children's magazine Pernalonga (8th November, 1961) which showed the famous Bugs Bunny with a carrot in his belt riding a hobby horse. Beside the drawing there was a verse:
Bão balalão!
Senhor capitão!
Cenoura na cinta!
E rédeas na mão!
(Bão balalão!
There goes the captain!
With a carrot in his sash!
With reins in his hand!
Obviously, "carrot" and "reins" were adapted to suit the drawing and possibly a children's story contained within the pages of the magazine. Nevertheless, the quatrain from Macau is immediately recognisable.
In an attempt to discover a little more about this strange coincidence, I wrote to a member of my family who has been living in Rio de Janeiro for many years, asking if they had ever heard anything similar being sung in Brazil.
They replied immediately, saying that the verse in question is often sung in the following two different versions:
1 - Bão balalão,
Senhor capitão!
Espada na cinta.
Ginete na mão.
Em terras distantes
Morreu seu irmão
Cozido e assado
No seu caldeirão.
(Bão balalão,
There goes the captain!
With a sword in his sash,
With a stick in his hand.
In far off lands
His brother died,
Boiled and roasted
In a great big cauldron.)
2 - Bão balalão,
Senhor capitão!
Espada na cinta,
Ginete na mão.
Aí vai a senhora abadessa
Sentada na sua cadeira,
Capitão não estava em casa,
Atiremos com ela no chão! (1)
(Bão balalão
There goes the captain,
With sword in his sash,
With a stick in his hand.
There goes the abbess
Seated in her chair,
The captain was not at home,
Let's throw her to the ground!)
When we examine these two songs we can see that the first version is similar to the Macau version with the addition of what seems to be a reference to a nursery-tale: "Boiled and roasted in a great big cauldron". The addition to the second version gives the idea that it dates from the times when wealthy people were transported in sedan chairs. This, along with the reference to the captain's stick (ginete is described as an archaic term for a captain's stick in the Morais e Silva Dictionary) leads us to the conclusion that this is a comparatively old verse. It would be reasonable to suppose that this quatrain was created in or taken to Brazil in the last century.
It seems that as far as the "Macau" verse is concerned, everything must be left to assumption. It would appear that this verse was not sung prior to publication of the article "Creole Songs-Makista Ballads" as it was not quoted by Marques Pereira. This would mean that it was either composed or imported during the first decade of this century.
How then can the coincidences between two verses from such distant lands as Macau and Brazil be explained? Given that it is unlikely that the song travelled directly from Macau to Brazil or vice-versa, the only explanation would seem to be that it originated in Portugal and spread in both directions. It would be interesting to know if this quatrain was, or still is, sung in other Portuguese-speaking territories.
I think it would be reasonable, however, to assume that this verse was not created by the Macanese community but was rather adopted and given a local identity through the creole pronunciation used in singing it (senhor becomes sium, capitão becomes capitam, mão becomes mám) and also through the words which were introduced (dom dom and rota).
In Malaccan creole dom dom means "to hold (ie. a baby)in one's lap" and the term was used as a nonsense word in lullabies in Macau just as bão balalão (probably from the verb embalar meaning "to rock") is used in Brazil. The word used for "whip", rota (rattan), is of Malay origin and is commonly used in the Portuguese spoken in the Orient. In this case it refers to the long thin whip carried by Portuguese officers (2) and has been used to replace the less comprehensible ginete used in the Brazilian version.
This would prove that in spite of the Brazilian creative talents, the version from Macau has actually gone one step further by adapting and making its own nursery rhyme from abroad.
NOTES
(1) The Brazilian version also has slight variations such as changing Bão balalã to Bam balalão or Bom balalão, ginete to sinete, senhora abadessa to senhora madeira and atiremos to atirarmos. These alterations are not important.
(2) The sword and whip or small stick used to be carried by all the Portuguese gentlemen in Macau "as an essential distinguishing mark" (Ana Maria Amaro: Filhos da Terra, ICM, Macau, 1988, p.80). They can be seen in a drawing called "A Foreigner" (Portuguese) dating from the XVIIth century and printed in Ou-Mun Kei-Leok, translated by Luís Gonzaga Gomes (Macau, 1950, p.133). However, by the time this verse was apparently brought to Macau, only officers in the Portuguese army wore these accessories.
*Graduate in Classics from the University of Coimbra. She has spent many years researching Macau's culture, particularly the linguistics of the territory and has published several books on Makista creole and other Asian creoles of Portuguese origin.
start p. 127
end p.