Labatut

Overview

Márcio Baptista’s 2011 cultural essay reproduces Câmara Cascudo’s quotation of Martins de Vasconcelos’s Labatut account. The creature lives at the end of the world and roams towns at night, preferring children to adults. It has round feet, long hands, tangled hair, porcupinelike body hair, one forehead eye and tusklike teeth. Moving rapidly through streets, it pauses at doorways to hear speech, singing, whistling or loud snoring before devouring someone. Barking dogs signal its presence.

The account belongs to a specific literary transmission. Mossoró writer and researcher Manoel Onofre Jr. identifies Vasconcelos’s Histórias do Sertão as a 1918 collection, later included in Obras Completas in 1956. He explains that Cascudo drew on the Labatut story for Geografia dos Mitos Brasileiros. Thus the familiar monster description reaches later readers through a regional writer and a folklorist’s selection, rather than a newly recorded twenty-first-century interview.

Origins & earliest records

The cited written witness is Vasconcelos’s Histórias do Sertão, dated 1918 by the named Mossoró literary researcher. Cascudo later transmitted its description. Folklorists associate the monster’s name with military officer Pedro Labatut, but the inspected reproductions do not establish exactly when that historical association first became a frightening tale.

Records & interpretation

Baptista supplies a specifically located Cascudo quotation, Dicionário do Folclore Brasileiro, second edition, p. 413, itself crediting Vasconcelos p. 10. Onofre independently supplies the collection and reprint chronology. Original editions remain uninspected here. A modern claim placing Vasconcelos’s childhood memory in his birth year, 1874, is not used.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Histórias do Sertão

   José Martins de Vasconcelos · 1918

   Labatut account credited at p. 10 through Cascudo’s quoted entry; original not independently inspected.

2. 02

   Dicionário do Folclore Brasileiro

   Luís da Câmara Cascudo · 1962 edition

   Second-edition p. 413 quoted by Baptista; original edition uninspected.

3. 03

   Cruzando referências

   Márcio Baptista · 2011

   Directly read named cultural essay reproducing the Cascudo/Vasconcelos witness.

4. 04

   Escritores mossoroenses (parte 4) – Martins de Vasconcelos

   Manoel Onofre Jr. · 2024

   Named regional researcher’s bibliographic account, published 22 May; directly inspected.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. CommunityBaptista 2011: located Cascudo quotation and credited Vasconcelos accountResearch access: 2026-10-05
2. CommunityOnofre 2024: Vasconcelos’s books and Cascudo’s use of LabatutResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.