A cabra cabriola or cabra-cabriola (literally "leaping nanny goat") is an imaginary bogeyman type being from Portuguese myth told to children, whose legend is also told in other parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Brazil.
It is imagined to be a fire-breathing, sharp toothed, but goat-like, child-eating beast.
Legend.
The cabra cabriola is said to be a man-eating goat, said to leap and buck a thousand times (hence the name, from "" "to prance, caper").
The cabra cabriola is considered a bogeyman monster that terrifies children into good behavior. It is said to be armed with huge jaws and sharp teeth used to devour youngsters, breathing fire from its eyes, mouth, and nostrils, while it bellows out its standard chant:
The wording of the chant may vary according to versions.
In one narrative, the Portuguese mother must leave her three children home at night to go to work, and tells them never to let anyone in unless they recognize her voice. Her advice works the first time around when the cabra cabriola arrives and utters the aforementioned chant, because the beast uses its natural thick voice, and is shunned by children. Undeterred, the beast hides in wait until the mother returns, and learns the manner of her speech, then goes to the blacksmith to re-forge his tongue in order to replicate the woman's soft voice. He arrives back, and now says:
and the unfortunate children believing it to be their mother, open the door and are devoured.
There are numerous other folktales surrounding the creature. In another tale localized in the Algarve region of Portugal, a poor widow tells her children to hide under the bed as she leaves for work, and secured the door closed with a pin. But the cabra cabiola entered the home. The woman got a ill-feeling hunch and returned home to find the door locked from within, and peering through the keyhole she espied the cabra cabiola. She told the goat to "Jump out of there", but the goat refused in verse (similar to his cliché chant). The woman was too afraid to confront it, so first hired a fox (for the payment of a rooster) and then a wolf (for a lamb) but both of them turned scared and retreated. Then the ant offered help, in return for "sopinhas" (soup) of honey and oil, which was in the house, so it could only be paid if it succeeded. Though tiny, the ant stung the cabra cabriola on the belly and it fled in pain screaming: baa, baa.
Parallels.
As a bogeyman-type device for frightening children into obedience, the "Cabra Cabriola" of Brazil (and the Portuguese language sphere) is named alongside the (, i.e. werewolf), the (var. ), the "Mula" (i.e., , the priest's mule or concubine which is equated with the the Headless Mule), the Curupira, the Caapora (Caipora), and the Cuca (Coco).
Gilberto Freyre conjectures that the origins of the cabra cabriola may be traced back to the lore of the "Caprimulgus" (nightjar, but literally "goat-milker") which goes on forays during the night to milk nanny-goats as well as eat children.