Conto: "O caboclo, o padre e o estudante" - Luís da Câmara Cascudo - em inglês

Esse conto eu li no maravilhoso livro "Contos Tradicionais do Brasil", de Luís da Câmara Cascudo, e foi a estória que escolhi para contar na sétima edição do Encontro Internacional de Contadores de Estórias - World Ceilidh, que acontece neste domingo (20) às 11h30 (horário de Brasília) com transmissão pelo Zoom, organizado pelo narrador holandês Marin Millenaar com a participação de contadores de estórias de todas as partes do mundo.

Como a participação é em inglês, tive que traduzi-lo e ficou assim:

The peasant, the priest and the student

A student and a priest were traveling through the Brazilian northeastern rough and dry countryside, with a peasant as companion. They were given a small goat cheese in a house.

 Not knowing how to divide it, even because the cheese was so small that it would not be enough for the three of them, the priest decided that everyone should sleep and the cheese would be given to the one that had, during the night, the most beautiful dream, thinking of fooling everyone with his magnificent oratory resources.

Everyone accepted and went to sleep. In the middle of the night, everyone else sleeping, the peasant woke up, went to the cheese and ate it.

In the morning, the three of them sat at the table for coffee, each ready to tell their dream. 

The priest said he dreamed of Jacob's ladder and described it brilliantly, how he ascended triumphantly to heaven through the celestial ladder. The student then said that he had dreamed of himself already in heaven waiting for the priest to come up. 

The peasant then smiled and said:

- I dreamed that I saw you, Your Holiness, climbing the stairs and you, Your Cleverness, in the sky, surrounded by angels and friends. I stayed on the ground and shouted:

- Mr student, Mr priest, the cheese! You forgot the cheese!

Then, the two of you answered from afar, from the sky, surrounded by the sweetest angels:   

- Eat the cheese, Mr peasant! Eat the cheese, man! We're in heaven now, we don't want cheese.

- I tell you, the dream was so real, so vivid, that I thought it to be true, so I got up while you were sleeping and ate the cheese…

A versão original, em português, eu postei aqui no blog em 2009 - leia aqui.