Case file · Folklore / legend
King Sebastião, the enchanted bull of Lençóis Island
On Lençóis Island, off Cururupu, Maranhão, islanders say the lost Portuguese King Sebastião lives in an enchanted castle and appears on Friday nights as a black bull with a star on its forehead. Wound the star and the king returns, São Luís sinks, and his enchanted city rises.
2007 CE · -1.32, -44.88 · status: legend
The account
The island also has an unusually high rate of albinism, about 3% of some 500 residents, who are called 'children of the moon'. King Sebastião is received as an encantado in Maranhão's Tambor de Mina. The year is that of the earliest dated press report we found (a 2007 article on the island's São Sebastião feast); the tradition is much older.