Alentejo Folk Tales collected from oral tradition by António Thomaz Pires

The folk tales of Alentejo, almost all from the Elvas region, collected by ethnographer António Thomaz Pires in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, have never been published in their entirety in a single publication. The dispersion and inaccessibility of the publications in which these tales were published for the first and, in many cases, only time, meant that they could only be read and studied by the few specialists who devote themselves to searching for the treasures of popular tradition among the yellowed pages of old magazines and books that can only be found in the country's main libraries.

The Alentejo Folk Tales, due to their fidelity to tradition, simplicity and purity of form, constitute a precious collection for those who study popular mentality. They are also a beautiful pedagogical tool: they stimulate children's imagination and instil the mental and symbolic frameworks necessary for the structuring of personality.

Thus, Mário Ferreira Lages made an exhaustive collection of all these tales collected by António Thomaz Pires, studying them and preparing them for publication in a collection.

This study began in 1986 and led to a first publication, No. 4 in the ‘Estudos e Documentos’ collection published by CEPCEP. The continuation of the study allowed for the collection of a few more tales, leading to the publication of a new work, No. 11 in the same collection.