Roughly translated to “Mary Hook”, she’s a folklore character known in the north of Portugal, in the region of Minho, expecially. Living in the north, I became acquainted with her during kindergarten. I had never been scared of such stories about bogeymen and similar horrors, but this one made me avoid wells for a looong while.
Maria Gancha is still well known today, sometimes having different names like Maria da Manta (Mary of the Blanket) or Maria da Grade (Mary of the Grid). Even the Mirandese language has a name for her: Marimanta.
I was told she had hair running down her face and hooks for hands, which she used to drag children who got too close to the edge of wells. But the descriptions vary a lot. Some other sources say she had no hair, red hair, that she was an old lady, that she had eyes made of fire or even horns. The only thing all these versions have in common is that she has hooks for hands.
Or hair pins, depends on how you want to go with the translation of the word gancho (which is the right way to say hairpin in Portuguese, but gancha makes the word feminine). But in the end, I think hooks sound scarier that old fashioned hair pins. I’m not saying those things weren’t pretty lethal, but still… I’m getting off track.
If you’re a child, be careful. When you look down, she will see you. Then, she will start climbing up using the bucket rope. She will then use her hooks to grab you and bring with her to the bottom of the well, where she’ll drown you.
The children who fall victim to her are usually discovered later by adults that come later to fetch water and see the bodies floating down bellow. And that’s always how the story ends.
I know! I’ll just throw rocks to hurt her! That way, she will stay away!
Do not do that. The noise of the rock banging against the well’s walls and the water getting disturbed will probably anger her a lot, but she also could be sleeping and that will just get her extra irate.
Oh that’s right, she sleeps. Probably to explain the incredible amount of children that have looked down countless wells and survived. Although, I have never heard about anyone who bested her or was able to flee in time once they caught her attention. And I looked for it.
It’s obvious she was made up by parents who needed to convince their dumb children that playing near the wells was a terrible idea. And while ‘’You could fall’’ doesn’t always get the message through, a ‘’There’s a horrible monster that will grab you with giant hooks and drown you’’ works so much better. At her core Maria Gancha is a cautionary tale. She is essentially the Portuguese bogyman for wells. Thankfully, in our more urban society there isn’t a lot of use for traditional wells, so unless you go looking for it, like a fool, you won’t find your death in Maria Gancha’s hooks.
But is there more to her?
A person in my family said she was a remain of nymph tales from older times, when the romans rulled the world. Leite de Vasconselos said that she was the distortion of an older iberian diety. I suppose we can agree that she was once upon a time something else. But what? Was it a protector of wells and lakes, and this ‘’I’ll kill your children’’ facet came later? Or like greek god Dionysus, did it have the murderous madness in her since the beguining?
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Sources: Oral tradition
‘’Literatura Portuguesa de Tradição Oral’’ by the Project Vercial associated with the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro
‘‘Seres Mágicos em Portugall – Histórias de fadas, duendes, olharapos, lobisomens, diabretes e outras criaturas que habitam o nosso país’‘ by Vanessa Fidalgo
”Bestiário Tradicional Português” by Nuno Matos Valente
Lusitana Magazine – vol. 31: ”Arquivo de estudos filológicos e etnológicos relativos a Portugal”
Several documents I couldn’t place by Leite de Vasconselos
”Maria da Manta” by wikipedia. Avaliable at: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_da_manta (Oh look, the rhyme/lullaby about her)
Last edited: 17/5/2023
Portuguese Creatures and Legends Galore! 