Folktale Week: smoke

It’s said that in Val Pellice, in the Italian Piedmont Alps, no one could succeed in bringing water to the houses of the Roussenc hamlet. One evening, the inhabitants were gathered in the stable, when a stranger entered and promised to bring the water to the village before the crowing of the cock in exchange…

Folktale Week: path

In Val Germanasca in the north-west Italy, right in the middle of the old road that leads to Prali, there is a huge rock split in half. According to a funny legend, the fault is all of a greedy donkey. One day, as sometimes happens in the mountains, the fog in the valley was so…

Folktale Week: secret

At Nido dell’Orso, above Prali, on the Piedmontese Alps in Italy, there were two sisters of opposite souls: one was kind and a great worker, the other was rude and lazy. Although the good girl spent her days at work in the stable, she always had some money to buy new clothes and jewels that…

Folktale week: home

Once upon a time, in the mountains of the Val Pellice, in Piemonte (the north-west region of Italy), in the meadows around Barma d’Aout, there were the houses of the fantine, as the fairies are called here. They were slim and industrious women who lived by raising cattle. In time, they had become friends with…