Folktale Week 2021

This year I participated as well in the Folktale week from 15 to 21 November. Folktale Week is an Instagram challenge where artists from all over the world participate by posting one piece of art each day for 7 days inspired by the 7 prompts created by the year’s hosts. This year the word were:…

Folktale week: Crown

In the mountains of the Germanasca Valley, 2400 m a.s.l., lies the plateau of the so-called Tredici Laghi (“thirteen lakes”). One of these is called Lago dell’Uomo (“man’s lake”) and a legend explains why. It’s said that a prince, passing by, saw a beautiful nymph on a piece of ice in the middle of the…

Folktale week: Key

It’s said that in the Germanasca Valley – in the Northwest of Italy – lived a family in which the two daughters-in-law and mother-in-law couldn’t agree on almost anything. The two girls were terrible slackers and it was said that the spirits had taken advantage of all that discord to get into their business.One day,…

Folktale week: darkness

One day, in the mountains of Val Troncea (in Piedmont, in the Northwest of Italy) Count Trucchetti was ascending, accompanied by his minstrel, when, in an opening between the rocks, he saw a beautiful fairy. He fell hopelessly in love and followed her into the darkness of the cave where she lived, and swore eternal…

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…