The picèna

The picèna

Go to the main page

The legend of the picèna has been inspired on one hand by the antiquity of the castle of Segonzano and by a hole of the ancient walls of the building (the so-called Bus del picena, i.e. the Picena's hole), on the other hand by the latent religious intolerance common in the ancient times and by the fondness for the ghosts in the Cembran legends.

It all started when the guards who garrisoned the Cantilaga bridge, by the castle, saw a little humpback who came down on a mule in the right bank of the Avisio river covering the Corvaia trail: they stopped the little man and tried to ask questions to him, but they obtained only sounds they couldn't understand.

So they seized him, yet being afraid to be in the presence of a diabolical creature. The hump itself was seen in times gone by as a divine sign given to the wicked men; a Trentine proverb says indeed: “Dai segnadi da Dio tre’ paśi endrio” , i.e. from the people marked by God (with a deformity) you must stay at least three steps far. An attitude that today wouldn't surely be felt as politically correct…
They led him to the presence of the Count (or anyway of the Lord of the castle: real actually the ownership of the manor has passed over the centuries to several barons, bishops and counts, and this story is set in an indeterminate time.) The Count, who fortunately was a quite educated person, understood that the one spoken by the stranger wasn't the language of the hell but a German dialect: the man was actually a Swiss tailor. Then he decided to keep him in his employment.

The tailor, who because of his height was just nicknamed él picèna (that is the little man), was then forced by the perfidious Count to dwell in the Bus del picena (or, according a different version, in a damp cave), kept busy to sew up luxurious dresses for the ladies of the castle.
Moreover, the fact that the man, who was of Lutheran religion, didn't go to the Holy Mass was cause of incessant frictions with the Countess.

The only amusement it was for him walking in the neighbourhood of the ancient manor, climbing the fig trees to pick the fruits that, it seems, he liked very much.
An unlucky day the picena, during one of these excursions, fell down a tree being seriously injured. The Countess called then a priest to try to save his soul at least in articulo mortis.

But the Swiss tailor, at the sight of him, started to shout: «Chase away that monster!» (or, according another version, he pronounced a filthy blasphemy), to breathe then his last.

From then on, during the a moonlit nights, the ghost of the picena wanders without peace, especially going about the darkest ravines of the castle and finding temporary rest inside the “hole”.

Go to the main page

Note related to the name of the Cantilaga bridge
The Cembran tradition interpreted the toponym on the basis of a curious popular etymology: Cantilaga would mean leave the songs, stop singing; in some variant of Cembran, indeed, the verb lagàr means to leave.
This because to the vagrants who passed through the bridge, often drunk, it would have been forbidden to sing not to disturb the Lords of the near Castle of Segonzano.

According a further belief, it would have been possible again to sing and speak in a loud voice when arrived to the near hamlet of Parlo, that for this reason it would have taken its name (in Italian parlo means I speak.)

Unfortunately the real etymology is less picturesque, as it can be seen by these quotations (I added the bold style):

« […] this is the «Cantilága» bridge; the word, in the ancient Ladin language, meant «water passage», while the local tradition interpreted it as a request to leave the songs in order not to irritate the guards and disturb the Lords of the not far Castle. […] »
[Parcheggia e Cammina page 64, quote translated by me]

« […] Prof. Ausserer jr., speaking about the Cantilaga Bridge, explains it as «laga i canti», that would mean «stop singing» not do disturb the counts of the castle of Segonzano. It's a poor collected popular explanation. It will be better to think to a compound of àga, ancient form for water. »
[Guido Sette - Toponimi page 66, quote translated by me]

« Parlo (párlo) […] year 1686: the Parlo small house [Lorenzi].
Obscure toponym. According Lorenzi it would be a nickname. It occurs also in the zone of Brescia, and in those cases it could be a surname or a corruption of the dialectal pèrlo ‘snowy mespilus plant’ […] »
[Toponomastica trentina page 283, quote translated by me]

Go to the main page