The legend of the tèrmeni
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Once upon a time there was…
(all the self-respecting legends start like that, don't they?) 
…we said: once upon a time there was a shepherd, who every day grazed his flock of sheeps in the arid lands he owned. That man was consumed with envy towards a neighbour of his: indeed, while the bony animals ate the poor available herbs, the most tender grass was in the neighbour's greenfield, just beyond the tèrmen (in Cembran the limit, i.e. the border stone which delimited the estate.)
The termeni are still used to mark the land borders, especially in case of woods: they are big pointed stones, but sometimes also beams, painted ferroconcrete rods, old pieces of kerbstone…
To be able to take the livestock to the best pastures, so the shepherd decided to cheat: he went during the night to the border and moved the limit a few tens steps uphill. Then he eliminated all the traces in the place where there was the stone and he did this with such a good care that nobody could have imagined that it had been displaced.
When the man died, many years after, God obliged him to replace the borders. The shepherd was then sent again to the earth to put back the limit to its exact place where it used to be.
The ghost of the man then came back to the field, took the big stone on his back and went in search of the original position of the border; but, however he explored as much as he could, he wasn't able to find the place.
From then on, the phantom wanders without peace far and wide in the Cembra Valley, in perpetual search of the place where to put down his burden.
It's told that, walking by night in lonely places, you can hear from a distance the man's voice: «Él pesa, él pesa!», that is “it weighs, it weighs!”, referring to the big stone…
And it's told that, after he heard the moan, an old countryman from Quaràs also mocked the poor ghost: «Mòlelo giò!» (“lay it down”).
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© 2005, Fabio Vassallo