2. The story of the Salvans (wildmen): the Silvani ask being allowed to settle in the Dolomites. They are an ill-fated people, persecuted and enslaved in their ancient mother-country, situated in the East.

 

This is a very realistic story, that complies with what we know of the migratory thrusts at the end of the second millennium B:C: but it cannot be referred to the Silvani, on the contrary, it fits the Rhaetians themselves. However, the latter people didn't ask for permission to populate the central Alps, they just chased their predecessors away or into the woods. Notice that Wolff in this legend alternates the words "dwarfs" and "wildmen" as if they were completely synonymic; better, he clearly states that in his opinion "the Ladinians call Silvani (wildmen) the dwarfs who live in the woods and in the caves".

 

1. The sacred lake: among the flowers on the Lagorai lies a lake, obviously a sacred one.

 

The military party here described (a single Arimanno leading several pesants) is contrasting with the idea that the Arimanni were a militia paid by the people of Fassa, while it fits very well with the concept that the Arimanni, the only men trained at arms and in their own right to use them, had divided the land among themselves, and therefore the troops following this Arimanno were nothing but his serfs, approximately armed and not even considered by their enemies.

 

This is the only existing example, in Wolff's legend collection, of a sort of metempsychosis concept, however rudimentary, localized in the ancient Dolomites. Remark how little these "Fields of the Blessed" have to share with the christian Heaven.

 

1. The salvaria's [wild-woman's] people: a salvaria states "it was your ancestors who chased us onto the mountains".

 

This time the Trusani attack from the middle valley of the Cordevole, but it is not the Arimanni who face them, but a coalition in which it is easy to recognize a makeshift alliance of small Rhaetic tribes of the Iron Age. The Trusani, therefore, in this passage ought to be the Romans. As a matter of fact, although the legend claims that the Fassani reported a crushing victory, it appears clear that their wounded fell into the enemy's hands, what generally happens to the losers and not to the winners; The warrior Verrenes, who comes back years later after evading from captivity, cannot dwell in the village but must take to the bush (joining the "Latrones?); finally, it is stated that Cadina, the daughter of a chieftain, is sought in marriage by a "foreign prince": and this also makes me suspect that the Romans had already occupied the valley.

A purely mythical kingdom, that might have been inspired by the Cadubrenes, because it roughly coincides with its geographical position ("behind the Antelao"). This king appears indeed as a guest of the Lastoieres' king. Once more we have purely mythological characters overlapping with persons or tribes that might have actually lived. The "king of rays" cannot be, anyway, but an obvious personification of the Sun, and in Merisana we can easily read "Meridiana" (i.e. "pertaining to midday"; from Latin meridies, midday) through a Ladinian "Merijana". So we are in a full-size solar myth, and we may wonder whether the simple tale recounted here may just be the iceberg tip of a much more complex mythological story. In any case, it is certain that the name "Raies", that someone in Fassa had assigned to the Fanes' king (as collected by de Rossi) is nothing but a spurious reminder, an attempt to unify all kings under the same name , the same way as all warriors are named Ey-de-Net, and all sorcerers Spina-de-Mul.

Once again, a myth that explains a natural feature (better, two of them: the "veil" and the fact that the larch, albeit a conifer, is deciduous). Now, since when do brides wear a veil? Certainly since pre-christian times by large. The symbolic meaning of the veil seems anyway connected with a wife's status of subordination to her husband, therefore with a patriarchal society. This induces me to date the latter part of the legend at a different and later period with respect to the former, that must have been composed when matriarchate was the obvious, "natural" social ordering. According to other passages in the Fanes cycle, we might indicate the Bronze Age (or earlier) for Merisana's myth as such, and the Iron Age (or later) for that of the larch. The author of the latter must have exploited the pre-existing story of a "queen of nature" who "became a bride" to insert the details he wished to develop for purposes of his own.

Notice the morphological similarity with the Filadressa. They are again feminine characters, and this fact alone denotes the antiquity of the myth. The demon who escorts the dead into Hell will probably take origin from this type of images. But this will happen later: by now, the very concept of hell seems not to exist yet. In ancient Ladinian legends, the dead take better the shape of birds, or flowers, maybe in an embryonic methempsychotic theory that never developped completely, or more easily in a generic concept of death understood as a "reflow into nature".

 

There is an evident connection between this sacred lake (notice the treasure buried in its bottom, in conformity with the known Bronze-Age rituals) and the cult of the Sun. Is the lake the "mirror" of the sky? Elba, who silently sails upon it, is the "daughter of the Sun". "Alba", or "Elba" is an ancient pre-Ladinian word meaning "cliff", that remains in several place names. But today, Ladinian uses the word "alba" as derived from the Latin "alba" (=white), with the meaning of "dawn". Indeed, Elba has nothing to do with a "cliff". She is a personification of early dawn, the silvery light that spreads noiseless on the lake of the sky, and vanishes when the sun rises: in the legend, after having been walled up, Elba dies giving birth to Soreghina ("thread of sunlight"). However, in Elba's character, who lives close to the waters of the sacred lake, we might at the same time perceive a reference to an anguana. Like the other anguana of the Croda Rossa, who presumably is Moltina's mother, Elba too gives birth to a child, Cian Bolpin, whose father is a foreigner. He is raised by his totem animal, the dog (=Cian) as his father had been by a fox (=Bolpin). More: his firstborn daughter, Soreghina, doomed to die in the darkness, is nicknamed "lujenta", i.e. "shining", just like Dolasilla's firstborn sister!

 

In this role Ey-de-Net (another mythical Ey-de-Net, who has little or nothing at all to share with the hero of the Fanes' saga) is probably to be seen as a lunar symbol ( the eye of the night), related, but not anthitetical, to Soreghina's solar symbol. Almost certainly, this again isn't the same Ey-de-Net who fought against Spina-de-Mul, and we perceive another commixture of two originally different myths, that overlap because of the arbitrary usage of the same archetypical warrior name.

This legend, ambiented in the Cortina bowl, that probably had no stable villages before the Middle Age, is late both in its form and its contents. It appears plausible that the Filadressa's character, who even in her human form keeps vulture talons-shaped hands, is inspired by that of the Bregostene, who now are only interpreted as wicked witches, and therefore indirectly reconnects with a remote cult of the vulture, seen as a scavenger of both bodies and souls.

 

1. The route: from Zoldo, the protagonist crosses the Peleghetes' country, then the Duranni's lands, to descend into the plains.

 

A tale that, for our purposes, is only interesting for its geographical hints. The most obvious route, keeping into account that the lower valley of the Maè stream is narrow and steep-sloped, was across the Duran pass, the lower valley of the Cordevole and the valley of Belluno. Therefore, according to this passage the Peleghetes might have lived in the same Zoldo basin and/or the area of Agordo and the Duranni the same area of Agordo and/or the valley of Belluno.

 

Assigning Spina-de-Mul's name to this wizard (what Wolff himself refrained from doing) has been accomplished on the only account of the presence of the Raietta, that in both legends appears associated with a sorcerer. But all conspicuous gems cannot but take the name of their archetype, while the wizard's actions, the properties of the gem and the whole background of the tale have nothing to share with the Fanes' period,

 

A gloomy story where, to the purpose of building a castle high on an "impossible" cliff, the owner resorts to black magic, by sacrificing a virgin who is walled up under its foundations. Full Middle Ages, then, as the whole plot confirms. But in the procedures of the sacrifice, performed by a witch who can be easily perceived as the twisting of an anguana's character, there might be an echo of the ancient rituals connected with the legends of Lujanta and the Delibana (as a matter of fact, although the castle is located in the Gardena valley, the legend was collected by Wolff in the Livinallongo.

 

The myth of the "pale mountains" appears again, and probably can be directly reconnected with the better known one, but this time the work is ascribed not to fresh immigrants, but more properly to those wildmen who had been chased into the woods.

 

The christianization of the Dolomites could be considered as complete around year 800. Therefore the Middle-Age "Arimanni" must be located shortly after that date. Remark also that "Loogut" is no Ladinian name at all, and that his father is a landowner: all these data match with the concept that the "Arimanni" were no mercenary militia, but the dominant social class composed of the lombard invaders. True, it is stated that Loogut "enlists" among the Arimanni, but this either might be a later and trivial distortion due to to the misunderstanding of the original concept of Arimanni, or only mean that the man abandons the administration of his farm to permanently join the armed company.

 

3. The "luntjernine": small lamps, hanging from the mine ceiling, light the way

2. Birkenleute: Wolff states here that the German name of the Bedoyeres ought to derive not from Birken, birches, but from Spirken, an obsolete word for baranci (i.e., dwarf pines) that he defines however as "tall dark pines"). From these trees the Croda dei Baranci (german: Birkenkofel) would have taken its name, and therefore the Bedoyeres must have lived in this area.

 

1. The miller's ghost: when he was alive, he sold flour to the Latemar wildmen, who gave him in exchange pure gold extracted from the mountain.

 

The Silivena was inhabited by queen Bongaya's Paghinis, who were defeated by the Laponis. Who was connected with the ancient Palaeo-Venetic center that, later on, will become the Roman Opitergium? Wolff didn't tell us, and maybe his informants didn't know as well. We might better see the Palaeo-Venetics in the "Laponis" (a name on the ethymology of which I'm unable to guess anything), supposing that the "Paghinis" were the original population, whom they defeated, organized as a matriarchate and probably devoted to chthonian rituals (remark their connection with caves and earthquakes). Notice that "Paghinis" closely reminds "pagans", from Latin "pagus", a village, a name that once didn't indicate any religion in itself, but a peasantlike style of life.