Legends that need to be read

One day, during a hunting trip on the Alto Nuvolau, the king of the Fanes managed to capture a young eagle. He had just locked it in a cage when an adult eagle flew overhead and swooped down on him. The man defended himself with his spear, but the bird of prey kept coming back: it was so enraged that flames came out of its beak. The king had never seen anything like it, and he was equally amazed to notice that the eagle had golden talons.

After repeatedly attacking and defending without either side gaining the upper hand, the bird of prey spoke to the king, saying “If you return my son to me, I will form an alliance with you, which will make you as superior to other kings as I am to other birds of prey.”

“If you truly wish to make a pact with me” replied the king “then I will gladly give you back your son.”

“The alliance I propose will be sealed with the exchange of twins” said the eagle.

“An exchange of twins?” asked the king. “What does that mean? What kind of pact is this?”

“It is clear that you are not a Fan” replied the bird of prey “because this has always been a custom in the mountains inhabited by the Fanes. If two children are born at once, one is given to one’s ally, who will do the same if he has twins, so the child of one becomes the child of the other. But he must not mention any of this: the alliance of twins is always a secret.”

 [...] “If that is the case, then I will make this alliance with you” said the king. “If I have twins, one will be yours.” So saying, he returned the eaglet, but no one in the kingdom ever learned of this encounter. The king never even told his wife.

Some time later, twin baby girls were born in the castle of the king of the Fanes, although the king wasn't too happy since he would have preferred two boys. The girls were so similar you couldn’t tell them apart and they were named Lujanta and Dolasilla.

At sunrise on the morning after the birth, the women in charge of caring for the newborns were terrified to discover that one of the twins had disappeared: in the cradle in place of Lujanta, there was a white marmot. The women were petrified by the strange discovery but then they summoned up all their courage and went to tell the queen what had happened. She didn't seem at all surprised and not only did she not reproach them, she ordered that the incident not be mentioned to the king.

A few days later, the king told the queen that he wanted to send the girls to a friend of his who had asked to see them. The visit couldn't be avoided and, on the contrary, would bring good luck to the entire kingdom. He therefore sent for a squire and said “Tomorrow you will take the twins and carry them to the foot of the Auto Nuvolau. Once there, you will see a great eagle arrive, which will take one of the two girls and carry her away. You will let it choose the one it wants and bring the other back to me. You will witness many strange things, but you must not let slip a single word to anyone. When you return, you will say that one of the girls was stolen from you by robbers.”

But the squire couldn't keep such a great secret to himself and he told it to a servant who in turn told others. So it was that the queen learned of it, and she ordered that the two little ones be wrapped in cloths that would hide them as much as possible, and then placed in a basket tied behind the man's shoulders, so that not even he would know what he was carrying. This way, even if he brought the marmot back, he would believe that it had been placed in the eagle's basket. The next day, everything was carried out according to the queen's orders. [...] The sun had set and it was beginning to get dark when the eagle finally appeared, flying high above the precipices on the southern side of Nuvolau before dropping down in a wide arc. With its golden talons, it delicately pulled aside the cloths covering the two newborns and looked first at one and then the other. It was the marmot who attracted its attention the most: the eagle thought it must be a special creature and decided to choose that one. It carefully covered the marmot, took it in its talons, and flew toward the sky, already veiled in the evening shadows. But the marmot began to shriek and struggle, so much so that the eagle, for fear that it would slip out of its cloth, landed carefully on a ledge among the hills. As soon as it touched the ground, the marmot slipped from its talons and disappeared into a crevice in the rocks. The eagle was immensely saddened, for it had lost the daughter of the ally who had entrusted her to it.