Between history and legend: the treasure of the bell in
Oleastra.
For young and grown up children...
The legend tells an event presumably
happened more than 700-1000 years ago in a wealthy and industrious
village whose name used to be Oleastra.
The wealthy village.
Until now, in that village, elder people
tell youngers of a rich village where people used to labour
in the fields, looking after vineyards and olive-trees,
as well as making wine and oil. But their activities were
not these only ones. People of Oleastra used to sell directly
their products into the markets, as their ancestors always
had done. Wine and oil from renewed vineyards and olive-yards
were taken to Corniglia or to Little Seashore (where today
Manarola stays) and from there, through the "Leudi" (coasting
vessels), to Genoa harbour, from where the goods were leaving
for bigger destinations (as they used to do in Roman and,
maybe, Etrurian times). The peasants/merchants of Oleastra
diversified their investments and also owned small quotas
in the shipping companies, using to participate – with part
of the money gained from the wine and oil sales – to commercial
enterprises called, at those times, "Commende". The peasants/merchants,
back from their activities, used to bring home precious
fabrics and rich cloths, as a demonstration of their prosperous
trade and of the favour of the market. These aspects were
noted by the Governors in Genoa, who allowed that the parish
church were dedicated to St. Laurence, a sign of great prestige
for the small village recognized as the core of the territory
.
Danger foreshadowing.
The place used to be quiet and rich,
children played in the "carugi", women span wool, men worked
in the fields, old men looked after the cellars and nothing
seemed to alter that peace, not even the news coming from
Little Seashore about the sight-seeing of ships with triangular
sails: it meant the arrival of Barbaresque pirates. People
in the lower villages asked helplessly the Oleastra villagers
for getting funds to arm some men and protect their houses.
In the meantime, other signals, about the presence of a
foreign fleet in the sea, start to frighten people. The
peasants/merchants, to compose people’s minds, sent a committee
to the Governors in Genoa, with the aim of getting battleships
to protect the coasts. They however were reassuring the
population, remembering that 10 years earlier, some pirates
- who had tried to attack Oleastra – had been chased by
peasants quickly assembled, with simple tools, like "furchete"
and "sarvadin" (in dialect, the wooden poles, of different
shape and weight, used in the vineyards). Somebody, in the
meeting with the major of the village, suggested that those
few men chased so easily some years ago could have been
spies, with the task of preparing a massive attack there
where it was assured rich spoils. All decided, however,
to go to sleep; the committee to Genoa has left and in a
week time, at the most, an answer would have come back.
But from its starting it was not a quiet night; uncertainty
was winning on confidence and the sleepers were not at ease
even if some peasants, as sentinels, stood awake on the
road to Little Seashore as well as to Groppo, the place
where the village used to collect water .
The bells are hidden.
At 1 a.m. an alarm called into the "carugi"
the already awakened people, "fire’s burning", big flashes
around, from Punta Mesco, signed an attack, but it was not
easy to see which village has been sacked, even if it was
sure that the pirates had come in great numbers. Waiting
at dawn, on the highest rock in front of the sea, people
start to decide what to do. A child broke the silence, noting:
"Bells, bells!", "What have the bells got to do with this?",
"They are shining!". In fact, Oleastra was famous also for
the sound of its bells; one, in particularly, had been casted
in pure silver and gold and – apart the fact that it rang
celestially – it was very brilliant and clearly seen from
a long distance. Without speaking a single word, all the
villagers moved into the church square, some with ropes,
some others with wooden poles, quickly a platform was made
to reach the bell-tower and the bells were slinged and lowered.
However, the possibility that the shining could have already
signed the village existed; so it was decided to excavate
a big hole in the ground, and to put into it not only the
bells but also the villagers’ properties. All gathered together
carrying their riches and the priest wrote on each coffer
the owner’s name. The properties were put together with
the silver bell, kept in the same position as it had in
the bell-tower, hanging from a main girder. Thereafter a
cover was made and protected by more than 10 metres of soil,
so nobody could notice the excavation. On the ground, quickly
some cultivation was made, as if it were a cultivated terrace
among the others. That night the sentinels trebled, people
went to sleep fatigued, waiting for a dawn that for too
many was not to come .
The pillage.
The Saracen vanguard came into the village
not from the watched roads but from the mountains above.
After the assault of the previous night, they had not gone
back to their ships, but had come inland to attack in the
rear; the first sentinels were slaughtered without any possibility
of perceiving what was going to be; others recognized, before
being killed, some of those who, ten years earlier, had
been too easily pushed back to the sea, a proof that the
attack had been carefully prepared. The peasants/merchants,
totally disarmed, could nothing against the invasors, most
of them were killed, women and children became prisoners
and were transported, while the old people were slaughtered.
A few minutes after the attack, high in the sky fires start,
showing that another slaughter had been made, a sign of
dismay and scare for the other villages. The invasors left
that night, in the same way as they came; it was heard far
away the prisoners’ cries and moanings, while they were
forced to get into the pirates’ vessels, and thereafter
carried and sold as slaves in oriental markets. From Little
Seashore, compassionate helps came and buried the deads.
For many months nobody dared to come back to a place that
had become a synonymous of desolation and death .
An old Man comes back .
From that horrible night sixty years,
at least, had been passed. Some other people had come back
to live in the houses, to cultivate the fields but all the
people – who had been living in Oleastra in the period before
the sack – had been killed or put in slavery. Nobody, then,
knew about the bell and the rich peasants’ properties that
had been hidden. To the people working under the olive trees
in the fields, along the path that previously used to bring
to Little Seashore, an old man, about 70 or even more year-old,
came quickly approaching. He was unknown to everybody, but
he clearly knew the steps and modified his walking according
to their different shape, as if he had walked on them quite
frequently. He didn’t speak to anybody; just went to live
into one of the few houses, still ruined after the sack
and not yet rebuilt, near the village of Groppo. All in
the village were curious about his status and his intentions;
some said that in Manarola, speaking in a strage language,
resembling Arab, he looked quite astonished seeing how big
the village has become, the village he still called Little
Seashore. People thought that he possibly was insane and
that it would be better to leave him alone .
The secret revealed.
Later on, he start to tell people incredible
things; he was the boy who had suggested to hide the shining
bell. He told about the fears, in the nights before the
pillage, about the raid, the abduction and about everything
already told above and thereafter about his escaping, after
years of slavery, and his willingness to come back to his
birthplace. After some reluctances, he added: "I have come
back also to recover the treasure". The astonishment was
total. "Which treasure?". He told, then, about the hiding-place
for the bell, 10 metres deep into the groud. Briefly, after
that, the old man died, but about his tale nobody thought
that it was a fake: in the nights of the strong libeccio
wind, when the sea swells and beats the coast between the
Lakes and the rosmaries, as to destroy it, just below Volastra,
even today, it can be heard the ring of the bell. Before
the old man’s tale it was perceived as a sound carried by
the wind, even if the uncertain direction made everybody
think that it could come from the earth. Later, when Volastra
was visited by people from everywhere, they tried to find
the bell and the treasure, following the last hints given
by the old man: "Looking at the bell-tower and at the chimney
of the last house in the village, this is the right direction
to find the treasure". But still today, in the libeccio
windy nights, when the sea furiously beats the coast below
Volastra, you can listen to the heavenly sound of the never
found bell .
As we have heard this tale when we were children, now,
grown up,we like to tell it to you.