The Fairies of Mount Sibilla

The story

At the top of the Monti Sibillini, where the wind never stops, there is a cave. The people of the Marche call it the Grotta della Sibilla, the Sibyl's Cave. But some also call it the Grotta delle Fate, the Fairies' Cave, and that is a name that says much more.

It is told that the Sibyl, the prophetess of the mountains, did not live alone. With her were her handmaids, the fairies. Girls whom nobody had ever seen up close, except on certain nights.

Because at night, when the Sibyl was distracted or had stopped watching, the fairies slipped away. They came out of the cave and went down the mountain, light, without a sound. They went down towards a little stone village, Pretare, at the foot of Monte Vettore, the highest peak of the Marche.

Down there were the shepherds. They took their flocks to pasture, and when darkness fell you still found them there, beside the fire, with the dogs asleep and the sky full of stars.

Then, from the path, a sound would come. A dance step, a rhythm, perhaps a stifled laugh.

The fairies danced the saltarello with them. The saltarello is a lively folk dance of leaps and turns. They spun, they jumped, they stamped their feet on the grass, and the shepherds had never seen anything like it. The long skirts opened like the petals of flowers. And nobody asked where they came from, because nobody wanted the music to end.

But there was a rule, and the fairies knew it well. Before dawn they had to be back at the cave. When the sky began to brighten above the mountains, they vanished. All together. Without saying goodbye.

For many nights it went like this. In the morning the grass was trampled and the air still tasted of music, but of the girls not a trace. The shepherds talked about those girls they had never seen, and how they disappeared. But one of them, more curious than the others, began to look more closely.

It is told that one night he stopped to watch the fairies as they danced, and noticed something nobody had yet seen. Under the long skirts, at every turn, when the cloth lifted for a moment, something appeared that did not look like a girl's foot. It was a hoof. A goat's leg.

The shepherd did not cry out. He told nobody, at least not until day came. But his gaze, perhaps, had lingered an instant too long.

From that night something changed. In the stories still told today, the Sibyl discovered that the fairies' secret had been revealed. And she imprisoned them, shut them in their own world, far from everyone.

The shepherds were left without dances. The nights grew long and silent. The path that led to the cave stayed empty.

Until one day a knight came to those parts. He was Guerrin Meschino, a hero of ancient tales, and he was looking for the Sibyl. What follows is how they tell it in Pretare. He hoped she would reveal to him who he really was, and where he came from. The shepherds stopped him and asked a favour: to find the vanished fairies.

He agreed. He climbed towards the cave and found the Sibyl, who fell in love with him. She promised to grant his wishes, if he solved her riddles. The knight solved them one after another, and the spell was broken. The fairies were free.

They came back down the mountain, to the shepherds, and with them, say the tales of Pretare, they founded the village. For this reason Pretare is still called "the village of the fairies".

But there is another version of that night, which left a real mark on the mountain.

That time the fairies had stayed late. They were dancing with the young men of the village, and when they noticed that the sky was already turning light, it was almost too late. They ran away. So fast that their feet left deep prints on the flank of the mountain.

If you look up towards Monte Vettore, they say, you can still see it. A long pale strip that cuts across the slope, a road with no beginning and no end. They call it the Strada delle Fate, the Fairies' Road. They are the footprints of their run.

Another tradition says that the Sibyl was not wicked at all. In the tales of those mountains she is a good fairy, beautiful and a little enchanting, queen of a world hidden inside the mountain. The French gentleman Antoine de La Sale, in 1420, climbed all the way up there and wrote about that underground kingdom, where, he says, ladies and young men live who learn all the languages of the world and never grow old. But from that world, he warns, you cannot leave when you wish. Whoever stays too long never comes back. And one understands why nobody, since then, has ever stopped looking at the mountain with a little respect.

Today Pretare is a small village, and the mountain around it is silent. But now and then, in August, its inhabitants gather and stage the legend, in a performance called "La discesa delle fate", the descent of the fairies. They dress up, they put on make-up, they climb the path once more. And in the evening, when darkness falls, someone turns towards the Vettore.

You never know.

Perhaps, on a windy night, some dance step is still down there, on the grass, just where the stars end. And if you hear a light sound, a rhythm, perhaps a stifled laugh, do not look too much at the skirts.

It might still be a secret.