Aradia in Sardinia: The Archaeology of a Folk Character Sabina Magliocco

Prologue
This paper builds upon my article Who Was Aradia? The History and Development of a Legend (2001). As one of the peer reviewers for that paper, Professor Hutton gave me extremely valuable feedback, thus beginning what became a very fruitful cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas. While Professor Hutton and I have different disciplinary specialties history and folkloristics/ ethnology, respectively we are interested in many of the same subjects and broader theoretical issues; thus our perspectives complement one another. Moreover, while my own grasp of history is weak and flawed, Professor Huttons mastery of anthropological and folkloristic literature is extraordinary for a scholar trained in a completely different discipline. It is therefore especially fitting that my contribution to this volume once again take up the threads of that original paper, expanding them in new directions and adding to what Professor Hutton has himself written on the subject of Herodias and Aradia. This work also provides an unexpected link between my early ethnographic research in Sardinia and my later interest in contemporary Witchcraft, bringing my research full circle in a satisfying way. I had the privilege of meeting Professor Hutton in person for the first time in April of 2004, when my colleague John Bishop and I came to Britain with two students in tow to film a May Day celebration in

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Padstow, Cornwall. Because Professor Hutton had written about the history of this festival, especially the figure of the hobby horse which stands at the center of the festivities (see Hutton, 1996, 81-94), I interviewed him for the film (Bishop & Magliocco, 2007). The trenchant, witty comments he gave us about the folkloristic origins of the idea that the Padstow hobby horse is a survival of ancient paganism never fail to elicit a laugh from the films audiences. What most impressed me about Professor Hutton at the time was the great kindness and interest he showed towards our students. He could have ignored them easily enough; instead, he demonstrated his natural mentorship by engaging them in conversation about their scholarly interests, background, and future plans. Both remember this experience as one of the highlights of the trip. It is no mystery why Professor Hutton has a train of devoted followers as numerous as the souls in Herodiass own procession: every exchange is for him a teachable moment, and he dispenses both praise and criticism with fairness and sensitivity. To receive his commendation, however, is to be borne aloft on golden wings, like Athenes Nike. The exchanges between Professor Hutton and me developed through the years into a collegial friendship, and I have been fortunate to meet him on other scholarly occasions. Certainly the most memorable was his glorious performance at the Getty Research Institute, one of the premiere cultural institutions in Los Angeles, California, in April of 2007. Invited by Getty Research Fellow and scholar of ancient religions Jan Bremmer, he delivered a lecture entitled Modern Pagan Festivals as part of a year-long lecture series dedicated to the theme of festivity.

[ Fig 1. l-r: Professors Ronald Hutton, Jan Bremmer and Sabina Magliocco at the Getty Research Institute, April 7, 2007. Photo by Jaynie Rabb Aydin.]

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I was privileged to be chosen to be a respondent to his remarks. He spoke to an unusually large audience which consisted of both scholars and Pagans, and managed the difficult task of charming and enlightening both camps, receiving enthusiastic accolades. It is therefore with gratitude and affection that I return to Aradia, the topic of our first contact, and offer this small contribution to the volume in honor of the tenth anniversary of the publication of Professor Huttons master work, Triumph of the Moon: a History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft.

Who is She?
Aradia is arguably one of the central figures of the modern pagan witchcraft revival. She is the main character of amateur folklorist Charles G. Lelands Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899), where she appears as the daughter of Diana, sent to earth by her divine mother to teach the mysteries of witchcraft to Italian peasants. Gerald Gardner was certainly influenced by Leland in his creation of modern pagan Witchcraft, particularly in the use of the name Aradia as the principal goddess of the Craft until the early 1960s, and his priestess Doreen Valiente based some of her prose Charge of the Goddess possibly the most widely diffused piece of Wiccan liturgy on material from Lelands Aradia. There have been other literary interpretations of this character among modern pagans, notably Aidan Kellys Epistle of Diana, a privatelypublished novel which has been spread through the Internet, and Myth Woodlings short story The Secret Story of Aradia, based on a legend from Lelands original text entitled The House of the Wind and also published online (http://www.jesterbear.com/Aradia/secret. html). Italian American author Raven Grimassi has elaborated on Aradias story and biography in his books Ways of the Strega (1995), Italian Witchcraft (2000) and Hereditary Witchcraft (1999), giving her a surname, personal history and twelve followers to spread her gospel after her disappearance. While Leland equates Aradia with Herodias (1899, 1), later arguing that she is actually a version of Lilith (1899, 102), a number of other theories regarding the origin of Aradias name have been proposed. One hypothesis, put forth by the Italian scholar Lorenza Menegoni in her translation and edition of Lelands Aradia, is that the name

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actually derives from the Greek Ariadne, through its Etruscan cognate Areatha (Menegoni, 1999, xii). The French scholar of Etruscan, Zacharie Mayani, connects the root Ar- with the words for fire and altar, and by association the concepts of luminosity and sacredness; thus Areatha or Arathia would be the luminous one, a fitting epithet for the daughter of the moon goddess (Mayani, 1963). Another explanation links Aradias name to the Latin words ara, altar, and dea, goddess, making her the goddess worshipped at the altar; or, alternatively, aratrum (plough) and dea, signifying goddess of the fertile earth (Grimassi, http://www.stregheria.com/Herodias.html ). The trouble with these derivations is that they are putative; no name Areatha, Arathia or Aradia survives in either Etruscan inscriptions or Roman literature. The question of origins is not altogether settled, because while the parameters of the narrative parallel that of medieval legends of Herodias, or Erodiade, as she was known in Italian, there is no record of the name Aradia in any published Italian text or medieval manuscript. Likewise, while numerous Italian folk characters have names which derive from Erodiade for example, la Redodesa, Redodeia, and Aredodesa in subalpine Italy (Cattabiani 1994, 13), these refer to the good Christmas witch of Italian folklore, la Befana, suggesting a connection between medieval legends of a supernatural female figure who flies through the air, and the development of the modern childrens legend. Ethnographers have hitherto not collected material about a character specifically called Aradia. Ronald Hutton in fact suggested that the name Aradia was actually Lelands Italianisation of Jules Michelets witch goddess Herodiade, from his novel La Sorcire (1862) (Hutton, 1993, 307). While Michelets romantic, egalitarian portrayal of witchcraft certainly influenced Leland, who may well have based his assumption that Aradia was in fact Herodias upon the work of Michelet, my research suggests that Aradia already existed in Italian folklore; she did not need Leland to invent her. In this paper I present indirect evidence that a medieval Italian character by the name of Aradia must have existed, for she survived in Sardinia under a slightly different name until the late 20th century. I will demonstrate that she is linked to medieval legends of Herodias and Diana, and that her name is a Sardinian version of the Italian Aradia. My hypothesis is that at some point before the late 19th century, legends about an Italian character by the name of Aradia, corresponding to

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medieval legends of Herodias and Diana and linked to witches and fairies, were brought to Sardinia, where they developed independently. This does not mean, however, that the Sardinian folk character is the same as the modern Pagan Aradia, nor that Aradia is the same as the biblical character Herodias; a combination of false etymology, misunderstanding and deliberate deception may have led to the syncretism of several legendary characters during the middle ages. This will be explored in depth below. In addition to the linguistic portion of my argument, I also maintain that the presence of Aradia in Sardinia as late as the 1980s illustrates the tremendous conservatism of this legend, even as it also fully adapted to a Sardinian context and blended with indigenous legend material. One of the reasons for the cool reception of Lelands Gospel among Italian folklorists in the early 20th century, compared to the interest provoked by his other works, was skepticism regarding the possibility of the continued existence of beliefs about Diana and Herodias (Menegoni 1999, x-xi). The survival in Sardinian folklore of the 1980s of a character related to Aradia attests to the longue dure of narratives about Diana and Herodias, and the possibility that they could have existed in Tuscany a century earlier. Thus it becomes more plausible that his informant Maddalena1 may have presented Leland with this character even as late as the 1890s. I call my methodology archaeology of legend, borrowing the term from the work of Italian ethnologist Ernesto De Martino, whose grounded historicism allowed him to examine Italian vernacular religion in order to understand how Christianity had imposed itself on pre-existing belief systems (De Martino, 2005 [1961], 7). De Martino saw folklore as a historical document through which to reconstruct the pastnot as a survival but as a document of a single history: that of the religious civilization in which it is a relic, or of the religious civilization in which it remains or is more or less profoundly remolded (ibid.).
1 In reality Margherita Talenti or Taluti; see Robert Mathiesen, Charles G. Leland and the Witches of Italy, 30. For the identification of her probable last name, I am indebted to R S Grimassi, who found evidence of it in Lelands private papers housed in the Library of Congress.

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Mine is therefore an historical project, but one for which I am using both historical and ethnographic materials and approaches. My goal is to remove layer upon layer, beginning with the most recent one, to reveal the roots and underpinnings of modern narrative materials. In doing so, I am not arguing for the existence of survivals, or implying that the meaning of these narratives has not changed through the ages, but rather demonstrating how legend material adapts to local socio-cultural contexts while still maintaining a recognisable connection to its past.

Sa Rejusta
This story begins in Bessude, a small town in the highlands of northwest Sardinia, in the summer of 1986. As a young graduate student, I was doing fieldwork on traditional religious festivals and social change, but I kept an ear open for local narratives, especially legends. Indeed, it was difficult to avoid them, as this area is particularly rich in stories. In the process of listening to and recording these accounts, I came to hear about a character known as sa Rejusta or sa Rajusta. This being was said to live under the Craxtu de Funari, a large boulder overlooking the Bidighinzu basin, from which she would emerge only once a year, on the night of July 31, when she would fly about the streets of the town, snatching and carrying away any children she happened to find. One could keep her at bay by leaving a plate of pasta on the window sill; the ogress would stop to eat it and fill herself up, diminishing her appetite for any errant children that might come her way.

[ fig 2 : The Craxtu de Funari, dwelling-place of sa Rejusta, in the territory of Bessude (Sardinia, Italy) photo: the author]

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It was clear that at the time of my fieldwork, Sa Rejusta belonged to the category of nursery bogeys: imaginary beings whose main purpose is to frighten children from doing things their parents and caretakers would rather they did not do. In fact, for many of my field consultants, there is little difference between sa Rejusta and other nursery bogeys, such as sas mamas (the mothers): sa mama de su sole (the mother of the sun, who appears at midday on hot summer days to snatch children who refuse to take a nap), sa mama de su ventu (the mother of the wind, who serves the same purpose in the winter) and sa mama de sa funtana (the mother of the spring, who pulls in children who lean too far into drinking troughs and wells). Sa Rejusta is supposed to frighten children from staying up past their bedtime on short summer nights when the sky is light well past their bedtime. But by the 1980s, the fear of these personages was fading even among the towns youngest children under the influence of education, television and globalisation. Today, many children in Bessude have never heard of sa Rejusta or sas mamas, probably because under the influence of psychologically-based child rearing methods, frightening children into compliance is considered traumatic and harmful to their development. From the beginning, I was fascinated with sa Rejusta. Who was she, and how did she get under the Craxtu de Funari? Why did she go after small children? What was her story, and what was the meaning of her unusual name? I tried going to the towns eldest citizens for answers to my questions, but got little clarification. Sa Rejusta means the lobster, one explained to me; and indeed, the Italian word aragosta gets rendered in the Logudoran2 dialect of Sardo as something like sarajusta. But this word is not indigenous to Logudoro; even then, I knew instinctively that it was a folk etymology. Sa Rejusta was not and could not be a giant lobster; Sa Rejusta, I suspected, belonged to a much older layer of cultural material. It was schoolteacher Marianna Nieddu, a connoisseur of local folklore, who first helped shed light on this legendary being by telling me a fuller insert space of her story. version Sa Rejusta was a sort of witch, she explained. On the night of July 31 she would leave her home under the Craxtu de Funari and make herself very small. She entered houses from the keyhole, and she would check to see if marriageable girls in the
2 The northwestern section of the island is known as the Logudoro; Bessude is located in this area.

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household had spun and woven enough for their dowries. If you had worked hard, she wouldnt harm you, but if you were lazy, she would punish you by chopping off your fingers. And there was a rhyme that I cant remember now, where according to how much you had spun and woven, she would cut off so many fingers (interview with Marianna Nieddu, 22 August 1986). The way to keep away this frightful being was to leave a plate of lentils or wheat on the door sill; the witch would be forced to stop and count them all, which would take her until dawn. Once the sun rose she would be compelled to return to her hiding place under the stone. Here we find well-known motifs recognisable from European folklore: the malicious night-witch who can shrink herself and enter through the keyhole, and who, when presented with tiny objects such as seeds or grains of sand, is forced to count them, and thus thwarted from causing harm. In the neighboring region around the towns of Torralba and Bonnanaro, sa Rejusta has a slightly different name: Sorre Justa, the just sister. While this made more sense to me linguistically, it begged the question: if a cannibalistic character who snatched children and chopped off young womens fingers was the just sister, who was the unjust sister, and what did she do? In Budduso and surrounding towns, the same spirit is called mama Erodas (mother Herodias) (Turchi, 2001, 97). This detail provides us with an important first key to the identity of sa Rejusta, by linking her not only to the other supernatural mothers, but to the biblical figure of Herodias and the well-developed legend complex surrounding this character in medieval Italian folklore. My argument, then, is that Bessudes sa Rejusta derives from an earlier cluster of legends about night-roaming, supernatural female figures linked with spinning and weaving, magic, the janas or fairies, and with meting out justice: rewarding the dutiful and punishing the wicked. But Herodias herself is probably a medieval Christian interpretation of what might have been an earlier supernatural figure with ties to the folklore of northern Europe, whose story entered Sardinia during the early Middle Ages and became syncretised with indigenous legends of dangerous female spirits. The remainder of this chapter is dedicated to revealing this history by examining each layer of folklore, as an archaeologist might, in order to contextualise it and understand its significance.

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Herodias and Diana

During the Middle Ages, beginning around the 9th century, a number of ecclesiastical documents report legends about night-time spiritual processions led by a supernatural figure in the areas which are now northern Italy, southern France and western Germany. In the narratives and their associated beliefs, these processions would enter houses, consume food which would magically regenerate, sing, dance and generally disport themselves. The leader would answer questions for her followers and dispense advice about healing herbs and the location of lost or stolen objects. If the assembly found the household in good order, they would bestow blessings and good luck, but if they found disorder and filth, they would punish the householders. While these were clearly legends incorporating fantastical material, some women actually confessed to participating in these gatherings at night, while their bodies lay asleep in bed (Cohen, 1975, 206-24; Ginzburg, 1989, 68-78). In the majority of early documents, believers refer to the leader of the spiritual assemblies by a variety of names, including Madonna Oriente (Milady of the East), la signora del giuoco (the lady of the game), Richella (Richie, the lady of riches), Abundia, Satia, Holda, Perchta, Bensozia (from Latin bona socia, the good associate), or Bensoria (from Latin bona soror, the good sister) (Ginzburg, 1989:67-71). However, beginning with the earliest report of these legends, in the work of Regino, Abbot of Prm in 899 CE, clerics associate the leaders with two figures from the New Testament: Diana and Herodias. Citing the Canon Episcopi, a document attributed to the Council of Ancyra in 314 CE, but probably a later forgery since this is its first mention in ecclesiastical records, Regino complains that many believe that Diana is a goddess or a queen who holds one third of the earth under her charge. He admonishes bishops to warn their flocks against the false beliefs of women who think they follow Diana the pagan goddess, or Herodias on their night-time travels, riding out on the backs of animals over long distances, following the orders of their mistress who called them to service on certain appointed nights (Bonomo, 1959, 19; Caro Baroja, 1961, 62; Cohen, 1975, 211). These warnings, along with the names of Herodias and Diana, are repeated in the encyclicals of Raterius of Liegi, Bishop of Verona (890-974 CE),

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Burchard of Worms (950-1025), and numerous later ecclesiastical writers, eventually passing into the body of canon law (Cohen, 1975, 212). In 1310 the Council of Treviri combined the two names, creating Herodiana (Ginzburg, 1989, 67). Historian Carlo Ginzburg argues that churchmens identification of the leader of womens night-time spiritual assemblies with Diana or Herodias was an attempt to render understandable within an ecclesiastical framework a body of folk beliefs that did not conform to the knowledge base and expectations of the clergy. It was the clerics who, in their encyclicals and confessors manuals, drew the connection between the leaders of spiritual assemblies and figures more wellknown in an ecclesiastical context, such as Herodias and Diana. Ginzburg writes: [T]he doubt nevertheless remains that churchmen and bishops (as well as later inquisitors) were forcing the beliefs they encountered into existing structures. The nod to Diana, the pagan goddess, for example, leads to the suspicion of an interpretatio romana, of a distorting lens derived from ancient religion (1989, 68; my translation). It is no accident that both figures of Herodias and Diana are drawn from the New Testament, the principal body of knowledge upon which medieval ecclesiastical knowledge was built, and that both are negative characters therein. Herodias, or Erodiade in Italian, appears in the Gospel of St. Matthew as the sister-in-law of King Herod (Matthew 14:3-12). She hated John the Baptist and wanted him dead, so she concocted a plan to kill him. She persuaded her daughter Salome to dance for Herod in exchange for the head of the saint. The plan worked: Salome danced, Herod had the head of St. John delivered to her on a platter, and that is the end of the story, at least in the gospels. But several early Christian legends explain how when Salome saw St. Johns head brought before her, she began to weep and repent her sin in a fit of remorse. A gust of wind issued from the saints mouth and blew the famous dancer into the air, where she is condemned to wander forever in penance (Cattabiani, 1994, 208; Cohen, 1975, 212).

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While we know of Salome from historical accounts, the Gospels actually never mention her by name; she is simply known as the daughter of Herodias (Mark 6:17-28 and Matthew 14:3-12). Since in Roman usage, the wives and daughters of a house were commonly known by the name of the male head of the household, it is easy to see how over time, Salome became confused with her mother Herodias. Neither is a positive figure; in fact, Herodias is arguably the wickedest woman mentioned in the New Testament. This fact is critical to the link which developed between Herodias, the goddess Diana, and the legends about supernatural flying women that medieval clerics attempted to quell. Diana is the only pagan goddess mentioned in the New Testament, in Acts 19: 1-41, which tells the story of Pauls journey to Ephesus, where stood the great temple of Artemis, whom the gospel calls by the name of her Roman counterpart, Diana. Artemis and Diana were associated with the moon, and in one of her aspects, Diana was conflated with the Greek Hecate, the protector of witches. Hecate was also the queen of the spirits of the dead, present at tombs and at the hearth, where pre-Roman peoples buried their ancestors. At night she would appear at crossroads, followed by a train of spirits of the unquiet dead those who had died before their time or in unjust circumstances (Caro Baroja, 1961, 26). Thus, for medieval clerics, not only was Diana a pagan goddess, she was also one associated with the worst kind of spiritual activity. This connection to witchcraft and the spirits of the dead was crucial in helping clerics censure beliefs in the night-time spiritual journeys, arguing both that the spirits were evil and that the experiences of women who reported journeying with them were inspired by demons (Cohen, 1975, 217). By linking the leaders of the spiritual assemblies to Herodias and Diana, medieval churchmen clearly strove not only to insert secular folk beliefs into a Christian religious structure, but to frame them as a form of pagan idolatry, and thus condemn them. As C. S. Watkins has argued about medieval English beliefs, despite the fact that with a few exceptions, medieval Europe was fully Christianised by the 10th century, medieval clerics often wrote as if paganism were a real threat largely because the theological materials from which they drew derived from an earlier period during which paganism was still alive.

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They transferred these references to the non-standard practices they observed in their own time, generally in an attempt to censure them (Watkins, 2008). However, we must not deduce from this that the beliefs actually were a form of pagan religion. Rather, they blended motifs from earlier belief systems with material drawn from a contemporary context, as folklore always does. What they do represent is a folk or vernacular understanding of the world, in contrast to an ecclesiastical one. If the leaders of the night-time spiritual assemblies from medieval folklore were neither Diana the pagan goddess, nor Herodias the New Testament villain, they were certainly based on figures drawn from pre-Christian legendry. We can gain insight into their nature by examining the names given to them in the reports of the clerical authors and the confessions of their parishioners. Burchard of Worms gives the alternative name of Holda, a character prominent in German folklore right down to the time of the Grimm brothers in the early 19th century. Holda (Frau Holle, Hulda, Holle, etc.; also known as Perchta or Berchta) was originally a pagan goddess of the winter solstice and the rebirth of the year (Cohen, 1975, 213). She was a supernatural, maternal being linked to both wells and caves (and thus an earthly otherworld) and flying through the air. She was often associated with winter; she was active during the twelve days of Christmas, and snowflakes were said to be feathers falling from her goose-down cloak (Motz, 1984). She had both beautiful and frightening aspects; she could appear as an attractive young woman, or as an ugly, long-nosed hag with huge teeth who terrified children, but she was generally only aggressive if angered. What angered her most was laziness and slovenliness in womens work, particularly spinning and weaving, of which she was the patron. She was also the protector of children, who were said to come from her. When she flew through the air, she was accompanied by a train of souls of the dead, especially unbaptised children and those who died before their time. Her visits, however, brought good luck, prosperity and fruitfulness to the land (Cohen, ibid.). Indeed, the other names of this spiritual visitor often make reference to her associations with fertility and prosperity of all kinds: the French Abundia (from the Latin abundantia, plenty) and Satia (from the

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Latin satius, full or plentiful) and the Italian Richella (from the Italian ricco, rich) clearly illustrate this connection. Some of her other names suggest instead the euphemisms for another goddess with related, but somewhat different associations. In the 1200s, Vincent of Beauvais writes in the Speculum morale that some deluded women call Herodias and Diana bonae res, good things. The Roman de la Rose calls the followers of Abonde bonnes dames, the good ladies. The Benandanti (good walkers) of Friuli paid homage to a majestic lady, called the good lady. Ginzburg calls attention to the propitiatory nature of these appellations, comparing them with the epithets of bona dea and placida, which referred to none other than Hecate, goddess of witchcraft and mistress of the dead, who also flew through the air at the head of a train of souls (Ginzburg, 1989, 77). In the post-Roman world, with its mixture of cultures, folklore about Hecate, the queen of the dead, and Holda, the bringer of fertility who also rode at the head of a procession of souls, may have begun to merge, developing both stable trans-geographic patterns and local characteristics. Clearly, we are dealing with a very archaic body of material, whose origins lie in a pre-Christian worldview in which the spirits of the dead, led by a supernatural female figure, visit households where they receive offerings of food and drink; if all is in order, they bring fertility and plenty to the homes they visit. Whatever indigenous, local names were attributed to the leaders of these spiritual assemblies in the various European vernaculars, by the 13th century, their identification with the figures of Diana and Herodias, accomplished through the influence of the Church, was complete.

The Ladies of the Night, the Fairies and the Dead

Like their leader, the spirits in the procession led by Diana or Herodias were known by a number of names: bonae res (good things), dominae nocturnae (ladies of the night) or fatae (fairies). As Ginzburg argues above, these appellations suggest a certain euphemistic quality indicating the ambiguous nature of the spirits; it is reminiscent of English-language traditions in which fairies are referred to as the good people. Indeed, a number of scholars have argued that the spirits

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which came to be known as fairies in English originally were the souls of the dead. In European folklore, fairies and the dead have a number of common characteristics: they exist at the margins of the human world, can appear and disappear at will, are often associated with ancient burials, reward and punish human actions, can enter human homes to feast, and indulge in pastimes such as dancing in a circle at night.3 As Diane Purkiss writes, Fairies share many characteristics of the dead; in some stories they are the dead, or the dead are with them, in others it is difficult for teller and reader alike to tell the difference between a ghost or a revenant and a fairy. [] But the link between fairies and the returned dead is not a confusion; like the dead who come back to feast in their homes, the fairies are both a society separate from human society and crucially intertwined with it. Like the dead, they are foreign and familiar; like the dead, they need gifts from the living, and give gifts back; like the dead, they can be angered. Like the dead, they are both present and absent (Purkiss, 2000, 87). We can therefore conclude that some material which appears in both ecclesiastical literature from the 9th century onwards, and in certain confessions and trial reports from the period of the witchcraft persecutions, is rooted in a body of legendry with very deep roots in European folklore. These legends of a procession of spirits headed by a supernatural female leader may hearken back to a layer of narrative material concerned with the dead and their relationship to the living. It was still very much alive in Sardinia as late as the 1980s. I recall from my early fieldwork how the towns elderly residents often complained of the night-time racket made by young people returning from parties and festivals, referring to it as su traigozzu (the big train). Upon closer questioning, this train turned out to be none other than the procession of condemned souls; it was said to be noisy because each spirit dragged along a heavy chain consisting of the sins it had accumulated during life.
3 See the Sardinian legend about the dead dancing in a circle and almost pulling a shepherd into their world in Magliocco, Two Madonnas, 95.

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Another name for this procession was sa regula morte (the host of the dead), and in Gallura, the northeastern part of the island, it was called sa frotta de Erode (the host of Herodias), preserving the link to the medieval legend (Turchi, 2001, 224). It was said that there were certain people in the village who had the preternatural ability to see this procession by going to a crossroads at noon or midnight and looking over their shoulder. The spirits of the townspeople who were doomed to die within the year would appear in the train. Those gifted (or cursed) with this ability were known as bidemortos, [those who] see the dead. But even townspeople who lacked this capacity interacted with the dead on a regular basis. It was still customary at the time to take offerings of food to the cemetery during the period known as sos mortos, the dead, between 30 October and 2 November. Many villagers also set a place at table for their beloved dead at this time, putting out a meal for them. Among the appropriate offerings at these spiritual meals were two types of cookies: sas tirikkas, made with grape must left over from the wine-making process, essentially identical to those the ancient Greeks offered to Hecate, and sas ankas de kane, dog-legs, which were indeed shaped like a dog leg, and may once have been an oblique reference to Hecates sacred hounds. The souls of the dead were expected during the period of sos mortos, whether as part of a ghostly procession, or as individuals; I once saw a woman offer a meal to a Gypsy (Rom) who had come begging through town. I dont normally offer them anything, she explained, but seeing as I recently lost my husband, and this being sos mortos and all, you never know who might be coming to your door. The implication was that wandering souls could appear even in the guise of strangers during this liminal period of the year, and that the offering of food was necessary to the maintenance of harmonious relations between the living and the dead. There are said to be in Sardinia beings called janas, whose name means followers of Diana, linking them directly to the medieval legends of roaming spirits. They are said to live in Neolithic shaft tombs, known as domus de janas, homes of the fairies, or in caves, both locations of prehistoric burials. They are expert spinners and weavers, and can interact with and in some cases even marry humans (Liori, 1992, 107-111). Like the

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Romanian iele, who are led by Irodeasa (Kligman, 1981, 54), Sardinian janas have as their patroness Araja or Arada (Turchi, 2000, 78), whose name is a version of the medieval Italian Erodiade. It is in fact the rendering in Sardo of a hypothetical Italian word Aradia. This is a persuasive piece of evidence suggesting that at some time, a character called Aradia must have existed in Italian folklore, and that when her stories were brought to Sardinia, her name, as well as details of her legend, acquired a Sardinian flavor. In some cases, the leader of the janas is called sAraja dimoniu, Aradia the demon, a reflection of the demonisation of the legend at the hands of medieval clerics. If sAraja dimoniu is the leader of the fairies, it is not an unreasonable leap to hypothesise that at some point in Sardinian legendry, this figure split into two, acquiring a counterpart who was not demonic, but righteous, rewarding industriousness and punishing laziness in young women who were spinning and weaving. The name of this spirit was sAraja justa, the just Aradia and here we have the likely antecedent of sa Rejusta (Turchi, 2001, 79). Legends of Herodias and Diana most likely entered Sardinia during the 12th 13th centuries, when the city-states of Pisa and Genoa vied for control over the island. This was exactly the time during which these legends were widely diffused in continental Italy, and when clerics were writing encyclicals warning against the dangers of believing these tales. In fact, it is not unlikely that it was through the influence of clerics themselves that the legend was imported. By the 15th century it could close gap be found in Sardinian confessionals (Turchi, 2001, 84). What seems not to have happened in Sardinia is the blending of this legend complex with the emergent myth of the diabolical sabbat; medieval Sardinian witch trial records lack confessions from women who reported going out at night with Aradia (Hennigsen, 1993; Pinna, 2000). Instead, sAraja justa seems to have hybridised, over centuries, with indigenous legendary characters like sas mamas (the mothers), who may be versions of pre-Christian spirits or deities connected with the sun, moon and water. She also merged with legends about nightroaming beings of a very different kind. Alongside legends of beneficent female spirits flying about at night at the head of a procession, there existed throughout Europe since ancient times legends of a very different sort of creature: the maleficent night-

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witch. These women were thought to enter homes at night in sprit form to harm the inhabitants by sucking blood, cooking and eating the bodies of their victims before restoring to them the appearance of life. Their victims eventually became ill and died. These stories are related to the Classical Roman legends of striae, women who could transform into birds of prey to fly out at night and eat their victims, often infants, in their beds. Their victims often appeared healthy, but over a period of time sickened and died: their souls were thought to have been eaten and, in some cases, cooked by the maleficent beings (Bonomo, 1959, 33; Cohen, 1975, 206-8). Analogous legends certainly existed in Sardinia well into the 20th century. Sardinian folklore distinguishes clearly between the purely maleficent coga (literally cook, or vampire-like witch) or surbile and the jana (fairy). Cogas and their counterparts, surbiles, are uniformly malevolent. They prey on newborns and unbaptised infants, entering homes at night through the keyhole by transforming themselves into insects, or by becoming as fine as a thread (Turchi, 2001, 87-8). Some allegedly anoint themselves with a special oil to effect this transformation (ibid.) The coga or surbile is often unaware of her own actions; one legend tells of a grandmother who unwittingly sucked the blood of her own grandchild (Turchi, 2001, 99). In other legends, however, cogas and surbiles appear to belong to a society of maleficent witches, and can initiate others into it. Turchi cites a legend reported by Piero Maria Cossu in which a young girl is initiated by a household servant who is secretly a coga. The older witch instructs the young initiate in the use of flying ointment, and warns her not to be afraid while flying, and especially not to cross herself when passing over a church or graveyard. But on her first flight, the young girl does so instinctively, and immediately falls to the ground. The next morning she is discovered by the priest curled in a foetal position on the ground, naked and weeping. He returns her unharmed to her family, but the servant who is a coga is discovered and burned alive for witchcraft (Turchi, 2001, 122). To defend against the dangerous coga or surbile, it is necessary to leave barley or wheat on the doorstep, where she will be forced to count the grains (Turchi, 2001, 97) a motif now found in the belief complex surrounding sa Rejusta.

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Aradia in Sardinia: The Archaeology of a Folk Character Sabina Magliocco

But sa Rejusta stands somewhere in between Araja, the queen of the janas, and the evil coga or surbile. She has elements in common with another folk character called sa gioviana (the Thursdaynian), a female spirit who would enter the homes of women on Thursdays, when they were spinning, offering them magical assistance so they could spin great quantities (Turchi 2001, 86). She could also punish women who were lazy spinners, who started their tasks late and did not spin or weave enough for their dowries (Turchi, 2001, 93). She could be kept away by placing a few grains of barley or chickpeas near the doorway. Legends of the gioviana recall the 14th century witch trial reports chronicled by Carlo Ginzburg and other historians in the cases of Sibillia and Pierina of Milan, who were called to service by their mistress, Signora Oriente, on Thursdays to participate in the spiritual assemblies and feasts (Bonomo, 1959; Caro Baroja, 1961; Muraro Vaiani, 1976; Ginzburg, 1989). We can see that in many ways, the legend of the gioviana recalls that of sa Rejusta. Both supernatural figures are concerned with spinning and weaving, and with the punishment of women who have not spun sufficient quantities; both can be kept at bay by being forced to count grains or seeds placed in the doorway. Both seem to draw elements from the folklore of Holda, the night-flying patron of spinning, weaving and fertility. It is also clear that historically, these legends functioned as a form of social control to underscore appropriate behavior for young women. While not as severely cloistered as women in Sicily and other parts of the southern Mediterranean, until the 20th century, unmarried women in Sardinia were expected to confine their actions to the domestic sphere. While men brought to marriage a house, land and livestock, women were responsible for providing all of the furnishings for the household, including bedding and floor coverings. These were traditionally made at home from the products of an agro-pastoral economy, which included wool and flax. Spinning and weaving were thus considered crucial skills for Sardinian women. It was typical for young women to begin learning them as children, and to work on their dowries from an early age. A fine dowry was an important asset for a young woman, who often brought only that to her marriage in the islands harsh and impoverished economy. As late as the mid-20th century, a marriage procession of horse- and donkey-carts bore household furnishings from the brides house to that of the new couple, where the brides handiwork was displayed for neighbours to admire as

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over the course of several days. Fine handiwork was not only an essential domestic skill; it could raise a womans status in the eyes of her in-laws and neighbours. No wonder, then, that there was social pressure on young women to produce, and to produce well and copiously. The elderly aunt of Marianna Nieddu, the young woman from whom I collected the most complete version of the legend of sa Rejusta in 1986, confessed to being terrified, as a young girl, that the old witch would maim her because she had not spun enough. By the 19th century, Herodias and Diana as leaders of the ladies of the night had vanished from Sardinian oral tradition, replaced instead by the gioviana and sa Rejusta, who helped industrious girls fulfill their obligations, but threatened lazy ones with brutal retribution. From this very brief study, two important conclusions can be drawn. The first, which will be of interest to historians of contemporary Paganism, is that at some point, there was a character known in Italian folklore as Aradia, derived from medieval legends of Herodias and linked with night flights, entry into homes, spinning, weaving and magic. While she seems to have disappeared from the folklore of Tuscany and Emilia, where Charles Leland reportedly found her in the late 19th century, she still exists in Sardinia, albeit in a localised form. The second, broader conclusion underscores the work of legend scholars, and concerns the ability of legend narrators to shape narrative material to reflect local concerns and adapt to local patterns. In this, sAraja justa is not just Herodias in Sardinia, but an exquisitely Sardinian character.

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