Video coming soon.
Colapesce, the Boy Who Lived in the Sea
Tonight, the caravan stops in Italy.
Cola from near Messina swims all day and never comes when his mother calls, until her angry words give him scales and webbed fingers. Then the King throws a golden cup into the sea.
About the tale
A legend of Messina and the Strait of Messina in Sicily. Giuseppe Pitrè collected its Sicilian folk versions and published them in “Studi di leggende popolari in Sicilia e nuova raccolta di leggende siciliane” (Turin: Carlo Clausen, 1904). In Sicilian the hero is Cola Pisci or Piscicola, “Cola the Fish”, and many tellers said that Messina, or all of Sicily, rests on three columns under the sea. Some retellings add that Cola stayed below to hold up the broken column; the folk versions Pitrè recorded only say that he never came back.
