Is Contus de foxili and the mystery of Is Cogas

How many times will it be happened to listen the tales told by grandparents after dinner or before going to sleep and to let you cradle by their voice that described far and magic places and fantastic characters? The curiosity of the younger was such that they did not have the will to go to bed and their mind imagined everything their ears heard in that moment.


In the village of Villacidro, too, state capital of the Medio Campidano, there was the habit to sit down outside in the garden in Summer or in front of a fireplace in winter for exchanging people’s tales and legends, through the Contus de foxili (tales of fireplace). The adults were able to tell the tales of the village with care and without creating fear; on the contrary, they aroused interest among children who remained seated and who paid attention to the words of the tellers.


The area of Villacidro is good as a place of mystery and obscurity, because it presents big stretches of vegetation given by woody lands and areas of mountains. Oaks, myrtle, brooms and deer, boars and hawks represent the most present good in this environment that is the perfect corner of paradise. The breath-taking view allows to imagine those places that stand out from the adults tales and to believe that they hide "utopian realities". This enormous area offers the possibility of creating some myths and mysterious tales that became such of public knowledge that they are considered true.

The most well-known of the area is that about Is Cogas, the witches with a long tail, hidden under the skirt. Grandmothers told to their grandchildren that those figures were known women who lived in the village and who, at night, changed in particular beings, that, then, took the features of flies or snakes or cats, too, and they went from a village to another for searching some preys to which arouse fear.


They were expert of evil spell and, when mournful events happened in that area, everyone thought that the guilt belonged to those individuals. But, there were others who pretended not to represent evil figures, but, defenders of the population, as healers who resorted to is brebus (prayers against evil) for helping who had some diseases.


Actually, this power was false, because it was a pretext for enchanting and persuading their aspired victims. According to some academics, the word cogas has the meaning of cooked and, indeed, the witches, you know, prepare some magic potions with grasses and materials with a bewitched and suggestive power. Moreover, someone relates to the Latin verb cogo, that has the meaning of obligating and forcing; therefore, the sense fits perfectly with the name of these ferocious witches, that attracted to themselves every individual that they found, preferably children, and that caught the individual for making some wizardries towards him.

The people’s fantasy about Is Cogas dates back to the Ancient Greece, when they talk about lamie, namely the eaters of children. The coincidence with Is Cogas of Villacidro is given by the motive according to which they stalked the younger for sucking their blood. The lamie were represented as monsters with a head of a woman and a body of a snake. According Sardinian tradition these harmful beings preferred exactly Villacidro village as a center where finding their preys. Sisinnio lived here, in the Second Century A.D. He was the local Saint who was able to defeat every Coga who wandered in the village and who was the worst enemy for them.


But, Is Cogas, did not have an easy life, because some citizens knew some remedies for driving them away. The best method for defeating them was putting something on the contrary: they were enough an overturned tripod or an overturned broom for allowing that the witch lost her powers and kept the aspect that she acquired before. So, she was stopped in her new animal role.


A wood or a mountain can hide parallel worlds that are waiting for being discovered and visited. And a legend can belong to the heritage of a community that every day live in contact with histories and myths that are not absolutely far, but, exactly near and familiar.