Saltocchio: not Hannibal’s elephant

Posted on December 16, 2009 by Heather Jarman
I go with Marco on the way home from the mill. It turns out he’s from Saltocchio, the village on the way to Lucca that Alberto, who is not from Saltocchio, told me took its name from from a battle there in which one of Hannibal’s elephants had lost its eye (‘saltare’ means jump and ‘occhio’ means eye). Marco’s legend is completely different. There used to be a small lake in the shape of an eye in front of the church and a boatman ferried worshippers across to its door, hence ‘jumping over the eye’. In a couple of hundred years will people wonder why a particular spot on the South Bank of London is called ‘London Eye’?
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2 Responses to Saltocchio: not Hannibal’s elephant

  1. Fannie says:
    January 31, 2012 at 11:35 pm

    I love reading these articles bcaeuse they’re short but informative.

    Reply

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