DOMUS DE JANAS

Giana is a strange name, or better still, it's a strange appellative. Normally the linguists derive it from lat. Diana, getting wrong. However they get wrong in the name, not in the myth.Diana is an ancient Italic divinity. At Rome she was the goddess of light (< dies) and Gianus (< dies) was the native god of light, as well. Gianus represented the Sun, Diana the Moon. The Christian evangelization undertook the huge task to hide d'amblée a millennial tradition which had a religious dialogue with the trees spirits, with the roar of the stream, with the storm fury, with the Moon. All the pagan deities payed the price for a common demonization, and Diana incorporated and increased in herself the Christian myth of perversion, becoming the witches' leader.

Identified with the Moon, a star joined to woman's cyclicity, Diana loved the night and embodyed in the meantime one of the shapes of triple Ecates, the goddess of magic adored by mysteric rituals. Ecates was honoured at Ephesos with women' dances: she embodyed the spectres and the ghosts of earth, but she loved first of all to appear by night together with the crowd of her followers, who are tormented souls without burial, looking for peace. Therefore the nocturnal cult of Diana-Ecates stays in straight contrast with the beneficial entities of light, for a long time now dethroned and substituted for Christian divinities.

In Sardinia now we have is domus de jànas (normally named in north-Sardinia sas domos dessas fatas 'the fairies' houses'). These are "ypogeic" graves bored in the rocky faces, dating back to the end of Neolithic Ages (2000-2200) b.v.a.). The Christian tradition was opposed to darkness, and relegated in those hollows the habitat of evil spells and perversion. But the shepherds calmed down the monks' exaggerations, because they, perpetually wandering amongst the pastures, came into contact with those "nocturnal entities", by which they didn't get even a shiver. And it happened that the ancient appellative (should it ever had to be) of Giana < Diana became a tender and amused bajàna 'virgin, maid' but even 'scatter-brained, imprudent, unwary'. Vittorio Angius, 170 years ago, tells these "fairies" weren't named gianas but bajànas. And this leads to a certain Latin etymology which gave birth to the concept of 'scatter-brained, imprudent, unwary, fool, she-prick'.

Romans were gourmet and knew to choose between broad bean and broad bean. The broad-bean that grew at Baiae (Pozzuoli) were the best in Italy by thickness and size. From this rose the appellative of faba bajana, then only (faba)bajana, that's 'she-prick' given to maids scatter-brained and fool. Appellative till now remainded in north-Sardinia with the only "Christian" meaning of 'virgin, unmarried'.