Gurro

Gurro lies in the Valle Cannobina, and its modern fame rests on a legend: after the battle of Pavia in 1525 some Scottish mercenaries heading home were caught by winter in these valleys and never left. The women's costume, the timber-framed walls marked with a St Andrew's cross and more than 800 words of supposedly Gaelic origin in the dialect are cited as proof. Local historians call the idea fanciful, backed by no source or linguistic evidence: it seems to have arisen in the fifties from an administrator's plan to draw visitors.

The village put the legend in its arms all the same: above a beech tree, a salamander among ten tongues of fire and the lilied crown of France. Other matters are firmer. Gurro belonged to Milan and followed the Ambrosian rite; moved to the diocese of Novara, it had to take up the Roman rite despite protests sent to Rome, and the Ambrosian rite returned only with the diocesan synod of 1990. When the valley's new carriage road was rerouted and left Gurro aside, the comune, a leading contributor, built its own link.