The Terrible Queen Pedoca

According to the poet and scholar Arturo Graf (Athens 1848 – Turin 1913), the name Pedoca may derive from a particular variety of grape whose leaves are shaped like a goose’s foot and which is called “regina” (queen). The myth of the “Queen with the goose foot” (pedauque, pied-de-oie, pedoca) is a folkloric figure found in various medieval popular songs, appearing as a mysterious sovereign, a fairy, or a saint with webbed feet like those of a goose.
In Alessandria, this figure is identified with the fierce German queen Pedoca, who at the head of a mighty army laid siege to the city around 1178, approximately ten years after the siege led by Frederick Barbarossa (October 1174 – April 1175). The terrible warlord had vines planted against the city walls, swearing she would not lift the siege until they bore fruit. The vines produced grapes, but the siege was unsuccessful, and the city resisted Queen Pedoca splendidly. After seven years, Alessandria had still not capitulated, forcing Pedoca to return to Germany. However, before leaving, enraged by her failure, she had the wine from her casks spilled upon the land surrounding the city, as if alluding to a great and barbaric blood sacrifice of the Alessandrians. This example of obtuse stupidity is still recalled in a popular saying used to describe someone who, though believing themselves cunning, acts in a clumsy and ineffective manner:

Gnurant c’mè Pedoca
Furb c’mè Pedoca
Ignorant or cunning like Pedoca

The tale, born of vivid popular imagination, nonetheless evokes a historical truth: the extensive devastation suffered by the vine-covered hills around the village at the hands of the imperial troops. A regulation of the time required every citizen to plant vineyards on their property in order to provide the city with produce and income. The legend was undoubtedly intended to exalt the tenacity of the Alessandrians in defending their newly won freedom.