Água de Alto

Água de Alto is a civil parish in the municipality of Vila Franca do Campo on the island of São Miguel in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores. The population in 2011 was 1,788, in an area of 18.41 km².HistoryAccording to historian Gaspar Frutuoso, little is known about this parish. What is known is that during the 15th century, a hermitage in this region sheltered a hospital for lepers, named Lazareto (after the saint São Lázaro, or Gafaria). Following Gaspar Frutuoso's reference, the community of Água de Alto consisted of thirty houses, administered by Father Baltazar Faguntes.The parish's name had its origin in the 30m waterfall in the vicinity of the Ribeira do Degredo. Owing to water falling from a height, the region began to be referred as Água D´Alto, which is literally water from the heights.During the early decades of the 16th century, the residents of Água d'Alto divided their days with tilling the land, collecting woad and fishing. On one day, close to evening, the peasants returned to their homes, where the women had prepared meager meals. Unbeknownst to the residents, a boat carrying pirates, likely Algerian in origin, neared the beach. In the shadows of the night, they passed unseen to the local sentries, and surprised the local populous. They sacked, maltreated and injured the men, violated the women, while another group advanced into the interior led by a drummer, who frightened the citizenry with his drumming. While the sound sacred and terrified the women and children, the pirates continued their task of pillaging and destruction. The sentries, discovering finally what was happening, launched boats and knights on horseback to attack the pirates. But, the pirates returned to their launches and escaped, except for the drummer, who continued to drum. When he realized, it was too late, he drummed louder so that know one would cross him. At the end of the night, the drummer quieted his drumming, but immediately the townsfolk heard a scream: the drummer had fallen into a cavern. Although they could not find the body, the settlers would later report that in the evenings they were able to hear the drum. The cavern then became known as the Grota do Tamborileiro, because the spirit of the drummer continued to play his drum.