King Pasoglav

There are many legends connected to the old fortification called Večka Tower, situated on the cape of Kulina beach in Starigrad-Paklenica, and they can be heard even today from the town’s older residents:

‘He was a king with the head of a dog and a human body. He was shaved each time by a different young man who the king then had killed so as to protect his secret. One mother figured out a way of saving her only son from death when it was his turn to go to shave the king. She made some bread using her own breast milk and gave it to her son to offer the king. The king ate it all, and then the young man told him why it was so delicious. As they had now become brothers through the milk of the young man’s mother, the king decided to let the boy go, but he ordered him not to tell anyone the secret about his dog’s head.

The young man kept the secret for a long time, but then one day he could refrain no longer. So, he decided to trust the secret to the ground. He dug a hole, bent over, and whispered: ‘Darkest earth, our king has a dog’s head’. Fate had it that an elder tree would grow from the ground and a shepherd made a flute from its wood. When he played his flute, instead of a tune, all that could be heard were the words: ‘Our king has a dog’s head!’ The secret spread like wildfire across the whole kingdom and the king was left to live unshaven and isolated until his death, while the young men from the kingdom were liberated from the fear of dying in the king’s tower.’

(Storyteller: Jurka Petričević (nee Trošelj), died aged 104)

However, another legend has it that:
‘King Pasoglav imprisoned the son of Marija Terezija. She thought of a way to free him - she had her horse shoed back-to-front, so it appeared that she had left in the direction from which she had come. This tricked the posse of men the king had sent after her. Hence, Marija Terezija freed her son and then destroyed the Večka Tower by attacking it from Vinjerac.’