go every night through valleys and mountains and up on trees ringing a little bell, or carrying a lantern and singing a prayer to the souls. Every Portuguese village had one. Calling and singing to the souls is an ancient tradition done either by one person alone or in groups and it has many names: "lançar as almas", "encomendar as almas", "amentar as almas", "deitar as almas", "cantar às almas santas". The serandeiros are disguised young men, covered with a blanket, a bed sheet or a hooded cloak. They carry a staff (a stick of quince or of honeyberry, about their own height) in one hand, and in the other they carry a small bundle of basil or apples that they make the girls that take part of the desfolhada smell, or with which they tickle people's cheeks; sometimes, to play a prank, they bring stinging nettles. When a girl recognizes the serandeiro or if she recognizes her boyfriend masked as a serandeiro, she throws him an apple brought from home. The serandeiros represent the spirits of the dead, the spirits of nature. The heads would have protective and healing powers, protecting people and communities. They would also be cherished for their divinatory, prophetic and healing powers. The display places for the Iron Age severed heads were in the inside or outside of buildings with a preference for public places, with streets and people passing by and always preferring high places. Our Ladies In Portugal, rituals among the Catholic religious order of Our Lady of Cabeza, a Black Madonna, include the offering of heads of wax to the Lady, praying the Hail Mary while keeping a small statue of Our Lady on top of the head; the pilgrims pray with their own heads inside a hole in the wall of the chapel. The Chapel of Our Lady of the Heads (Nossa Senhora das Cabeças) situated northwest of the ruins of the Roman era temple of Our Lady of the Heads (Orjais, Covilhã) evidences a continuity in the use of a sacred space that changed from a pagan worship cult area to a Christian one and continued to be a place of worship for centuries after. According to Pedro Carvalho, the pre-Roman findings and the unusual location of the ruins inside an 8th-century BC hillfort suggest it was the place of a pre-Roman cult. The Lady of the Head and Lady