“A red-clad sprite no taller than a cat who tangles your hair and rides your chest while you sleep.”
In the Garfagnana — the green mountain country along Tuscany's Serchio valley — every village knows the buffardello, though no two describe him alike. The classic account gives a sprite half a metre tall in red clothes and pointed shoes, at home in walnut trees and stables; others swear he is a small black animal-thing, part fox or cat or owl, known chiefly by the sarcastically mocking laughter he leaves outside the window at night.
He is a prank economy unto himself: he tangles sleepers' hair into knots, sits on chests until breath comes short, strips bedding, panics the stable, steals wine from cellar barrels and rides the horses to a lather. Yet the tradition is affectionate as much as fearful — the buffardello can be fond of children and women — and where belief has faded his name survives as weather: in the Garfagnana, 'tira il buffardello' means a whirlwind is up.
The Legend
The buffardello works at night, and works close. He slips into bedrooms to knot hair — unmarried women are his favourite targets — snatches covers, snuffs lights, and presses on sleepers' chests in the crushing visitation locals called calcolisce. In the stable he sucks milk from the cows, tangles tails and manes, and terrifies the livestock. At Gallicano he was said to occupy a house outright, opening and closing its windows; at Minucciano he is a horned nocturnal bird living in the town tower.
The best-documented tale comes from Corsanico. A farmer found his horses mysteriously loosed in the night and one of them hoisted to the ceiling rafters, hanging by its own mane. He fetched the men of the village; by the time they arrived the horse stood freed on the floor, the windows banged open on their own, and a malevolent laugh faded away over the fields. Afterwards, any knot found in the morning's hair was laid at the door of the baffardello.
The Record
The sprite has a paper trail. Idelfonso Nieri's Vocabolario lucchese defines the buffardello as a curious sprite or little devil, roughly comparable to the linchetto, and between 1984 and 1987 the folklorist Oscar Guidi collected first-hand accounts across more than fifteen Garfagnana municipalities, from Castelnuovo to Minucciano and Villa Collemandina — an unusually dense modern record for an Italian folletto.
Guidi's Magia e folletti in Garfagnana (2004) and Matteo Cosimo Cresti's Fate e folletti della Toscana (2012) set down the variants: bufardello and baffardello, piffardello at Sillano, pappardello at Gorfigliano. The record even preserves a folk theology — the creature's hands are said to have been pierced by Saint John, precisely so that he can never get a killing grip on the sleepers he torments.
The Lore
The countermeasures are a folklore in themselves. Hang a juniper branch by the door and the buffardello is compelled to count its berries until he forgets whom he came to torment; an inverted broom inside the door, laundry brought in at dusk, and a boy's cap set on a child's head all bar his way. Confrontation works too — the afflicted could break his grip with the taunt that Saint John had punctured his hands, so he cannot suffocate anyone.
He belongs to a crowded Tuscan family — first cousin to the linchetto of Lucca — and to the wider tribe of Europe's household spirits. In the upper valleys he has dwindled into an idiom for the wind that spins dust in a farmyard, called scontronello at Magliano, but parents in the Garfagnana still deploy the oldest formula of all: behave, or the buffardello will come for you.
Field Notes
- ✦ A dish of juniper berries left out condemns him to count them and forget his pranks.
- ✦ Descriptions vary wildly: small red-clad man, ugly black animal, beardless boy, or bearded elder.
- ✦ His hands are said to have been pierced by Saint John, so he cannot strangle sleepers.
- ✦ Oscar Guidi collected buffardello accounts across 15+ Garfagnana municipalities in 1984-1987.
- ✦ Where belief has faded, 'tira il buffardello' survives as a phrase for a whirling wind.
Case File
- Classification
- Forest sprite
- Category
- Little People/Fae
- Territory
- Garfagnana, Tuscany
- First Sighted
- Tuscan oral tradition
- Habitat
- Woods and walnut trees of the Garfagnana
- Reported Size
- About 50 cm tall
- Also Known As
- Folletto della Garfagnana