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Atlas NoctisA nocturnal atlas of folklore
A — documented

Buffardello

Tuscany · Liguria · The Po plain and the northern Apennines
Val di Serchio, Garfagnana, Versilia, Lunigiana

Buffardello — being about half a metre tall, in red clothes and pointed shoes, or else «ugly and black» with animal features.

The Buffardello, half a metre tall and dressed in red, steals wine from the cellar and plaits the horses' tails in the stable.
Variants and dialect names
Bufardello, buffardella, baffardello, beffardello; pappardello (Gorfigliano), piffardello (Sillano)
What is told
Being about half a metre tall, in red clothes and pointed shoes, or else «ugly and black» with animal features. It acts at night: suffocation during sleep, theft of wine, plaiting of horses' tails, abduction of children.
What it was forthe author’s reading
Superimposable on the Linchetto, with two accents of its own: the theft of wine, which accounts for undeclared consumption from the cellar, and the abduction of children, which forbids minors to stray towards the wood.
Where it is attested
Idelfonso Nieri, Vocabolario lucchese. Oscar Guidi, Magia e folletti in Garfagnana, 2004, with recordings made in 1984-1987 in seventeen municipalities of the Garfagnana.
Caution
The etymology is not documented. The connection with beffa, suggested by the variant beffardello, is plausible but could be a secondary re-etymologisation.

The grade says how well the entry is documented, not how interesting it is. How the grades are assigned.

In the same area

AMascaPiedmont — Langhe, Roero, Monferrato, Canavese, Cuneo valleysABordaEmilia-Romagna, Lombardy — The Emilian and Romagnol lowlands, extending into the Lombard plainAMazapégulEmilia-Romagna — Romagna: Forlì-Cesena, Ravenna, Rimini, with an Apennine coreCFojoncoEmilia-Romagna — Apennines between the Secchia and the Panaro, provinces of Reggio Emilia and ModenaALinchettoTuscany — Lucchesia, Versilia, GarfagnanaAGostanza da LibbianoTuscany — San Miniato (province of Pisa), where the trial was held; the accused came from Libbiano, a hamlet of Peccioli, in the Valdera

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