Calandrino and the Pig
Intro
- Storyteller: Filomena
- Filomena's going to tell another Calandrino tale, following up on Elissa's earlier story (VIII.3).
Story
- Calandrino has a little pig farm outside of Florence where he goes every year in December and has a pig slaughtered and preserved in salts.
- Usually, his wife goes with him. But one year, she got sick and stayed behind.
- That was the cue for Buffalmacco and Bruno to go and stay with a priest-friend of theirs who lived nearby.
- When they show up, Calandrino shows off his slaughtered pig.
- They're impressed, but they want him to sell it so they can party with the money.
- Tell your wife it was stolen, they say. Calandrino knows his wife will kill him.
- Bruno and Buffalmacco decide they'll go ahead and steal the pig for themselves.
- The priest thinks this is an excellent idea.
- They decide to get Calandrino drunk so that it'll be easier to steal the pig.
- The three men show up to his house and find the door wide open. They take the pig and hide it at the priest's house.
- Poor Calandrino wakes to find his pig gone. No one can tell him what happened to it.
- Bruno and Buffalmacco go over to see what Calandrino thinks happened to his pig.
- When he tells them someone stole it, they see an opportunity to tease. They pretend he's taken their advice and will dupe his wife about the pig.
- No matter how much Calandrino swears that the pig's been stolen, the two men go on like Calandrino's really shamming.
- Then they pretend they'll help him find the pig.
- Buffalmacco says he'll give the neighbors a "bread and cheese test" (a kind of medieval lie detector test—very inaccurate, of course). In this case, he's going to use a kind of crystallized ginger.
- But Bruno and Buffalmacco have something up their sleeves. They buy normal ginger sweets, but they also buy a different, bitter root, which is then compounded with aloe (also bitter) and rolled in sugar to look just like the normal candies.
- Bruno and Buffalmacco explain to Calandrino that they'll say magic spells over the sweets so that they can detect the pig thief.
- Calandrino gathers all the neighbors and Bruno explains to them what they're doing.
- The pig thief, he says, will not be able to swallow the ginger because it will taste bitter to him.
- He gives them all a chance to confess before the test begins.
- But they all receive their sweets and take their chances. Calandrino, of course, gets a bitter one.
- Calandrino spits out his "sweet," but they give him a second chance. He spits out the second.
- Now Buffalmacco and Bruno really lay into him. He stole the pig himself! And he's keeping a girl up there in the country!
- They decide to blackmail Calandrino into giving them some capons (or they'll rat on him to his wife).
- Calandrino has no choice. He gives up the birds.
- The two scoundrels make off with their pig and poultry and leave poor Calandrino in despair.