Folktale week: Key

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It’s said that in the Germanasca Valley – in the Northwest of Italy – lived a family in which the two daughters-in-law and mother-in-law couldn’t agree on almost anything.

The mountains over the Indritti hamlet, where the story takes place.


The two girls were terrible slackers and it was said that the spirits had taken advantage of all that discord to get into their business.
One day, the two girls stole the cellar key to go and drink wine taking advantage of the absence of the mother-in-law. While they were helping themselves, they saw, flickering in the light of the candle, a figure sitting on the barrel. It was a huge white goat with shining eyes that tore the bonnet from one of their heads with a leap.

The girls, terrified, fled leaving the wine tap open. They immediately put back the key where they took it, frightened for the moment of the discovery of the empty barrel. In the evening, the woman went down to the cellar and returned perplexed with a bonnet dirty with wine. The spirit of the wine cellar, after giving a lesson to the two girls, had saved the precious contents of the barrel.