The Giubiana

The story

It happens every year, on the last Thursday of January. In many villages of Brianza, when it gets dark and the air is so cold that your breath makes clouds, children go out with their families and gather around a bonfire. In the middle of the flames there is a straw dummy, dressed in rags, with a badly drawn face. Every now and then someone shouts, and everyone laughs.

Then the dummy burns. And afterwards people eat: yellow risotto, with luganega sausage, and mulled wine for the grown-ups.

Nobody, around that fire, remembers any more why they do it. But the grandparents, if you ask them, will tell you a story. A story that begins in a frightening way.

It is said that in those days at the end of January, when the cold is hardest and the fields sleep under the frost, an old woman appears in the wood. She is called the Giubiana.

She is thin as a dry branch. She has very long, crooked legs, and on her feet red stockings, red as blood. She walks without making a sound, but she does not walk: she never touches the ground. She leaps from tree to tree, in long bounds, and the branches shake behind her. Whoever sees her coming, at night, glimpses only red stockings jumping among the branches.

Because the Giubiana wants one thing only.

She wants children.

They say that on the last Thursday of January she comes down from the wood and goes around the houses of the villages. She sniffs, she listens, she searches. Where she hears a child's breath, she stops. And if she manages to get in, she leaves with a full belly.

For this reason, in those days, mothers closed the doors well and let nobody out after sunset. The children lay tight in their beds, with the blankets up to their noses, listening to the wind. Every creak was a footstep.

But there was a mother, in a village of Brianza, who did not want only to hide her children. She wanted to be rid of the Giubiana for ever.

She thought for a long time. She knew the witch: she knew that she was greedy, that hunger went to her head, and that she never looked at the sky. And she thought of a trick.

That Thursday, the mother cooked. She put on the fire an enormous pot of saffron risotto, with plenty of luganega, the kind that makes even the dead's mouths water. The smell went out of the window and spread over the village. When the risotto was ready, the woman carried the steaming pot to the windowsill, left it there, and closed the window.

Then she hid in the house, with the children, in the dark, and waited.

Towards midnight they heard something coming. A rustle among the branches. A leap, another leap, a crackle like light footsteps on the roof. The red stockings appeared in the shadow, for an instant, in front of the window.

The Giubiana stopped. She sniffed. She sniffed again.

Then she saw the pot.

She thought of nothing. She threw herself on the risotto, seized it with her gnarled hands, and began to eat. She ate in huge mouthfuls, without taking a breath. It was delicious. It was hot. She had never eaten one like it.

She ate everything. She ate the luganega too, and the bottom, and scraped the bottom with her nails. It took her a long time, and she noticed nothing. She did not notice that the sky behind her was changing colour. That the stars were going out. That the air was growing lighter.

It was the dawn that caught her.

The first ray of sun reached her legs. The Giubiana raised her head, her mouth still smeared with saffron, and understood. She tried to leap, but could not. The red stockings faded. Her skin turned grey, then ash. And the witch, in a puff, fell apart.

The mother opened the window and found on the sill an empty pot and a little heap of dust. The wind, in a moment, carried that away too.

They say that from that day the children of Brianza have been safe, and that to remember the trick, every year, people eat risotto with luganega and burn the straw witch. So, if the Giubiana should ever come back, she will know that we have already seen her.

There is also a bloodier, darker version, which the grandparents tell lowering their voices. In that one, the mother does not cook a risotto. She puts in the bed, in place of her daughter, a doll full of knives and scissors. The witch swallows it in one mouthful and dies, pierced from the inside. It is a story that makes you laugh less.

As for the name, it perhaps comes from Jove, the old god of the Romans, and from his day, Thursday. Others think of Juno, Janus or Diana. If it was Jove, then an important god turned into an old witch with red stockings. It happens to stories that last many centuries.

So, on the last Thursday of January, when you smell the saffron risotto, look carefully at the sky. And if you see a pair of red stockings running along the branches, do not worry.

They are only old memories coming back to knock. After all, by now we know how it ends.