Bruno and Buffalmacco Extort Calandrino with a Ginger-Pill Ruse is an Eighth Day tale in which two pranksters steal Calandrino’s pig and make him appear guilty of the theft. Their fraud turns a farmyard loss into a public ordeal: the stolen pig is hidden, the test is rigged, and Calandrino’s genuine distress becomes evidence against him. The trick ends not with recovery or vindication, but with the thieves carrying off two pairs of capons as hush money.

The Pig and the Setup

Filomena tells the story on the Eighth Day, prompted by the mention of Calandrino and his companions in the preceding tale. The plot begins at Calandrino’s small farm near Florence, which came to him as his wife’s dowry. Each year he goes there with his wife to kill one of the pigs raised on the property and have it salted. This year, because Mistress Tessa is somewhat unwell, he goes alone. His isolation gives Bruno and Buffalmacco their opportunity.

The two men are visiting a neighboring priest when Calandrino welcomes them to see what a capable manager he is and shows them the pig he has just killed. Bruno proposes that they sell it, spend the money together, and tell Mistress Tessa that it was stolen. Calandrino refuses: he expects his wife would not believe that excuse and would drive him from the house. The refusal establishes the fear that will later make him vulnerable. Bruno and Buffalmacco leave without accepting his invitation to supper, but the pig has given them a scheme.

Theft Behind the Ordeal

Bruno and Buffalmacco decide to steal the pig and make its owner pay for the privilege of silence. They enlist the priest, then use Calandrino’s fondness for drinking when someone else pays to get him drunk. At the tavern, the priest insists on covering the bill, and Calandrino drinks freely. Late that night, he returns home, fails to secure the door, and goes straight to bed without supper. The conspirators dine with the priest, enter the house through the open door, unhook the pig, and carry it to the priest’s home.

In the morning, Calandrino discovers both the missing pig and the open door. He makes a loud complaint and tells Bruno and Buffalmacco that he has been robbed. Bruno pretends to accept the news while slyly reminding him that he had proposed precisely this story the day before. Calandrino insists that the theft is real, but his companions make his protest sound like a rehearsed lie. His panic about how he will return home and what Mistress Tessa will say is already part of their leverage, though he does not know that the theft was their own work.

Buffalmacco offers a way to identify the thief: an ordeal using bread and cheese. Bruno objects that a real thief might suspect the test and stay away, so they devise a more inviting version with ginger pills and good wine. Calandrino agrees to pay for the supplies, hoping that discovering the culprit will console him. Bruno goes to Florence, buys a pound of ginger boluses from a druggist, and has two dog-balls compounded with fresh hepatic aloes. He covers them with sugar like the genuine pills and marks them privately so he can tell them apart. The scheme depends on concealment as much as theater: the pills appear alike, but only the selected ones are made intolerable.

The Sham Test and Public Reversal

The next morning Calandrino gathers a company of young Florentines and local farmers. Bruno explains that each person will receive a pill and wine, and that the guilty man will find his pill too bitter to swallow. The neighbors agree to take part. Bruno lines them up with Calandrino among them and distributes the pills, placing one of the doctored dog-balls in Calandrino’s hand. The first taste of aloes makes Calandrino spit it out. Bruno pretends this may have happened for some other reason and gives him the second marked ball.

That second pill is more bitter still. Calandrino tries to keep it in his mouth rather than expose himself to the company, but at last spits it out, with tears running down his face. The assembled company interprets the rigged test as proof that he stole his own pig. Thus the supposed instrument for finding a thief reverses the accusation onto its victim: the evidence appears to come from Calandrino’s body, although Bruno and Buffalmacco have manufactured the result. Their performance turns a private deception into public disgrace, and the neighbors leave convinced of his guilt.

Blackmail and the Ending

Once the company has dispersed, Buffalmacco accuses Calandrino of taking the pig himself and inventing the theft to avoid sharing the proceeds. Calandrino swears that he is innocent, but the ordeal has left him unable to persuade even his supposed friends. Bruno adds a further accusation: someone among the guests supposedly told him that Calandrino keeps a mistress and may have given or sold her the pig. This claim is presented as part of the extortion, not as an established fact. Bruno also invokes Calandrino’s earlier escapade on the Mugnone, where he led his companions on a futile search for the Heliotrope, as supposed proof that they know his tricks.

The threat that finally matters is not exposure of the real theft, but the prospect of a quarrel at home. Bruno and Buffalmacco demand two pairs of capons, declaring that otherwise they will tell Mistress Tessa everything. Calandrino, already convinced that his protest has failed and unwilling to face his wife’s scolding as well, gives them the birds. They carry their payment back to Florence after salting the stolen pig, leaving him with both the loss and the humiliation. Filomena’s tale makes the con’s stages turn upon one another: Calandrino’s attempt to prove that he was robbed becomes the occasion for the thieves to accuse him, and the fear that first made the theft attractive to them secures their final profit.