The bouffadou

This object is craft and single, very used in Lozère. The bouffadou is made out of wood with the peak or the crest of a sylvan pine which pierces. We blow in the bouffadou to stir embers in the chimney or in the barbecue without scattering ashes and without burning ourself. It’s an handful object . It’s about 70 – 95 cm.

The secrets of manufacture :

• They pierce the bouffadous with a wisp which will be guided by the marrow of the wood, central part of the branch which is more tender. We use sylvan pine to do any bouffadou because it’s a wood which has a lot of marrow and which pierces well.

• Making a bouffadou in beech would be very difficult. In the past, they let the crest of pine to freeze, because the marrow which is poor in water doesn’t freeze. That facilitated the drilling.

• In the legend, this stick was born of the witch “Bouffanelle”.

Bouffanelle

Bouffanelle was a witch, at the time when there remained people in the big forests of Gevaudan.

This witch has a speciality : the devil stick.She had cut a young birch of white wood, removed

bark and widened a wooden conduit. So, it was enough ams tram gram peak and peak and

colégram, blow in the hole and, at the other end, appeared a imp in his red breeches, a little guy filled

of malice who, as long as lasted the blast of the witch, in the blowtorch, danced the devil’s dance.

Some apprentices went in the forest and tried to make a stick. No devil appeared at the end of the hole and the witch's apprentices had

some for their shame.

However, by this simple stick hollow, fortune came for one of them : Bouffarel.

One evening, as Bouffarel was blowing in front of the fire, nothing happened. Midnight

approached, The fire was gradually dying, and as he blew once again, approaching the end of the tube near the fire, it brought it life.

Bouffarel had invented the device to relight the fire without burning his moustache.