Galtzagorri

'Red-pants'
Mamur

In Basque mythology, a galtzagorri is a type of iratxo or imp.

According to the legend, a certain peasant who sought a way to do less work, was advised to go to certain shop of Bayonne and buy a box of galtzagorriak. He did that and, when he was back to his farm, he opened the small box. A bunch of little imps with red pants jumped immediately from it asking:

What do we do, what do we do?

He immediately put them to work: repair the fence, prepare the land, milk the cows, redo the ceiling... In few minutes the galtzagorriak had done all the jobs and asked again:

What do we do now, what do we do now?

The peasant ordered them to do many other things and again the job was done in minutes. But the galtzagorriak kept asking what to do. The more than pleased peasant had to say:

Nothing.

Frustrated the imps started to undo all the jobs they had done. Eventually, the peasant managed to get them back into their box and, from then on, he decided to do his job by himself.