City Lit French language tutor, Julie Ricci gets us in the mood for a scary Halloween with 6 scary French legends. This one left us a bit scared of the dark!
As we approach Halloween, some in the UK have started to decorate their house, prepared a list of Halloween themed or scary films to watch, or ordered a costume. As a French national here I am not used to this - Halloween not really being celebrated in my country!
Nevertheless, we do have our “Toussaint” (all Saints’ day), on the first day of November, that some people still honour by going to put flowers on a loved one’s grave, or that others use as a restful holiday. On the 31st of October some young people might engage in scary activities but that’s about it.
However these days that mark the passing from October to November are spent, it is always the opportunity for the media to remind us of the spooky Legends and haunted castles that exist and of witch (yes, my puns could use a little more imagination) French folklore is not by any means lacking.
Here are few of the most popular ones. If, by the end of this article, dear reader, you are not quaking in fear, even just a little, quite frankly you are made of sterner stuff than I.
La dame blanche
Various versions of the “white lady” exist all over Europe and north America, sometimes oracle of death, sometimes protector, and more recently scary hitch hiker according to urban legends; but in France, numerous ‘dames blanches’ are seen haunting ancient castles and sometimes, it is said, guarding a hidden treasure.
L’Ankou
Of celtic origin, from Britanny, Ankou comes from the Briton ‘Anken’, grief and ‘Ankoun’ forgetting.
The Ankou looks like the well-known depiction of Death; wrapped in a black coat or cloak, wearing a wide boarded hat and carrying a scythe (or more anciently a spear, an arrow or a spade – after all even Death is forced to modernise). He is, however, the servant of Death – not Death itself. But do not be misled. He is as feared by the people of Brittany as the familiar, 8-foot tall scythe wielding monstrosity you know and love.
He moves around in his cart to collect the souls of those who have died and take them to the next world, and if one hears its wheels grinding in the night, they are warned of an imminent death; seeing him assures that one’s death will happen before the end of the year. Shudder!
The Ankou is here to remind people that death will come for them. He takes the body of the last person to die each year which means they are doomed to perform his office for a year and a night. As if they didn’t have enough problems.
Mortemer Abbey
Located in Normandy in the mystical heart of the cold, humid and silent forest of Lyons; Mortemer Abbey (French: L'Abbaye de Mortemer) is nicknamed the most haunted abbey in France.
Indeed, in this old monastery, four monks were killed during the Revolution and are said to still be roaming the cellars to drink wine tasting of blood.
And among its many erm… idiosyncrasies, it has a pink room, whose walls are decorated with small macabre paintings where flowers are drawn with the hair of dead children.
I’m not one to pass judgement on interior design choices, but I do feel that if forced to live there, I’d most likely want to redecorate.
Neither would I blame the people who owned the property in the early twentieth century who had the place exorcised in 1921 after experiencing several paranormal phenomena.
Finally, it is said to be haunted by the Empress Mathilde, the White lady of Mortemer Abbey. Granddaughter of William the Conqueror and Grandmother of Richard Lion Heart, she died in 1167 and even though she was buried in the Cathedral St Germain like all the other French monarchs, she supposedly came back to Mortemer Abbey where she was forced to spend five years.
The legend says that if you see Mathilde wearing white gloves, it is an omen of birth or marriage, but that if she wears black gloves death will come within a year. Talk about fashion being a matter of life or death.
The Count Saint Germain
This one I personally find strange and cool at the same time. Count Saint-Germain is one of the most mysterious characters of the Seventeenth century. Adventurer, musician, multilingual traveller who found himself being received at the courts of various monarchs, he also liked to perform chemistry experiments with dyes, diamond melting and other eccentricities (he clearly didn’t have to get a job).
The one problem is he was always aloof when it came to talk about his life and his identity and apparently had a talent for telling stories of ancient events with such brilliance, that he ended up gaining the reputation of an alchemist and of an immortal.
It doesn’t help that some of his contemporaries declared meeting him at a fifty-year interval and not noticing any change in him or sign of old age (maybe his experiments resulted in the first anti-aging cream in history?). Some say he is still living today…
The Maréchal de Rais
In 15th century Brittany, there was a lord named Gilles de Rais who lived in the Castle of Tiffauges. Knight and companion-in-arms with Joan of Arc, in his youth, he then lost his fortune and was later accused of alchemy, demonic incantation and confessed to the accusations of assassination of 140 children in 1440 (he’s definitely not invited to my birthday party).
His legend was built over the centuries and has been thought by some historians to be linked to Charles Perrault’s character Blue Beard.
The Beast of Gévaudan
Last but not least, there is the biggest and most famous legend in French folklore. If by any chance (or not…) you happen to have some ancestors who lived in the French region of Lozère (Gévaudan at the time) between 1764 and 1767, they might have been one of the 88 to 124 victims of THE BEAST; a blood thirsty creature who roamed the plains and slaughtered its way to fame.
No one really knows what it was. It might have been a huge wolf, a deranged dog, a hyena escaped from a touring circus or something even stranger. Some rumours even talked of a cross breed between a man and a beast, or worse, of a cannibal dressed in animal skin. The story became so big and was retweeted… erm… retold so many times by the newspapers of the day (who liked scandal as much as their current descendants) that the king himself had to intervene and send his teams to the rescue (that didn’t really help, by the way).
In the end the attacks stopped like they had started, and life went back to normal. The mystery was never solved. Writers and film makers have given their theories in romanticised versions of the story, but it still remains that the Beast of Gévaudan is still roaming free… in our imagination.
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