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paperandsong · 3 months ago

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Les Flambettes

From Légendes rustiques, illustrated by Maurice Sand, written by George Sand, 1858

Original French at Project Gutenberg

English translation:

These are playful and pernicious spirits. As soon as they see a traveller, they surround him, tease him, and manage to exasperate him. Then they flee, enticing him deep into the woods and disappearing when they have gotten him completely lost.

Maurice SAND.

Les flambeaux (torches), or flambettes, or flamboires, also called the mad-fires, are those bluish meteors that everyone has encountered at night or seen dancing on the still surface of backwaters. It is said that by themselves these meteors are inert but that the slightest breeze stirs them up and they take on the appearance of movement which amuses or disquiets the imagination, depending on whether one is given over to sadness or to poetry.

To the peasants, they are souls in pain begging for prayers, or else they are wicked souls who drag them into some desperate race and lead them, after a thousand insidious detours, into the depths of a pond or river. Like the lupeux and the follet, we hear them laughing ever more clearly as they seize their prey and approach the fatal and inevitable outcome.

Beliefs vary widely about the nature and more or less bad intentions of these flambettes. There are some who are content to lead you astray and who, to achieve their own ends, do not hesitate to take on various appearances.

It is said that a shepherd, who had learned to make them agreeable, made them come and go as he pleased. Everything was going fine for him, under their protection. His animals benefitted, and as for him, he was never sick, he slept and ate well, in summer as in winter. However, he was suddenly seen to become thin, yellow, and melancholic. When asked about the cause of his troubles, he told us the following,

One night, when he was lying in his cabane roulante (rolling cabin) near his fields, he was awakened by a great light and loud blows that struck the roof of his cabin. “What is it, then?” he said, surprised his dogs hadn't warned him. But, before he was able to get up, for he felt heavy and suffocated, he saw before him a woman so small, so small, and so slender, and so old, that he was afraid of her, for no woman could be of such height and such age. She was dressed only in her long white hair which hid her completely and only let through her little wrinkled head and her little withered feet.

“Well, my boy,” she said, “Come with me; it is time.”

“Time for what?” asked the dispirited shepherd.

“Time to get married,” she continued; “Didn't you promise to marry me?”

“Oh! Oh, I don’t think so! Especially since I don’t know you, and am just now seeing you for the first time in my life!”

“You lie, handsome shepherd! You saw me in my luminous form. Don't you recognize the mother of the prairie flambettes? And have you not sworn to me, in exchange for the great services I have rendered you, to do the first thing that I come to ask of you?”

“Yes, it is true, Mother Flambette; I am not a man to take back my word, but I swore it on condition that it would not be contrary to my Christian faith and the interests of my soul.”

“Well, then! Am I coming to bewitch you like a coureuse de nuit (night-runner)? Do I not come to you decently, dressed in my beautiful fine silver hair, and adorned like a bride? It is to the Night-Mass that I want to lead you, and nothing is healthier for the soul of a living person than marriage to a beautiful dead woman such as I. Come on, now, are you coming? I have no time to waste on words.” And she tried to take the shepherd out of his yard. But he recoiled in fear, saying: “Nenni, my good lady, it's too much of an honour for a poor man like me, and besides, I made a vow to Saint Ludre, my patron, to remain a boy the rest of my days.”

That saint's name, mixed with the shepherd's refusal, infuriated the old woman. She began jumping and howling like a storm, and twirling her hair which, as it parted, revealed her black and hairy body. Poor Ludre (for that was the shepherd's name) recoiled in horror when he saw that it was the body of a goat, with the head, feet, and hands of a decrepit woman.

“Go back to the devil, you ugly witch!” he cried; “I deny you, and I conjure the name of . . .”

He was about to make the sign of the cross, but he stopped as he judged that it was useless, because with the mere gesture of his hand the demon had disappeared, and all that remained of her was a small blue flame fluttering outside the yard.

“That's good,” said the shepherd; “Carry the torch just as long as you like, I don't care, and I don't care about your bright lights and antics.”

Thereupon, he wanted to go back to bed; but now his dogs, who until then had remained as if charmed, began to approach him growling and showing their teeth as if they wanted to devour him, which made him very angry with them, and, taking his iron stick, he struck at them just as they deserved for their poor guardianship and bad tempers.

The dogs lay down at his feet, shaking and crying. It was as if they regretted what the evil spirit had forced them to do. Ludre, seeing them soothed and submissive, began to go back to sleep when he saw them rise up again like raging beasts and throw themselves upon his flock of sheep. There were two hundred in the flock there who were seized with fear and vertigo; they jumped like devils over the fence and fled across the fields, running as if they were turned into deer, while the dogs pursued them like raging wolves, biting their legs and tearing off wool which flew in white clouds over the bushes.

The shepherd, in some great pain, did not take the time to put on his shoes and his jacket, which he had taken off because of the heat. He began to run after his flock, swearing after the dogs that weren’t listening to him and were only running faster, howling like hounds hunting a hare, driving the frightened flock before them.

And so they ran around, sheep, dogs, and shepherd alike, such that poor Ludre ran at least twelve leagues around the flambette pond without being able to catch up with his flock, nor to stop those dogs of his which he’d gladly have killed if he could but reach them.

Finally, at daybreak, he was astonished to see that the sheep he thought he was pursuing were nothing more than little white women, long and slender, spinning like the wind, tiring no more than the wind tires itself. As for his dogs, he saw them moult into two big coares (ravens) which then flew from branch to branch, croaking.

Assured that he’d fallen into some witches’ Sabbath, he returned to his yard exhausted and sad, and there he was astonished to find his flock sleeping under the watch of his dogs, who came to meet him for a pat.

He threw himself down on his bed and slept like a rock. But the next day, at sunrise, he counted his woolly animals and found one less than he looked for.

In the evening, a woodcutter who was working around the flambette pond brought back the poor drowned sheep on his donkey, asking him how he kept his animals, and advised him not to sleep so hard if he wanted to keep his good name as a shepherd and the confidence of his masters.

Poor Ludre was very worried about the consequences of this affair, of which he understood nothing, and which, unfortunately for him, began again in another way the following night.

This time, he dreamed that an old goat with great silver horns was talking to his sheep and they were following it, galloping and jumping like kids around the large pond. He imagined that his dogs were transformed into shepherds, and he himself into a goat that these shepherds beat and forced to run around.

As the day before, he stopped at the peak of the day, recognizing the white flambettes which had previously deceived him; he returned home, found everything peaceful in his yard, fell asleep from fatigue, then got up late, counted his animals and again found one less.

This time he ran to the pond and found the animal drowning. He pulled it out of the water, but it was only good for its skin. This wicked business lasted for eight days. Eight animals were missing from the herd and Ludre, whether he ran around in a dream like a sleepwalker or suffered a fever dream in which his legs moved and his mind ached, felt so tired and so sick that he thought he would die from it.

“My poor comrade,” a very wise old shepherd said to him, to whom he related his sorrows. “You must marry the old lady, or give it up.

I know this silver-haired goat from seeing her torment one of our elders, whom she killed with fever and grief. This is why I have never wanted to lay with the flambettes, although they have made many advances on me, and I’ve seen them dancing like beautiful young girls around my yard.”

“And could you give me a charm to get rid of her?” said Ludre, quite overwhelmed.

“I have heard it said,” replied the old man, “that whoever could cut the beard of that damned goat would govern it as he pleased; but it would be a big risk, it seems, because if you leave even a hair, she regains her strength and twists your neck.”

“Honestly, I will try all the same,” continued Ludre, “because it would be better than to go on languishing as I am.”

The following night, he saw the old woman in the shape of a flame approaching his cabin, and he said to her:

“Come, most beautiful one, and let us marry quickly.” About their wedding, we never found out anything; but at midnight, the witch being fast asleep, Ludre took the scissors he used to shear sheep and, in one fell swoop, cut off her beard so well that her chin was completely bare and he was happy to see that this chin was pink and white like that of a young girl. Then the idea occurred to him to shear all his goat-wife in this way, thinking that she would perhaps lose her ugliness and malice along with her fleece.

As she was still asleep or pretending to sleep, he had no great difficulty in shearing her. But when it was over, he realised that he had sheared his shepherd's crook and that he was alone, lying with his staff.

He got up, worried about what this new devilry might mean, and his first concern was to count his animals, which were found to number two hundred, as if none had ever drowned.

So he hurried to burn all the goat’s hair and to thank the good Saint Ludre, who no longer allowed the flambettes to torment him [14].

George SAND

#légendes rustiques #george sand #maurice sand #french literature #in translation #folklore #rustic legends #spooky #october #ten of twelve #les flambettes #saint ludre #sheep

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