French werewolves – Bone and Sickle

Mélusine, the Serpent Fairy

By boneandsickle | February 18, 2025

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:51 — 63.9MB)

Mélusine is a female fairy of medieval legend. who suffers under a curse transforming her once weekly into a monstrous form. In various tales she becomes either a serpent or fish from the waist down, or fully transforms into a dragon. Mélusine can only break this curse via marriage to a mortal who is obliged to allow her certain secret freedoms. In return, her husband enjoys magical assistance and sees his fortunes flourish, at least until that day pact is broken.

The most famous version of this story, and the one to which we devote the bulk of the show is a French tale set down in 1387 by Jean d’Arras, Mélusine or the Noble Story of the Lusignans. The patron for whom he wrote, Duke Jean de Berry, belonged to the House of Lusignan, whose ancestral claims to the lands around Poitiers were portrayed by Arras as a matter of supernatural destiny involving the fairy.

We learn how Jean de Berry’s ancestor, Raymondin (Raymond) became engaged to Mélusine after a meeting at an enchanted fountain. Raymond is unaware that this encounter, and all that follows, is the subject of a prophecy set in motion by his accidental killing of his uncle. We hear the curious way in which this transpires, of Raymond and Mélusine’s wedding attended by a multitude of fairy folk, and of the building of Château de Lusignan through a sly collaboration of fairy magic, ingenuity, and human agency.

We then learn of Mélusine’s and Raymond’s offspring, all of whom are handsome and strong yet also betray their supernatural parentage via certain disfigurements — strange birthmarks, enormous stature, huge jutting teeth, or additional eyes. Much of Arras’ narrative is devoted to the sons’ heroic exploits, particularly as Crusaders in the Middle East, where the historical Lusignans gained lands and reputations, but our episode, focuses only only two sons, “Geoffroy Big-Tooth” and Fromont, whose stories are more intertwined with that of Mélusine herself.

Next comes the central drama, the breaking of the secret pact between Raymond and his fairy wife, which I’ll leave for you to enjoy without spoilers. Mrs. Karswell delivers a fine dramatic reading of this lengthier passage.

While that situation simmers, we hear how Geoffroy has returned from a giant-slaying adventure to discover that his brother, Fromont, is about to enter a monastery rather than devote himself to expanding the Lusignan empire. This doesn’t sit well with Geoffroy, whose disproportionately wrathful response is at once horrible and comic.

Reacting to the tragic fall-out of Geoffroy’s rampage, Raymond himself flies into a rage, accusing Mélusine of producing offspring supernaturally inclined toward evil. Cruel as his words may be, Mélusine seems to validate them, assuming a diabolical presence as she abandons their marriage, flying away from Castle Lusignan in the form of a dragon.

Finally, we examine the origins of the curse upon Mélusine, a strange backstory revealed through the discovery of a tablet in fantastic subterranean tomb, one which relates how she imprisoned her human father inside a mountain and installed there a giant as jailer.

Our episode then considers some folkloric parallels to the figure of Mélusine, a possible kinship with the Irish Banshee, the Scottish Bean-nighe or the Lavandières (“midnight washer women) of Brittany as well as earlier 13th-century literary sources for Arras’s tale including works by Gervase of Tilbury, Marie de France, Walter Map, and others.

By the late 15th century, the story by Arras had been retold by the French author Coudrette in a version that became broadsheet fodder for German publishers. We also hear how the tale was embraced in Luxembourg, where it attached to Siegfried, Count of the Ardennes, and the magical construction of Luxembourg Castle.

Finally, we look at some 19th-century retellings of the legend as German folktales, some of which made their way into Czech lands, where Meluzina’s doleful howling at her fate is heard in the moaning of winter winds. The show closes with a snippet of a modern Czech children’s song mentioning Meluzina, as an embodiment of the wind –“Vitr fouka do komina” (The wind blows in the chimney).

#30 Loup-Garou, Werewolves in France

By boneandsickle | July 22, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:56 — 36.6MB)

The werewolf (Fr: loup-garou) epidemic of 16th-century France forms the core of our show, but we also include some medieval French werewolf tales as well as the legend of a figure connected to both werewolves and Bluebeard.

In our last episode on Bluebeard, I promised to recount a legend that may have inspired Charles Perrault’s story. This would be the story of Count Conomor, or “Conomor the Accursed,” a 6^th-century ruler of Brittany. Here the role of Bluebeard’s new wife is played by Trephine, the daughter of a rival count. Through her forbearance, she came to be regarded in local traditions as a saint (therefore the chapel depiction below). Her adventures include interaction with the helpful ghosts of Conomor’s slain wives, decapitation by Conomor (with miraculous cure) and a magic ring The curse upon this wicked count continues into the afterlife, during which he is condemned to roam the countryside in the form of a werewolf.

A revived St. Tryphine. Statue in chapel of St Trémeur, near Carhaix, Brittany — The decapitated but ambulatory St. Trephine. Statue in chapel of St Trémeur (her son), near Carhaix, Brittany

Our next segment looks at some medieval werewolf stories, including the 12-century poem by a Marie de France, “Bisclavret,” in which the werewolf plays a surprisingly sympathetic role, the tale of Sir Hugues de Camp-d’Avesnes, condemned to an afterlife as a werewolf for burning a town in the 1131, and that of the knight Raimbaud de Pulet, who in a fit of despondent madness becomes a werewolf.

The French werewolf epidemic, which between 1520 and 1630, resulted in the execution of more than 30,000 individuals was the result of a link forged between the werewolf and a new, more aggressive attitude toward witchcraft arising in ecclesiastic councils taking place in Basel Switzerland in the 1430s. The first regions in France to begin prosecutions were therefore naturally those adjacent to Switzerland. Many there were overseen by Henry Bouguet, a judge who tried approximately 600 witchcraft cases in the locality. Most of the stories recounted in this episode come from his writings on the subject, while others come from the The Werewolf by highly eccentric English scholar Montague Summers, who was discussed in Episode 1.

Montague Summers and his classic volume on werewolves

The first of Bouget’s cases examined is that of Michel Verdun, who shortly after a wolf attack in which the beast is wounded is discovered treating a matching wound on his arm. Verdun’s testimony implicated two other men likewise said to transform themselves into wolves, Philibert Montot, and Pierre Bourgot, who provides a lurid testimony including accounts of bloody crimes committed in wolf form, attendance at a witches’ sabbath and being initiated into his wicked ways by a black rider he meets in the forest.

The Beast of Gevaudan. Outside the witchcraft paradigm discussed in the episode, but a nice image.

The next case discussed (and judged by Bouget) is that of Gilles Garnier, who also spoke of a forest meeting with a diabolical figure who presented him the magic ointment necessary for transformation. Garnier’s case is interesting in that he brought home human flesh from his werewolf attacks for his wife to enjoy.

Another case in this same area mentioned by Boguet is that of the Gandillons, a whole family of alleged werewolves. It begins with a female werewolf, Perrenette Gandillon, who attacks a brother and sister and is then killed by a mob. Her sister, Antoinette confesses to also being a werewolf and attending a witches sabbath, as do her father and brother. Wilkinson reads for us a colorful description of the wolf-like behavior of the male Gandillons in their prison cells.

Outside of Bouget’s jurisdiction, we find the case of the Werewolf of Chalons, a tailor discovered abducting children and butchering them in his shop. We also hear the story of Jean Grenier from Bordeaux (see the comic below).

The show closes with an account of 20th-century lycanthropy from Grenier’s home town of Bordeaux. When an unnamed assailant confesses to murdering a stranger invited into his home for a meal in 1989, he is examined by prison psychiatrist Michel Bénézech, who makes the diagnosis of “pathological lycanthropy.” The quotes we hear from Bénézech are from the BBC show “The Secret Life of Ghosts & Werewolves.”