#frenchstories

[francoise-larouge]

Charonne.8juin2021©FrançoiseLarouge (1)

[amaranthem]

https://www.webtoons.com/fr/challenge/edel-charpie/list?title_no=580013

Mon webtoon avance encore et toujours et cette semaine c’était la sortie de l’épisode 7 !

Viendez lire ça ! Commentez- partagez- ~ soutenez moi siouplé !

Salopette forever.

[frenchfabulae]

La Fontaine hideuse

Our tale takes place in the village of Beuvry (Northern France). The area was not exactly welcoming (surrounded by marshes and ponds) but it was somehow the place some mysterious lord chose as his residence. The story tells that he lived here, in a gloomy castle overhanging the water, during 20 years. He never stepped out of it - and it seems fair to say that no one dared to enter it.

No one ever saw him in those two decades. Actually, no one ever saw a living soul around here, except for the men guarding the castle but the fact that they were unable to speak the common tongue only made things worse.

The only thing coming out the castle were some petrifying sounds on every Christmas Eve: you could hear people screaming, moaning and weeping, some others laughing hysterically. Everything was back to silence at midnight and stayed so until the next Christmas.

The villagers soon believed that the lord was conspiring with some evil forces, some even thought that he was the Devil himself.

Anyway, they carefully stayed away from this place, even avoided to look in that direction. Those who talked about this strange case mysteriously disappeared so no one dared to discuss it any longer.

On a certain Christmas Eve, the screamings and cries became particularly loud before stopping as they usually did. The villagers discovered the next morning that the castle had vanished into thin air. There was no trace of it but they found a new water spring at this exact location and named it la 𝘍𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘶𝘴𝘦 (which you can translate as horrible fountain).

🖼️: 𝘗𝘦𝘢𝘶 𝘥’𝘢̂𝘯𝘦 (detail), illustration by Gustave Doré published in 𝘓𝘦𝘴 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘴 of Perrault (Paris, J.Hetzel) 1862.

📚 Selected sources (in french):

Jacques COLLIN DE PLANCY, Dictionnaire infernal, Paris, Plon, 1863, p. 663.

René ALLEAU (dir.), Guide de la France mystérieuse, Paris, Sand, coll. Les guides noirs, 2005.

[amaranthem]

UP DATE

Envie d’une promenade en forêt ? Envie d’une aventure (qui commence doucement) sympatoche à suivre ? 

Ou tout simplement envie d’être GENTIL et de me soutenir, de m’encourager, de me conseiller ? 

Viendez lire mon webtoon et ne vous retenez pas de lâcher du comm’ !

C’est par ici ==>

https://www.webtoons.com/fr/challenge/edel-charpie/les-listes/viewer?title_no=580013&episode_no=3

Lalie vous remercie ~♥

[amaranthem]

UPDATE

Retrouvez Edel au début de son aventure : épisode 4 “l’arbre visqueux”

https://www.webtoons.com/fr/challenge/edel-charpie/larbre-visqueux/viewer?title_no=580013&episode_no=4

N’oubliez pas qu’un commentaire est un énooooooooorme soutien moral (ce dont j’ai vraiment besoin...)

A bientôt pour de nouvelles aventures bande de ptits loups !

[frenchfabulae]

The Black Hunter of Chambord

Some texts report the presence of a ghostly hunter haunting the famous estate of Chambord.

We have to go back to times prior to the construction of the emblematic castle that we know today: the estate was then known by the name of Montfrault. It included a hunting lodge, or maison de plaisance, property of the counts of Blois. Legend has it that if you go around the location of the former lodge at midnight, you will see a hunter dressed in black, followed by his pack of hounds.

That hunter is usually identified as a tenth-century lord: Theobald I, first count of Blois, also known as the Trickster (French: Thibault Ier Blois dit le Tricheur). Theobald is depicted as an evil and cruel man who earned his nickname by giving himself the title of Count of Blois - and allegedly by taking some lands around Chambord by force. He also terrorised the locals by leading raids in the area.

The story tells that one day, Theobald stabbed a priest in full mass after he began the office without waiting for his lord to return from the hunt.

According to the tale, the Count had to answer from his sins at the moment his death and has been condemned to hunt endlessly in those woods without being able to catch a single prey.

On very windy days, you can hear the uproar of this ghost hunt, moving to the neighboring domain of Bury, then returning back to Montfrault.

This tale displays the recurring elements of the Wild Hunts, which is a very common theme in European folklore. Some variations of this myth have been identified in the area, often referred to as Chasses à Ribaut (chasse means hunt / Ribaut may be a distortion of the name Thibault).

📚Selected sources (in french):

Jean-Jacques BOURRASSÉ, « Chambord » in Résidences royales et impériales de France, Tours, Mame, 1864, pp. 312-313.

Louis de la SAUSSAYE, Le Château de Chambord, Blois, 10th ed., 1864, p. 36.

Bernard EDEINE, La Sologne: Documents de littérature traditionnelle: Contes, légendes, … Paris-La Haye, Mouton, 1974, pp. 55-56.

Xavier PATIER, Le roman de Chambord, Monaco, Editions du Rocher, 2019.

🖼️ (not related to Chambord directly): The Wild Hunt (unfinished), by Johann Wilhelm Cordes, 1856-57. Benhaus Museum, Lübeck, Germany.

[krutalana]

In this dramatic chapter, Henri Tamillier recounts a bizarre and unforgettable Christmas Eve in Paris. What begins as a search for companionship on a freezing night turns into chaos when the young woman he invites home suddenly goes into labor. Surrounded by drunken revelers, costumed neighbors, and a bewildered doctor, Henri finds himself trapped in a grotesque comedy of errors that changes his life forever. A tale of irony, misfortune, and dark humor, this story captures the absurdity of fate and the unpredictability of human encounters.