THYME AND ROSEMARY CROSS
''On the morning of Saint-Jean, the young girls of Roussillon place bouquets gathered the day before in the countryside on a cross at the doors and windows of their house, to prevent entry to the bad fairies.
This custom has a legendary origin: a young girl, in love with a handsome mountaineer whom she was to marry, put on her door, without thinking about it, two bouquets of thyme and rosemary forming a cross.
When her fiancé came, he dared not enter, pretending that the bouquet was in the shape of an asp.
- It is not an asp, replied the beauty, but a cross; bad people alone are afraid of the cross.
- Well! I'll admit it to you, I'm the Devil who came to get your soul and who would have achieved his ends without this cursed bouquet.''
Claudes Seignolles • Gospels of the Devil (the Devil in man)











