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The houle fairies are fairies native to the French coast of the English Channel, ranging from Cancale to Tréveneuc in Upper Brittany, to the Channel Islands, and known by some fragments of stories from the Cotentin Peninsula. According to legend, they live in coastal grottos and caves referred to as houles, are female, are considered immortal, powerful, splendid, benevolent, and have a sensitivity to salt. They live communally, occupy themselves with washing, bread baking, or shepherding, marry male fairies called féetauds, and are served by warrior elves called fions. They come to the aid of humans who request it, furnishing them with food and magical objects, but they anger at disrespectful acts or when humans acquire the ability to see through their disguises without their consent.

Paul Sébillot assembled fifty tales and fragments of legends about these creatures both in French and Gallo. The houle fairies, considered demi-gods, were probably worshipped locally by the Upper Bretons. Belief in the fairies diminished in the 19th century under the influence of Christianity and education. The collected tales themselves evoke the disappearance of these fairies, often as a consequence of the loss of their immortality and magic powers.

Etymology and Terminology
Nearly all the tales concerning the houle fairies were collected by Paul Sébillot,. Although the French word houle refers to a swell of sea water, the houle fairies do not live in the waves, but in caves. In the northern coast of Upper Brittany and the Cotentin Peninsula, seaside caverns and grottos in the cliffs are known as houles or more rarely goules" goules ",. Paul Sébillot claims that the name is French, while also indicating that it originated "in the Gallo country."(sic) " . He found it difficult to determine the etymology of the word, which most likely does not come from the Breton language. According to him and Françoise Morvan, the English word hole, which has more or less the same meaning, actually seems to be its closest relative., . Later etymological research indicates that the word houle probably comes from the Norman language.

Characteristics


The tales and fragments of legends of the houle fairies exhibit numerous commonalities by which we can attempt to reconstitute the concept held of them by the 19th-century inhabitants of the northern coast of Upper Brittany. According to Sébillot, they considered the fairies to be semi-divinities.

However, certain information is irremediably lost. The houle fairies are fairly numerous. They are most active on dry land and have practically no ties to the water, despite their habitat. Originally, they may have had the power to walk on water, as two tales suggest. They are tend to display pensive and contemplative behavior and are fundamentally beneficent.

Reputedly immortal, very powerful, and immune to disease, they fear salt, which renders them mortal. . They live in grottos and caverns (the houles) situated in the coastal cliffs surrounded by reefs. These houles could be very grand and luxuriously furnished, including the means to bake, teach, make music, and dine in the manner of an Otherworld. . Dans celle de Saint-Briac, des navires en or sont construits.

They were respectfully called "bonnes dames" or "our bonnes dames the fairies".

The names of some fairies are known: la Truitonne, la Merlitonne, Gladieuse, and Flower of the Rock. Some were children of royalty or sorcerers, capable of hideous transformations. .

The Fairies of the Houle of Grouin were exceptional--these fairies were described as bad-tempered and causing harm. . Sébillot also notes a kinship with the Basque Lamiak, who have affinities with the houle fairies,.

Appearance
Most often the houle fairies are described as tall, beautiful blonde women. The majority of them dress in grey burlap. Some of them resemble old fairies of the groac'h type, adept at shapeshifting, with more obscure purposes. Once they are old, they become shriveled and covered with kelp. Although they are not baptized (and therefore immortal), these fairies have worms in their mouths. . According toFrançoise Morvan, another creature from Breton lore known as the Man of the Sea serves as an intermediary between the houle fairies and male Sirens. She notes a certain assimilation between the female korrigans and the houle fairies in some tales, although by their respective descriptions, these creatures are complete opposites. The houle fairies are fairly close to the sirens, beautiful, with voices that tempt young fishermen.

Occupations and Social Life
The houle fairies resemble humans in their occupations and social life, their lifestyle being comparable to lords or well-off landowners. They keep their living spaces sparklingly clean, occupy themselves by baking bread, spinning wool and fabrics, fishing, and drying their white sheets in the sun. At night, they rock their children, sing, or go dancing outside in the moonlight. Their children receive an education which includes music (the houle fairies play the violin and sing music underground which is "so sweet and so melodious that simply to hear it made one fall into ecstasy" ), metamorphosis, and clairvoyance. They also possess a great variety of magical objects, such as a golden boat and a string that permits one to move on the land as on the sea by passing it around the body.

These fairies occasionally visit their human fellows. They live in a matriarchal society with other fairies of the same type. They are able to marry, their spouses being male fairies known as "fétauds" or "féetauds." They give birth to chubby-cheeked children. Warrior goblins, known as "fions," are their servants. They also possess a great variety of domestic animals, most often black chickens, roosters and cats , but also all types of cattle, sheep, and goat herds which have the ability to become invisible in order to graze on the lands of nearby peasants. More rarely, they keep geese and exceptionally, horses.

Interactions with Humans
Interactions between these fairies and humans are numerous. The houle fairies are easily visible to all at night, but in the day, only people with the gift of clairvoyance (by means of a magic ointment rubbed onto the eyes) can see them through their many disguises. . The fairies do not hesitate to respond to requests nor to furnish bread (which infinitely regenerates) and galettes (sometimes with a pitcher of cider) or even healing potions, so long as the request is formulated politely and with respect,. These gifts also include lard, butter, wine, a purse that never empties, clothes that never wear out and adapt themselves to the size of children, magic wands, enchanted boats ... Certain tales even mention schools run by the fairies which admit human children upon request : they learn to transform themselves, to see illusions and invisible things.

Sociable creatures, the houle fairies are easily seen so long as they are on land. : Fishermen of Fréhel claim to have seen them dancing many times on the moor. Certain among them commit minor acts of larceny, stealing lobster cages or grazing their invisible flocks on pastures belonging to someone. This leads peasants and fishermen to set traps for them, which the fairies dismantle with great ease. . They have, however, no malevolent intentions. . According to Françoise Morvan, though they take human children they do not leave changelings behind. . Philippe Le Stum, however, notes that the fairies do swap a human for a fairy child in the tale of the Houle of Chêlen.

The houle fairies are often quite willing to take on the role of godmother of babies to be born. , and they treat their adopted human children as attentively as their own.

Life among them is so pleasant that seven years seem to pass as quickly as seven months, and "twenty years there seem like a single day".

The houle fairies from different places speak different languages. Those from the coasts of the north of Upper Brittany and Guernsey speak Gallo, while the Norman houle fairies speak city French. . They are capable of reading and writing, and can communicate with humans in this manner.

Geographical Localization


Paul Sébillot reports of numerous houles with which popular folklore associates two or three legends implicating these fairies: in Cancale, Saint-Briac, and Saint-Jacut-de-la-Mer (Houle Causseul ), Saint-Cast, Étables (houle Notre-Dame ), at cap_Fréhel, and a dozen in the community of Plévenon. He describes one at Erguy which rather than houle is called the Goule of Galimoux. The cave of Saint_Enogat, known well by bathers in Dinard in its time, is also known as the Goule-ès-fées. The Island of Guernsey also has houles with fairies. These houles are not permanent dwellings for the fairies: the stories mention houles that collapse or which are hollowed out by the fairies themselves.

The geographic localization of the houle fairies, from the coast of Cancale up to the coast of Tréveneuc, is known with great precision. Paul Sébillot assigned other folklorists to seek out similar tales in neighboring regions. Lower_Brittany does not know these houles, attributing their coastal caverns to korrigans. In Normandy, a rare few legends recall these creatures, one tradition attributing fairy inhabitants to houles, called fairy holes (trous des fées) ,

However, very similar stories have been collected on the Isle of Guernsey, in which appears a Fairy Hollow covered with mica, making it shine like gold. Edgar MacCulloch sees there the origin of the legend according to which the fairies possess great riches and leave the caves at night to dance under the full moon.

Collected Tales and Legends
Sébillot collected fifty tales or legendary fragments in which the inhabitants of the houles appear. He spoke of the stories of the houle fairies as the ''most curious and particular of all told in Gallo country. The first fairy_tale collected in his career was The Houle Cosseu, recounted in 1866 by Anselme Carré, the son of a fisherman of Saint-Jacut-de-la-Mer, whom he encountered at the primary school in Dinan. Some years later, he collected the tale of the Goule-ès-fées from Auguste Lemoine, published in Littérature oral de la Haute-Bretagne (Oral Literature of Upper Brittany) with several words of patois following his version told in the Gallo dialect of the coast.

A popular legend of Plévenon has it that the houle fairies of Cap Fréhel wash their linens at the pond of Gaulehen, in the middle of the arid moor. They hang their linens, which are the whitest one could ever see, on the short surrounding grasses. Whoever could come there without moving their eyelids would be given permission to take it; but nobody who ever made the attempt succeeded. As soon as they move their eyelids, the linen becomes invisible. The fairies of the houle of la Teignouse, in Plévenon, had an ox that grazed on the moor; one day, it wandered off and passed through the wheat fields causing damage to them. The disadvantaged farmers came to complain to the fairies, who to compensate them gave them a nice piece of brea, advising them never to give any of it to a foreigner. The bread lasted two years and disappeared because a piece was cut for a beggar. According to the tale School of the Fairies, the houle of la Corbiére at Saint-Cast accommodated the fairies who instructed their children at the school. One day the eldest child of a neighboring human family heard the fairy waking her own children up to go to school, and asked her to take the same line of instruction along with his brothers and sisters. These human children were instructed in the art of how to use magic wands and to see illusions. A story collected on the Isle of Guernsey told of a worker who tried to make off with the fairies' cake without being invited, and was punished.

The giant Gargantua appears among these Breton fairies in another tale from Plévenon, Gargantua, Godson of the Queen of Fairies.

The Cosseu Houle
The Cosseu Houle is a cave not far from the extremity of the peninsula of Saint-Jacut-de-la-Mer. One night at nightfall, a fisherman walked along the rocks at the base of the cliffs and noticed several fairies in a cave. They rubbed their eyes with a sort of cream, and suddenly changed form and left the cave, seeming like ordinary women. The fisherman hid and they passed without suspicion of being observed. He went into the reputedly haunted cave and found some of the leftover cream. He put it on his left eye. Since then, he recognized the fairies whatever disguises they wore and was protected from their tricks, consisting of begging humans for bread, placing a curse on certain houses, tangling fishing lines or telling fortunes in the form of gypsies. While attending a fair, he perceives that the fairies are anxious about someone recognizing them. Passing near a shack where several fairies were parading on the platform, they looked at him with an air of irritation and, quick as an arrow, one of the fairies poked his eye out with the wand she held in her hand.

To Françoise Morvan, this tale blends certain traits common to korrigans with those of the houle fairies, in particular the gypsy disguises. They retain, however, the powers generally attributed to these fairies.

The Goule of Fairies / The Houle of Fairies


One night at the height of winter, the mother Milie, who was a midwife, brought an old woman into her house who asked her to assist a birth. She followed her all the way to the Goule of the Fairies, which revealed to her the true nature of the old woman. In this immense cave, a very beautiful young woman was the object of everyone's attention. She gave birth to a chubby infant. The fairies gave Milie an ointment made of pork fat and told her to rub it onto the child, advising her to dry her hands very well afterwards, or else evil would come to her. While occupied with the newborn, Milie scratched one of her eyes. She realized that the poor little cave was as beautiful as a church, and that the fairies were dressed like princesses. With the fairies, the fions, no bigger than a thumb, were in attendance. She said nothing of her discovery and declared that she had finished. The fairies thanked her by giving her a purse full of money. Milie thereafter could see the fairies and often saw them in her travels. She hid herself until the day when she noticed a fairy steal by putting her in the apron of a woman at the market. She cried, "Thief!" But the fairy turned toward her and swiftly ripped out her eye, so that Milie thereafter lived with only one.

This tale was collected then written in Gallo by Paul Sébillot, who cited his wish to respect the original language,. He also notes that the storytellers did not habitually use this patois to tell stories, which explains why this is the only tale he collected in Gallo. Françoise Morvan commented on this story, noting its motif of an ointment which renders one clairvoyant which is present in numerous other tales and legends since the Middle Ages,.

Another tale tied to this place speaks of a fisherman irresistibly attracted by a woman dressed in white one misty autumn night. His boat crashes in the Goule-ès-Fées and he loses consciousness. The next day, he awakens in top form in a brand new boat full of fishing gear, moored onto a large rock at the entrance to the Goule-ès-Fées.

The Houle of la Corbière
Several tales have been collected concerning the houle of la Corbière, located in Saint-Cast-le-Guildo. Agnes, who lives above this houle, often hears the sound of a spinning wheel, a rooster crowing, children crying, or even the plunger of a butter churn coming from under her house. She doesn't worry about it, because the fairies have a reputation of being friendly. One day, Agnes' child falls ill. A fairy gives a curing medicine, passing her hand through the rocks of the fireplace and advising Agnes to "carefully conserve the bottle". This saves the child, but Agnes tells everything to her neighbors, lending the bottle to anyone with a sick child until finally, one ends up breaking it. When her husband gets sick, Agnes, begs the fairy who lives under the fireplace to give her a new remedy. The fairy warns her that this will be the last of such remedies, and that it must not be talked about to anyone. Later, when she asks for the fairies' help in finding her lost cow and two sheep, the fairies allow her to find three much more beautiful animals. One night, when she has nothing to feed her child, she asks the fairies for bread, for a loaf which can never diminish. . A hand places a loaf of undiminishing bread for the child, with the condition that it must never be given to a person other than their own kin. One night, ten years later, Agnes' husband brings one of his friends home for whom he cuts a piece of the fairies' bread. Instantly the bread disappears. Agnes and their children repeatedly beg the fairies to give them another piece of bread, but they remain deaf to their wishes.

The fairly similar tale of the husband Mignette has it that the man with the wounded foot saw a fairy enter his house which cured him and gave him a shirt that would never wear out. Happy, he later on met some workers, one of whom was asking impolitely for a galette which proved to be inedible. He asked the same thing politely and was given a delicious galette which he shared amongst them. A woman having heard one of the fairies speak went to the houle and admired their weaving and singing. The fairy who had cured Mignette asked this woman to find him, and to bring him a crumb of bread that would regenerate itself and a wand, with the condition of never talking about it to anybody. When Mignette went to the houle, the fairy asks to marry him. He accepts, but since he is old and baptized, the fairies perform a ritual by cooking him in the oven, reducing him to ash, and grinding him up, which renders him young and handsome. From that moment on, he lives happily with the fairy.

Paul Sébillot references another tale of which he has only a sketch. One of the fairies that inhabits this houle falls in love with one of the soldiers who guards the Redoute de la Corbière. She follows her lover to the army during the fighting relating to the French Revolution. As long as they are together, the soldier rises in rank and accumulates victories without being injured. But when the fairy abandons him, so does his luck; he gets injured, and he finds himself on the losing side of every battle. .

The Houle of Poulifée


The Houle of Poulifée is reputed to be the biggest and most beautiful of all the houles of Plévenon. Some youths from the village went inside and discovered that it was inhabited. Two ladies invited them to dinner; they ate all sorts of food. Once the meal was finished, the ladies invited them to return again. The people of Plévenon heard the news and came often to meet the two fairies, who asked them about their work, gave them advice, as well as bread and meat. A man came and told them that he was the father of a family that he was having trouble providing for. A fairy gave him some money and told him to return when his wife was pregnant again. When he came back to the houle, one of the fairies asked him to become the child's godmother. The man, returning home, told everything to his wife, who refused to give their child to the fairies. The ladies of the cave, irritated by this refusal, took back all the gifts they had given. The family became as poor as they had been before. . Another tale, "The Houle of Poulie", tells the fate of the fourteen sons of a woman of Plévenon, the Mother-of-fourteen. She leaves seven of her sons with the fairies of Poulifée, and the seven others join them after her death. The children become intelligent in the company of the fairies (they had been born simple-minded) and learned to change themselves into "all sorts of animals". One day they changed into rabbits to walk through the moors, but a hunter killed them all.

A certain conflict caused the death of a great number of houle fairies. A rivalry emerged between the fairies of the houle of Château-Serin and those of Poulifée. Jean, a child from Plévenon, became the godson of a fairy of Poulifée, which made one of the fairies from Château-Serin want to kill him before he reached his 18th year. The fairy godmother succeeded in saving the child by sequestering him in the houle of Crémus, which she dug out for him in the cliff of Fréhel. There he reached the age of twenty, at which point it was no longer within the power of the fairies to do him wrong. Jean learned the secret of how to end the immortality of the fairies: all that was required was for their lips to come into contact with table salt. Jean was asked never to make use of this, but he took vengeance on the fairy of Château-Serin who had tried to kill him by pouring a packet of salt into her mouth. Immediately, all the fairies disappeared from the country of Plévenon. They abandoned their houle, leaving their treasure under the protection of a gnome and a rooster

.

The Houle of Grouin


The houle of Grouin (on the pointe du Grouin in Cancale) is inhabited by bad fairies who steal from humans and cause damage. One day, a farmer who was looking after her cattle saw a stranger approach her who asked for some milk. Unaware that the stranger was indeed a fairy, she refused her request, telling her that her cows were only milked according to schedule. The fairy cursed her and her cows no longer gave milk. The farmer sold them to buy others, without success. The fairies borrowed her donkey to walk for eight days in a row, and the animal "became a wizard" as a result of being around them, and took up the habit of casting spells on the people who hit him. The fairies also made horns grow on the sheep and even the lambs, so that their owners no longer recognized them. They sheared the sheep and the the wool grew back in eight days. To appease the fairies, the farmers offered them butter. They lifted the curse. ,.

The tale, "The Sea Rogue and the Fairy" narrates the curse of a fisherman who ignores the warning of the fairies of Grouin, who ask him not to pull up his nets. As punishment, the fairies turn him into a fish, the "sea rogue". . The fairies of the houle of Grouin are said to have disappeared after the crumbling of rocks which destroyed their cavern. .

The fairies of Lûla
The cave of Lûla, in the bay of Saint-Cast, is near an oyster farm. Its owner realizes that his oysters and lobsters are being stolen regularly, and he suspects the fairies and féetauds and decides to keep watch over them. Discovering that his thieves are invisible, he fires his rifle at them. When the fairy bursts out laughing at his attempt, he curses her. The fairy responds without swearing and promises to put the oysters back the following day. Indeed, the next day he finds his farm is full. Happy, he returns eight days later and tells the fairies that they can take as much as they want. The fairies appear to them and tell him that they will guard the farm, so that he not need worry. They also tell him that in case he receives an order, the man needs only write it on a piece of paper that he can put at the entry of the houle.

One day a laborer sees smoke rising out of the ground as he turns over the fertile soil he had been working. A voice asks him not to dig anymore because, if he should happen to destroy the fairies' house, they would destroy his. He responds that he doesn't want to do them any wrong, and the fairy offers him a gift for not digging any deeper. He asks for a fork and a spade capable of working on their own, which he gets. The tools fill their duty perfectly until they are all worn out and must be taken to the blacksmith. From then on, they lose their magic. The peasant searches in vain to find the fairies and ask them for new tools, then the learns that they only come out at night. He goes to their houle, guarded by a féetaud, who advises him to come back later with a black cat and a rooster to offer as a present to the fairies. He gets the two animals and returns. The féetaud is thrilled with the present and offers him tools which work by themselves without wearing out, as well as a boat which can go on or under the sea. His wife asks for clothes and bread for their children, and she gets clothes which never wear out and bread that never diminishes. The féetaud asks a laborer and his spouse never to show the boat to anybody, then announces that this is the final service ever to be rendered by his kind to humans, before their final departure.

Analysis
The houle fairies possess many of the characteristics attributed to fairies in general. The tales associated with them include a form of wisdom: whoever seeks to profit off the fairies or who is insincere is punished, whoever asks them to perform a service without ulterior motives or who looks on them with wonder is compensated. Likewise, according to Morvan, the "bad" houle fairies have an essential characteristic which is to keep their motivations secret, as opposed to the benevolent fairies who act without any agenda. . The children in the Fairy School tale, who put put back the magic ointment that allowed them to see the enchantments of the fairies are never punished, unlike adults who have stolen. .

To Morvan, "the gifts of these fairies come back like a reflection in a mirror, before you could foresee what your image would be". The theme of their disappearance is also very symbolic (even alchemical), since the houle fairies of Poulifée after being killed by salt, being rather bright and powerful creatures, leave their old dwelling-place under the watch of a gnome, a typical chthonic creature, and a rooster, which symbolizes the blaze on the verge of reignition. .

Evolution of beliefs


It is difficult to know the exact origin of the houle fairy stories. Roger Sherman Loomis sees a relationship between the fairies of Upper Brittany and Morgan Le Fay of Arthurian legend, thanks to the existence of numerous tales concerning the similarly-named Margot la Fée in the region. Philippe Le Stum alludes to the lineage of the parcae, ancient goddess who preside over destiny, because of the relations maintained by these fairies with nobility, and their habit of becoming the fairy godmothers of children. According to Sébillot and Edgar MacCulloch, bailiff of Guernesey at the end of the 19th century, beliefs related to the houles could have been willingly spread and maintained by smugglers who stored their goods in these caves. Whatever the case may be, according to Richard Ely and Amélie Tsaag Valren, "Brittany fears [these fairies] as much as she loves them". Belief was still strong in Upper Brittany at the end of the 19th century, above all among elderly women born in the 18th century, many of whom believed that the fairies really existed. According to several storytellers who shared their stories with Sébillot in the 1880s, their grandfathers had personally known the houle fairies. The elders of that era insisted on having participated in the dances held by these fairies, or having heard them sing. Sébillot also remarks that the belief in these fairies strongly receded at the beginning of the 20th century, particularly with the creation of a seaside resort in the bay of Saint-Malo]. Many people believe that the fairies disappeared over the course of the 19th century, considering it the "invisible century". Certain tales leave hope for a possible return of the houle fairies "in visible times", by which is meant the following century, the 20th. This belief was held to the degree that in 1900, peasants thought that ladies driving automobiles were fairies returning to their country.

The houle fairies seem to have been the object of real veneration. At Saint-Suliac, the cave known by the name of "the lair of the Fairy of the Cape of the Hill," on the banks of the Rance river, was supposed to be the home of a houle fairy capable of calming the wind and sea: she left her cave at night, initially as amorphous, white vapor, then taking on the form of a beautiful woman clothed in rainbow colors. Before going fishing, sailors had the habit of paying homage to her by leaving flowers at the entrance of the cave. The vicar of Saint-Suliac came to exorcise this creature, who from then on had "no more power", ,. The case of this fairy, however, is rather distinct in comparison to other tales of the houle fairies, this creature seeming to be an intermediary between them and characters of the morgen type and "les lavandières".

A certain number of tales mention the disappearance of the fairies, including the tales of the Lûla houle, the Châtelet houle, and the houle of Saint-Michel of Erquy, where the fairies say that they are leaving "for another country". Others are killed when their hole collapses. A "man of the sea" is reputed to have sojourned in the Poulifée houle, then that of Teignouse, before taking the inhabitants of those houles with him as he left for England. The reasons given for these departures are certainly tied to the influence of the Church and education, an explanation reinforced by the fact that the immortality of the fairies is lost by means of the salt of baptism, which recalls the retreat of pagan divinities before Christianity.

Articles connexes

 * Fée
 * Houle (géomorphologie)
 * Féetauds
 * Fions
 * Jetins
 * Margot la fée

Popular Tales of Upper Brittany
In three volumes. First edition published by Charpentier, republication by Terre de Brume.

Articles


Category:Upper_Brittany Category:Breton_legendary_creatures Category:French_fairy_tales Category:Fairies Category:European legendary creatures