That the Metaphysics of Cartography are Limited . . .
. . . is what I wish to prove.
For days now the cemetery of St Nicolas has been noisy with the living. Excavators and forklifts rear their appendages above the church yard walls and bare their teeth at me as I cut fading hydrangeas in my garden. Relatives pick their way through the tombs with cloths and buckets, secateurs. The supermarkets fill with chrysanthemums, plush cushions of burgundy, yellow, white and pink. Toussaint is approaching, and Les Défunts, or les jour des morts, the days in the year when the dead are reminded of their burial and the saints in their niches and reliquaries and ossuarys, saints known and unknown, chatter their dry bones.
Sunrise behind the church of St Nicolas de Pierrepont, 16 October.
But that is still five days away, days which have turned suddenly cold and sunk in dampness, as though the year has walked through the door from a party she grew bored of, shrugged off her gaudy costume, and retired. And at autumn’s wake, to the low moans of calving cattle, I find myself asking what else comes walking, beyond the enclosure of the church. This is an old and watchful landscape. The churches here are often built on sites of dedication far more ancient and obscure. You can map a landscape through its contours, its waterways and roadways, but beneath that map is always another, a shadow map of the world at the corner of our eye, at the frayed edge of history and time and belief. Let us walk it.
Beginning at the church, for, despite its much-vaunted status as a place where only the divine is able to tweak the curtains of our world, churchyards here are capacious. They contain multitudes. Including, perhaps, at certain times of night, spirits called le Lubin. Lubin. Lupin. Loup.[1] They take the form of wolves, led by a he-wolf, black as an abyss. But far from being sources of terror, it is they that are frightened of us. At the slightest noise they panic and flee, crying out ‘Robert est mort! Robert est mort!’[2]
Beyond the church, to the village and the farms which surround it, to human habitation bright and hot with light and food and superstition. Like mice, garden birds, and foxes, fairies are drawn here from the woods and marshes beyond, to share in our bounty, though the share, we suspect, is not always a fair one. Though a channel separates them (and as all wise children know, fairies cannot cross running water) the fairy-lore of Normandy has much in common with that of the British Isles. Les Fées here will invite you to dance until you are exhausted. They will switch out your babies in a moment of inattention and only wily negotiation will win them back for you. You may catch them washing their linen in springs and setting it out to dry on stones. I think of this idly as I pass the many lavoirs which still punctuate the landscape here, square stone troughs which collect water flowing from springs.
There are les Lutins, industrious agricultural fairies who favour particular farms, fixing broken objects, gifting sweet treats to those to whom they have taken a fancy, and fashioning stirrups from the woven manes of farm horses, galloping them about at night, seated high on the horses’ necks.[3] Second only to horses, le Lutins are terribly fond of children, so a local proverb runs. ‘Oú il y a belle fille et bon yin / Là aussi hante le lutin.’[4] Fairies of course are double, both wilfully literal and wily interpreters of words and actions, human and their own: the bête Avette is a fairy who resides in pools and fountains. She also loves children, very much, and drowns them so she can keep them with her always. ‘I could eat you up I love you so.
Setting sun through the trees, looking towards Launay.
Beyond the farms there are the woods, and in the woods there are les Dames Blanches. No kindly domestics these, they dwell in the passing places and bottlenecks of the countryside, white ladies who act as toll keepers.[5] Their demands from the travellers who meet them are varied. They might demand a dance, a show of deference or chivalry. They might, for a lapse in your manners, hurl you into ravines full of brambles, or turn you over to be tormented by cats and owls and other sundry gobelins.
What else is flitting between the trees? A skeletal dog, tall and lean and hungry: the Taranne, a particular visitor on winter nights. It will leave us alone, being only interested in persecuting other dogs, there being no sympathy between the supernatural hound and its domestic counterparts. When the farm dog Inka whines at night, I wonder if it is the Taranne whining back. The mysterious Piterne of which only its name remains, and the fact that it fell to certain members of the community to stand sentry and try to capture it, a difficult task indeed if you do not know what manner of creature you are looking for. Then there are the Letites or Létiches or Laitisses. They are small, very small, difficult to see with the naked eye, and shy, evaporating into the air as soon as you approach. Incandescent white and harmless, they only appear at night. Local people opine that they are the souls of unbaptised children. Flames of lives unlived flickering in and out of existence.[6]
Treescape, voie vert towards Portbail.
Out of the woods and onto the marshes and here more fires flicker in the darkness but these little lights are not for following. They are the Faulaux, spirits which take the form of lanterns, their falseness incubating in their names. Faux. Lux. These are the souls of the damned, tempting us to join them, seeking to drag us down beneath the clay and the rushes and the peat.[7] Overhead an owl plots a silent course through the dark back to the farmhouse. Here they call her fresas or fresaie and attribute to her the power to announce a death, though only mice and voles and other scuttling, trembling things know this for sure. Banking back on ourselves, like a plane seeking the safety of the runway, returning towards the house. All manner of life and not-quite-life could be here. Black rams who vomit hot flame. Cats the colour of the night whose prismatic eyes sparkle and flash with malice. ‘Suspicious white rabbits’ and horned crimson bulls who bellow into the dark.
We are home and we have taken care not to invite anything in. But if we run an idle hand over a bookshelf, a volume may present itself. A grimoire, a book of spells. It is muttered darkly here, that for a grimoire to work it must be baptized by a priest and named like a child. Whoever possesses such a book would have at their disposal then the legions of spirits who dwell in the ditches and ruins and ponds and dead trees, in dried seedpods and the desiccating skulls of seabirds and cathedral ribcages of horses. In the tube of a hollow reed. Whoever possesses such a book could be certain of being promptly obeyed. Could place it on a scrubbed kitchen table and allow it to fall open, on a map, such as this one.
[1] Wolves had been extinct in Normandy for more than a century until one was sighted in rural Dieppe in May 2020.
[2] Here they say of a particularly tremulous person ‘il a peur de lubin’ [‘he is afraid of the lubin’].
[3] Certain Lutin are also found out on the Normandy coast, where they go by names like ‘Nain Rouge’ and ‘Petite Homme Rouge’. To fishermen who pay them the proper respect they are valuable helpers. Those who disdain them can expect to be ducked in ponds, showered with stones, or worse.
[4] Where there is a beautiful child and [bon yin]/there also haunts the Lutin.
[5] Where the current Rue Saint Quintin now runs at Bayeux, was once a narrow ravine, inhabited, so the story goes, by Le Dame de Apigny. Are you dancing? Because she’s asking.
[6] Some sources suggest that the origins of belief in Létiches are to be found in the nocturnal dancing of the ermine, and the way its white fur reflects the moonlight.
[7] These lights are called Wisp or Will-O’-the-Wisp by the English. Those found in Manche are known to particularly detest the sound of whistling and will punish those trying to keep their spirits up by doing so, as they traverse the marais in the dark.