#devil french folklore

The Devil as an animal

'' Fishermen are exposed to beings who, under the appearance of large fish, are in reality incarnations of the Devil, or the dead.

Before we had exorcised the one whom the people of the bay of Saint-Malo call Nicole, who for them is sometimes the demon himself, sometimes a severe fisheries guard, sometimes a wicked fisherman who obtained from the Devil, his deathbed, the power to transform himself in this way to torment his former companions. It showed itself as well near rocks as on the shoals.''