#rabelais

As I have referenced Gargantua, I must now ask anyone knowledgeable about this matter whether, before the publication of the Book (for this is how, I believe, people referred to that singular, great, and wild literary success of Rabelais during their time), there was not also some popular legend of Gargantua in the provinces which the great satirist might have seized upon, just as Goethe did the legend of Faust and Molière the legend of the Commander’s Statue. Was the phrase the Book used by Rabelais’ contemporary admirers exclusively in order to express their great admiration? Might it not also indicate that a distinction was to be drawn between his brilliant poem and some more obscure legend? The ogres Perrault brought back into fashion are those very same giants whom the knights slaughtered in the Middle Ages. Would Gargantua not be of the same family as them, and would his name not have been noticed by the author of Pantagruel right alongside those other once-famous characters who are now long forgotten for having only existed as the late-night tales of our ancestors? 

In Berry, where no historical traditions have remained in the collective memory of the peasant except as vague myths, we were more than surprised to still encounter there a very precise sort of local recollection of Gargantua quite separate from Rabelais’ poem, although in the same vein. At Montlevic, for example, a small isolated knoll in the plain was formed by the foot of Gargantua. Whilst lost in these clay-rich lands of ours, the giant shook his hoof here, and left a hill in that spot.

And on the Creuse, in the outskirts of Berry, Gargantua was once found [9] astride that vast and magnificent ravine where the river rushes between the bell towers of Pin and Ceaulmont, planting himself in their steep cliff sides. A small boat full of monks drew up to pass between the giant’s legs. Believing it was a trout darting away, he bent down, plucked up the ship in two fingers, and swallowed it whole, finding the monks big and fat but rejecting the boat itself, complaining about the fishbone. 

Anyone who tells you such stories has certainly never read the Book, nor did their ancestors even know of its existence. The name of Rabelais is just as unknown to them as those of Pantagruel and Panurge. Brother Jean des Entomeures, so renowned for his character and for his use of speech, did not achieve widespread popularity amongst them either. These fictional personalities are the work of the poet, but I would still believe that Gargantua is the work of the people and that, like all great artists, Rabelais took his subject matter where he found it.

The superstitions within the villages and cottages of the Creuse region in lower Berry do acknowledge the giants, who, by contrast, occupy little place in the chronicles of the high country. This high country is wide-open and rolling; the low country, which is steep and ravined, is rooted in the same rock which serves as a buttress for the escarpments of the land. Its strangely-shaped stony cliffs of mica and schist might easily resemble gigantic figures, and this fact must be far from laughable to any fisherman who goes out in bad faith to lift their colleagues’ traps at night. It is not the merry Gargantua who appears to him: it is the three men of stone, whom in the daytime he would call the monk’s rocks, and whom he had seen standing motionless alongside the clear water’s edge, without fear.

One night Chauvat, coming back from the low country mill, saw them move, coming down from their huge pedestal and walking along the shore, gesticulating; oh but what horrible gestures, what a terrifying parade they made! They seemed to have neither feet nor legs, and yet they moved faster than the waters of the Creuse, and the pebbles they crushed cried out under their weight. He fled to his house and barricaded himself inside as best he could; but the men of stone had followed him, and as he was an unbeliever who didn’t think of giving himself up to God, the smallest of these colossi leaned his elbow on the gable of the house, flattening it like a pat of butter.

The terrified Chauvat then fled to his barn; but the second of the stone men put his hand on it, splitting it into four as though it were an old Huguenot in the land of Bazaiges.

Chauvat had enough time to save himself, and he sought refuge on the great lock which cuts the river diagonally from one side to the other. There, he believed himself saved; but the three men of stone took this path to return to their usual place on the other bank, and he found himself forced either to stay there or to throw himself into the river, which is very deep on either side of the lock; to run faster than the giants was out of the question.

He made himself very small, not daring to breathe, crouching down on the ground and hoping that those wicked boulders would not see him there. The first passed by; then came the second, who also passed by. Chauvat began to breathe again. Finally there came the third, who was the largest and heaviest by far, and who tried to pass by along with the others. But the road was slippery and the stone man slipped.

Fortunately, Chauvat finally remembered his baptism and made the sign of the cross, asking for the assistance of Heaven. The man of stone stumbled yet did not fall, otherwise the poor fisherman would have been crushed like an eggshell.

The returned are, in this same part of Berry, very frequent guests. Few houses here are not haunted by some soul in pain. That rushing river Creuse, which runs black and rapid in certain deep spots where it flows without any impediment, carries along the plaintive spirits of people who have met their deaths beneath its waves. At night, we hear heartbreaking cries; these are the drowned, who wail and ask for prayers. Elsewhere, it foams and rumbles against the rocks; there, one hears the imprecations of those who are unpardonably damned.

The term le retournant (the returned) carries a similar meaning to revenant. However, some old women will tell you that the souls of those lost to suicide  (those who intentionally drowned) are condemned to the eternal task of tumbling over the large stones that clutter the torrential riverbed. In the middle of a certain waterfall in the Creuse, one of these dark rocks looks so much like a capsized boat that you could easily be fooled from afar. It is an overturned stone: we assure you that it is white on its underside, and also that it was brought there from a long way away by the returned.

These legends undoubtedly hearken back to the tragic memories of disasters caused by the river’s sudden and terrible floods. In 1845, a great deluge of rain swelled the tributaries of the river such that the Creuse, which was itself already a formidable torrent in this region, rose by what is said to be more than one hundred feet, pulling an entire recently-felled forest into its shores. Upon reaching the only bridge in the countryside, this travelling forest stopped for two hours, jammed between the two steep riverbanks, and this mass was subsequently compounded by other masses of roofs, boats, barriers, and general debris of every other kind, and fearless children travelled from one riverbank to the other on dry feet atop this floating mountain above the raging waves. All of a sudden the mountain burst forwards, carrying the bridge that had held it back, and sweeping away everything in its path: houses, herds, crops, and passers-by.

Yet even the memory of this disaster was not enough to fully populate the banks and islets of the terrible river with its sorrowful souls. There is also a faint legend of a clash between salt smugglers and salt-tax collectors, during the time when titled and bourgeois men were moving mules laden with contraband salt along the steep valley paths. The official history of Berry says nothing about this battle. The old peasants heard this story told by their fathers, who got it from their grandfathers. Many people perished there, they say, and were thrown from the rocks into the Creuse. That’s why we hear, on bad nights, unfamiliar voices who cry out over and over again: Salt! Salt! At this cry, all the mules in nearby pastures will run away with their ears down and their tails between their legs, as if the Devil is after them.

In this same region, the belief in the great serpent reawakens from time to time. We don’t mind the thousands of rock-dwelling vipers, which are said to have never harmed anyone; but this serpent, which is forty feet in length and has a head like that of a man, is the one that concerns us. It is probably the same one who ate three prisoners in the Châteaubrun tower dungeon in ancient times. He has shown himself several times since then, and last year, in 1857, the whole countryside was in turmoil because a shepherdess saw him in a bush. More than fifty hunters went out on foot looking for him; but, as usual, he could not be found.

He illustrated Andersen's fairy tales...

He created an illustrated version of "The Arabian Nights"...

And he also illustrated various children-oriented productions, such as Walter de la Mare's "Peacock Pie" or Charles Kingsley's "The Water-Babies".