The other legend named Le Lutin tells how seven little boys, regardless of the warnings of their old grandmother, would go out at night on various affairs. As they went along a pretty little black horse came up to them, and they all were induced to mount on his back. When they met any of their playmates they invited them also to mount, and the back of the little horse, stretched so that at last he had on him not less than thirty little boys. He then made with all speed for the sea, and plunging into it with them they were all drowned.[540]
Passing to Auvergne we find Gregory of Tours in the sixth century thus relating an event which happened in his youth. A man was going one morning to the forest, and he took the precaution to have his breakfast, which he was taking with him, blessed before he set out. Coming to the river, before it was yet day, he drove his bullock-cart into the ferry-boat (in ponte qui super navem est), and when he was about half-way over he heard a voice saying, "Down with him! down with him! be quick!" (Merge, merge, ne moreris!) to which another replied, "I should have done it without your telling me if something holy did not prevent me; for I would have you to know that he is fortified with the priest's blessing, so that I cannot hurt him."[541]
Miss Costello[542] heard in Auvergne a story of a changeling, which the mother, by the direction of the Curé, took to the market-place, where she whipped it well, till its mother, La Fée du Grand Cascade, brought her back her own child. She also relates at great length a legend which she styles La Blonde de la Roche, in which a young lady, instructed by her nurse, learns to change her form, and thus become a companion of the Fées, who are beings of tiny dimensions. Afterwards, when she is married, they take away her children, but she manages to recover them.
"La Tioul de las Fadas is within five and a half leagues of St. Flour, at Pirols, a village of Haute Auvergne. It is composed of six large rude stones, covered by a seventh, larger and more massive than the rest; it is twelve feet long, and eight and a half wide. The tradition relates that a Fée who was fond of keeping her sheep on the spot occupied by this monument, resolved to shelter herself from the wind and rain. For this purpose she went far, very far, (bien loin, bien loin) in search of such masses of granite, as six yoke of oxen could not move, and she gave them the form of a little house. She carried, it is said, the largest and heaviest of them on the top of her spindle, and so little was she incommoded by the weight of it, that she continued to spin all the way."[543]
The following legend is traditional in Périgord:—
Embosomed in the forest of the canton of La Double, near the road leading from Périgueux to Ribérac, is a monument named Roque Brun. It consists of four enormous rocks placed two and two, so as to form an alley ten feet long and six wide. A fifth rock, higher and thicker than the others, closes this space on the west. The whole is covered by a huge mass of rock, at least twelve feet by seven, and from three to four feet thick. There can be no doubt of its being the work of man, and it is remarkable that the stone composing it is different from that of the soil on which it stands.[544] The tradition of the canton, however, is, that many thousand years ago there was a Fée who was the sovereign of the whole country, and having lost her husband in a battle fought in this very place she resolved to bury him on the spot. She therefore called six of her pages, and ordered them to fetch, each one of these stones, and to place them in the order which they still maintain. They instantly obeyed, and they carried and arranged the huge masses as easily as if they had been only rose-leaves. When the tomb was completed, the Fairy ascended it, and turning to the east, she thrice cursed, in a voice of thunder, whoever should henceforth dare even to touch this monument of her royal spouse. Many an instance is still recorded by the peasantry of those who dared and were punished.[545]
The Fairy-lore of the North of France, at least of Normandy, is, as was to be expected, similar to that of the other portions of the Gotho-German race. We meet it in the fées or fairies, and the lutins or gobelins, which answer to the Kobolds, Nisses, and such like of those nations.[546]