Chasse gallery
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The Chasse-galerie is a French-Canadian saga on the subject of the wild hunt , in which a group of voyageurs makes a pact with the devil. The appearance of a flying canoe in the night sky should be observed especially at the end of the year. The most popular version comes from Honoré Beaugrand (1848-1906) and was published in August 1892 in Century Magazine .
origin
The underlying story can be traced back to a French legend about a wealthy nobleman who loved hunting so much that he preferred it to attending Holy Mass on Sunday. As punishment for this sin, he was doomed to roam the heavens forever, pursued by galloping horses and howling wolves. When French colonists settled in New France along the Saint Lawrence River , their story mingled with one of the First Nations myths about a flying canoe. The origins of this legend are believed to be in the Poitou .
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After a night of partying, a group of rangers who worked at a remote logging camp decided to visit their loved ones on New Year's Eve, who lived about 100 leugen (300 miles ) away. The only way to get there and back until work started the next morning was to hurry through the so-called “Chasse-galerie”, which meant making a pact with the devil to get there. The devil promised to let the group's canoe fly to the desired destination at great speed. The condition was that the travelers were neither allowed to mention the name of God nor to touch the cross on the top of a church tower during their flight through the air. Should any of these rules be broken during the flight, the devil would preserve their souls. The men promised each other not to drink a drop of alcohol that night in order to keep their heads clear, then they took their places in the canoe, which rose into the air, and began paddling.
Far below they saw the frozen Rivière Gatineau , villages, gleaming church steeples and finally the lights of Montreal . The bewitched canoe eventually landed near the house where the New Year's Eve festivities were already in full swing. Nobody was surprised at the sudden arrival of the group, they were welcomed with open arms and soon they were dancing and celebrating happily like all the others. After all, they had to make their way back to be back on time to start work. During the flight through the moonless night it became clear that her helmsman had been drinking, because he was steering the canoe on a dangerous and lurching course. Over Montreal they narrowly missed a church spire, only to land shortly afterwards in a deep snowdrift. When the drunk helmsman began to curse and blaspheme God, his friends tied and gagged him, fearful that the devil would now take their souls, and chose another helmsman. However, the man who was bound managed to break free after a short time and to continue his profane cursing. The crew, increasingly panicked at the thought of losing their souls, finally rammed the cursed canoe into a mighty jaw, fell out and lay unconscious on the ground, where they the next morning - unharmed and relieved to still have their souls - from other loggers were found.
Variations
The end of the story varies. Sometimes the men are doomed to fly their canoes through hell, and only on New Year's Eve are people watched in the sky, but in almost all other variations they escape the contract with the devil. Depending on the region, the men fly in a canoe, a fishing boat or ride a pig. In another variant, the devil himself steered the canoe and tried to bring the men to the breach of contract on the way back until they threw him out of the canoe in order to save themselves. In English this legend is known under the name "The Canoe" or "The Wild Hunt Bewitched" (The wild bewitched hunt).
In Quebec, the most common variant was written by Honoré Beaugrand , who was a Freemason and a follower of Luciferianism . In his version, the devil (Lucifer) showed himself to be generous to the men and made it possible for them to return unscathed. The story appeared in a collection of Franco-Canadian fairy tales called Legends of French Canada by Edward C. Woodley, which was first published in 1931 and republished in 1938.
An earlier version, entitled The Flying Canoe (La Chasse Gallery) , was written by JE LeRossignol and published by McClelland and Stewart Limited in 1929, with thanks to the Toronto Star Weekly and the Canadian Home Journal for their permission to publish selected stories, originally published in these journals.
Trivia
In 1991 a Canadian series of stamps featuring Canadian fairy tales was issued, including a 40-cents stamp with an illustration of the legend. The Quebec-based Unibroue brewery also uses an illustration of the legend for its Maudite beer .
The National Film Board of Canada produced an approximately ten-minute animated short film about The Legend of the Flying Canoe (La Chasse-galerie) . The flying canoe also appears in Fredric Back's 1981 animation film Crac .
The theme also inspired musicians, for example Claude Dubois' album Rencontre de rêves live (1992) includes the song Chasse Galerie , and the Quebec folk band La Bottine Souriante released the song Martin de la Chasse-Galerie on their album La Mistrine in 1994 . In 2009, the Montreal folk metal band Blackguard used the image of a flying canoe on the album cover of Profugus Mortis , which contains the song "The Last We Wage", the lyrics of which are based on the legend.
During the opening ceremony of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, a canoe with the fiddler Colin Maier was lowered from the ceiling, alluding to the legend.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jean-Loïc Le Source: La chasse-galerie: Du Poitou à 'Acadie . Iris, Center de recherches sur l'imaginaire, Université de Grenoble 3, Grenoble, France 1999 ( [1] [PDF]).
- ^ French Canadian Legends - The Witched Canoe. (No longer available online.) In: allsands.com. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016 ; accessed on October 22, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Edward Carruthers Woodley: Legends of French Canada . B. Blom, 1931, ISBN 978-0-405-09102-5 ( books.google.com ).
- ↑ JE LeRossignol: The Flying Canoe (La Chasse-Galerie) . McLelland and Stewart, 1926.
- ^ The Legend of the Flying Canoe (La Chasse-galerie). In: nfb.ca. NFB.ca, accessed October 22, 2015 .
- ↑ Frederic Back: Crac , 1981. In: youtube.com. Societe Radio-Canada a CBC Montreal Production, accessed October 27, 2015 .
