Saturday, August 17, 2013

Wolves


No, not the football team I supported so fervently in my youth, but the real thing. I'm writing about wolves in the final section of my chapter on the Monts d'Arrée and made yet another visit to the Musée du Loup at Cloitre-St-Thégonnec this week. I do their book fair every year and an occasional walk from the village, so it's familiar territory. This time we walked in blazing sun right up onto the Landes de Cragou, a typical terrain of the Monts d'Arrée's distinctive landscape.
An unpleasing irony is that the wolf museum does not allow dogs in, so it was a fleeting look on a very hot afternoon. I just wanted to get a bit of the atmosphere of the days when wolves were common in Brittany and look again at some examples of the oral tradition. It was ill-advised to call a wolf a wolf in those days: Yann and Willy were apparently preferable modes of address. Hard to imagine the circumstances - it makes me think of Ogen Nash:  If called by a panther, don't anther.

Go away in the name of St Hervé if you are a wolf,
In the name of God if you are Satan.

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