Scooby Doo Crime 3#: the Good Ladies Rob a Peasant September 17, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval , trackback
Imagine a single story that manages to combine three favourite Beachombian tags: crime, fairies, and practical jokes. Enjoy.
And similarly, as people in a certain parish in the diocese of Besançon [north-east France] believed in parallel things, some jokers dressed up as women and, appearing in this way, they entered the house of a rich peasant with torches and dancing slowly and singing ‘Receive one, give out a hundred’. And in this way, under the eyes of the peasant they took off all his treasures, while the peasant said to his wife: ‘Shut the hell up and close your eyes! We’ll become rich, because these are the good things and they’ll multiply by a hundred what we own.’
Note that this is a loose translation. Latin at the foot of the post for purists.
What is happening here? We seem to have a very exciting encounter with ‘the good women’, perhaps a distant cousin of Britain’s White Ladies, and the great grandparents of Disney’s fairy godmothers. The jokers/thieves dress up as these spirits and enter the house dancing with lights: was this how ‘the good women’ were typically seen in twelfth-century France? There are a couple of fairy touches here. The peasant woman is told to shut her eyes, fairies must, of course, not be seen. Fairies are also generous and return many times what they are given. Recently came across a mermaid heist from Africa, but the good ladies with swag bags is perhaps even better. There are lots of stories about smugglers using the occult to mask their crimes. Other examples: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Note that this short passage comes from Etienne of Bourbon (aka Stephen of Bourbon) Tractatus de diuersis materiis praedicabilibus, in other words this was intended to be used in sermons; Etienne was a Dominican (shiver). The Tractatus has not been dated with care but seems to have been written c. 1250. Of course, the story might have been invented but Etienne as an inquisitor will surely have passed 101 residual French paganism.
Item, cum in diocese Bisumptina, in quadam parrochia, hominess talibus crederent, quidam ribald transfigurauerunt se in similitudinem mulierum, earum assumptu habitu, et, domum cuiusdam diuitis rustici cum torticiis intrantes, et coreas ducentes sub pressa, canebant: ‘Unum accipe, centum redde’. Et sic in oculis rustici domum euacuauerunt omnibus bonis, dicentis uxori sue: ‘Tace, et claude oculos, quia bone res sunt, et centuplicabunt bona nostra.
Love it!
