It was out of the ‘bottomless’ Lac Pavin that the sorcerers conjured wind and storm by casting a stone into its enchanted waters… -Margaret Roberts
The crag, the precipice, the perilous pass, the castle-crowned hill, the arched bridge, the untutored mountaineer, the ravaging baron, the robber chief, the ugly legendary tale of death, the pretty tale of love and fairyland luck — all these come into the story of Auvergne.
In August 1869, the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne — one of the leading figures of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood — visited Auvergne with his friend,
“In Auvergne, too, you will find again the homely farms, with great hearths and cupboard-beds…the strange superstitions and beliefs; the markets, the picturesque processions and dances,
“All nations have their omens drear, Their legends wild of woe and fear…” -Sir Walter Scott (1808) An interesting list of Auvergnat folk traditions was
Auvergne has a long tradition of loups-garous (werewolves). In fact, one of the most famous loup-garou legends first appeared in Discours execrable des Sorciers (1602), a book by
What did nineteenth-century Americans think of Auvergne? In 1801, American ambassador William Short told President Thomas Jefferson that the Limagne — a sun-kissed expanse of
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Designed by Paolo Zappalà
