Detail map

France

3 entries in 3 subareas: 3 at grade A. The points fall where the entry was collected, not where the story is set. Hover a point to see the subarea, click it to open the entry.

The entries, in brief

The folklore of France documented in this atlas: Bestia del Gévaudan, Ankou and Tarasca. Every entry is placed on the map at the point where it was collected or attested — not where the story is set — and carries its declared grade of documentation (3 at grade A), with the sources it comes from. The 3 subareas are not an administrative division: folklore lives in cultural areas, which rarely coincide with state borders.

Ankou A
He is not the Death that decides, he is the one that carries out: the Ankou is the carter charged with collecting the dead of the parish. He appears as a very tall, thin man with long white hair, his face in shadow under a wide…

Bestia del Gévaudan A
Between June 1764 and June 1767, on the plateau of the Margeride, an animal — or more than one — kills dozens of people, the overwhelming majority of them women, girls and children caught alone at pasture. In contemporary…

Tarasca A
An amphibious monster lurking in a wood on the bank of the Rhône, which devoured passers-by and sank boats. In the oldest version it is the offspring of Leviathan and of the Bonnacon of Galatia, half fish, with an equine mane, a…

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