The
second instalment on the legends of Saurimonde has to do more with
seers and than with faeries, although an element still remains. Her
treasure of the golden comb seems to be one of the connective
features underlying all the stories and traditions. It is probably
not coincidental that in the legend Saurimonde shares traits and
characteristic very similar to those if the 'witch goddess' Mari in
Basque mythology. Basque country is situated on the other end of the
Pyrenees and it is more than likely that those stories travelled and
adapted themselves nicely to existing medieval Occitan cosmology.
The
former Cathar stronghold of Lastours is a stones throw from
Carcassonne and was the former home of the medieval witch version of
Saurimonde and the notorious Loba the she-wolf of Cabaret, reputed to
be the loveliest woman in the Languedoc and one of the chatelaines of
the 'Courts of Love' held in the castle of Puivert. The troubadours
would have sung her praises just as the tales of Saurimonde would
have been told in hushed tones, in dark corners in the dead of night.
Curiously
enough, there was an interesting
novel by Joseph Dovetto, 'Salimonde Lastours, the Cathar Naiad', in
which the roles of these two mythical women are blended and
reversed. The
book is inspired by the legend of the cave of Saurimonde at Lastours
castle. Saurimonde was called by protestant minister and one of the
first chroniclers of the Albigensian Crusade, Napoleon Peyrat "the
prophetess of the camp of the Hautpool faidits", writer and poet
Maurice Magre described her as, "the solitary Saurimonde, the
inspired prophetess of the Mazamet district, who went naked as in the
days when the world was born, because her soul was as bright as the
sun she invoked." The story starts out with two naiads or fees
that guard a treasure that is made of double-silver, pearl and
lapis-lazuli. Salimonde is blonde with blue eyes and loves the light,
her sister Brun is dark-haired with ebony eyes and she loves the
darkness and hatred. During the Visigoth invasions, Salimonde starts
a relationship with a wounded warrior, Acco, that she has been
treating. Her sentence for this illicit affair with a human is that
she and her sister lose their otherworldly powers and are doomed back
into existence through reincarnation.
In
their next lives they find themselves cast into a bygone era of
Cabaret just before the Albigensian
Crusade.
Loba is reincarnated as Bruna, the new face of the devil and Nova de
Cabaret as the
virtuous
Salimonde. Nova warns about her aunt, "you should beware of her
like the plague, my aunt
Etinette,
wife of my Uncle Jourdain. She is unkind and even cruel. She is known
as the wolf of
Pennautier,
named so by poor troubadour Peire Vidal. You see her often dressed in
a wolf skin. For
fun,
the troubadour, who was the courtly lover of Etinette, disguised
himself as a wolf during a
hunt.
The dogs of the she wolf nearly devoured him."
The
medieval folklore version of the Saurimonde tale tells quite a
different story...
"Under
the castle of Quertinheux (one of the castles of Lastours), north
west of Grésilhou, overlooking the river, is situated a cave known
as the 'Hole of the Witch'. The main opening sits almost flush with
the water below. At the bottom of the cave, a rough stone staircase
leads to the first floor in the north wall which opens to a large
natural bay half closed by ivy.
This
is where, according to tradition, lived Salimonde the witch. She had
long hair that reached down to her feet and she was dressed in
sheepskins. When it was Candlemas, she would appear at the opening of
the cave. If she cried and lamented then winter was going to continue
and increase its ferocity. On the contrary, if she blew her flute
with joyful ease it meant that spring was just around the corner and
that the seasons would be beautiful and sunny.
The
superstitious villagers used to try and win her good graces by
sacrificing two or three sheep to her.”
There
exists another legend in the black mountain of the faery Saurimunda,
who lived in the cave of Minouvre. “One day she dropped her golden
comb into the river Arnette and predicted that the waters of the
torrents would ride constantly with gold.”
Perhaps
the basis for these stories is the legends of the Basque witch
goddess, Mari. Not much is remembered of her as there exists no
written accounts, but her reputation lived on through representation
and oral tradition.
Mari
was a central goddess who was associated with the various forces of
nature including lightning, thunder and wind. She was known as the
'bringer of storms' who lived in a cave and often prophecised the
weather. She was always dressed in red (as were all the high
priestesses in the ancient tradition) and was often depicted with the
full moon emitting flames behind her head. Although she has many
animals attached to her, one of her main familiars is a black goat in
which she would wear his skin for protection when he was not by her
side. Most
often, she is seen as a beautiful woman seated at the mouth of one of
her caves, combing her long, lustrous hair with a golden comb. Legend
has it that a woman stole into her cave one night and stole a golden
comb. In the morning the woman's valuable tract of land was
completely covered in stones. The women who served as the pagan high
priestesses of her court were known as the lamia, or lamiak, or
sorgiank. Sometimes they are referred to as witches, but in all the
instances they possess large amounts of golden treasures and there is
more than one story of a mortal stealing a golden comb from one of
them and in retaliation they savagely hunt the person down and bring
great harm and misfortune to them.
Portrayed
in darkness and in light, taking on aspects of good and evil,
reinterpreted and reimagined, the reputations of these powerful
ladies lives on into modern day. The motif of the golden comb turns
up in fairy tales from Greece with mortal kissed fairies whom weep
during the full moon to Japan where is was worn by the loveliest lady
of the land who lies crying in the moonlight, to pour the water of
the dead. The one thing that these sotries have in common is that the
possessing the golden comb often ends badly. Possibly it is a
metaphor for trying to tame and imprison the wild nature which ends
in a castle somewhere East of the Sun and West of the Moon. It seems
that some gifts are not what they seem...
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