Houles fairies () are fairies specific to the Channel coast, stretching from Cancale to Tréveneuc in Upper Brittany, to the Channel Islands, and known from a few fragments of stories in the Cotentin region. They live in coastal caves and caverns known as houles. Reputed to be magnificent, immortal and very powerful, they are sensitive to salt. Rather benevolent, the swell fairies described in local stories live in communities, do their own laundry, bake their own bread or tend their own flocks, marry male fairies and are served by warrior goblins called Fions. They come to the aid of humans in many ways, providing food and enchanted objects, but get angry if anyone disrespects them or acquires the power to see their disguises without their consent.
Paul Sébillot's collections, in French and Gallo, have yielded some fifty tales and fragments of legends evoking these creatures. The houles fairies, considered "semi-divinities", were probably worshipped locally by the Upper Bretons. Belief in them waned considerably in the 19th century, under the religious influence of Christianity and teachers. Collected stories themselves evoke the disappearance of these fairies, often as a consequence of the loss of their immortality and powers.
Etymology and terminology
Paul Sébillot has collected almost all of the information on houles fairies. Contrary to what their name suggests, they don't owe this one to a link with the waves of the sea, but rather to the name given to the sea caves and grottoes on the cliffs of the north coast of Upper Brittany and Cotentin, "houles" or more rarely "goules". Paul Sébillot says the name is French, but he also specifies an origin "from the Gallot country". For him, it's rather difficult to determine the etymology of the word "houle", which probably doesn't come from Breton. According to him and Françoise Morvan, the English word "hole" is the closest, since it has the same meaning. Subsequent etymological research indicates that the word "houle" is more likely to come from the Norman dialect.Lexicographical and etymological information on "houle" (etymological meaning) in the Trésor de la langue française informatisé, on the Centre national de ressources textuelles et lexicales website
Characteristics
The stories and fragments of legends have many features in common, enabling us to reconstruct the idea that the inhabitants of the north coast of Upper Brittany had of the houles fairies in the 19th century. According to Sébillot, they considered them to be "semi-divinities". However, some information has been irretrievably lost. Houles fairies are quite numerous. They usually operate on land, and have almost no connection with water, despite their habitat. They may originally have had the power to walk on water, as two stories suggest. They tend to be contemplative and fundamentally beneficial. Reputed to be immortal, very powerful and immune to disease, they fear salt, which renders them mortal. They live in caves and caverns (houles) in coastal cliffs surrounded by reefs. These houles can be very large and luxuriously furnished, with everything needed to bake, teach, make music and dine, in true Otherworldly fashion. In the one at Saint-Briac, gold ships are built. They are respectfully referred to in French as "bonne dames" (good ladies) or "nos bonnes dames les fées" (our good ladies the fairies). The names of some of these fairies are well known: la Truitonne, la Merlitonne, Gladieuse and Fleur du rocher. Some are of royal descent and the children of magicians, capable in particular of monstrous metamorphoses. The fairies of the Grouin houle are an exception, as these evil fairies are described as cursed and cause much harm. Sébillot also notes a connection with the Basque Lamia, who have affinities with the houles fairies.
Appearance They are most often described as tall, beautiful blond ladies. Most houles fairies are dressed in gray cloth. A few are similar to old groac'h-type fairies, adept at metamorphosis and whose role is more obscure. As they grow older, they become stunted and cover themselves with seaweed. Until they are baptized (and therefore stop being immortal), these fairies have worms in their mouths.
According to Françoise Morvan, another creature in Breton tales, the "man of the sea", is an intermediary between the houles fairies and the male sirens. She notes a certain assimilation between female korrigans and houles fairies in some tales, although in their respective descriptions, these creatures are completely opposite. Houles fairies are quite similar to mermaids, in their beauty and their voices that entice young fishermen.
Occupations and social life
Houles fairies are little different from humans in their occupations and sociability, their lifestyle being comparable to that of lords or wealthy landowners. They keep their living quarters sparkling clean, baking bread, spinning wool and cloth, fishing, and hanging out their white washing in the sun. In the evening, they cradle their children, sing or dance in the moonlight. Their children receive instruction in music (fairies play the violin and sing underground a song "so sweet and melodious that just listening to it [one] falls into ecstasy"),Told in 1879 by Marie Chéhu, from Saint-Cast, 80 years. metamorphosis and clairvoyance. They also possess a wide variety of magical objects, including a golden ship and a cord that can be passed around the body to move on land and sea.
These fairies sometimes visit their fellow creatures. One of their particularities is that they live in matriarchal communities with other fairies of the same type. They can marry, and their husbands are called "fetauds" or "féetauds" (male fairies). They give birth to chubby children. Warrior goblins called "Fions" are their servants. They also have a wide variety of domestic animals, most often black hens, roosters and cats, but also all kinds of herds of cattle, sheep and goats, which have the particularity of making themselves invisible to graze on the land of neighboring farmers. More rarely, they have geese and, exceptionally, horses.
Interaction with humans Interactions between these fairies and humans are numerous. Houle fairies are easily visible to all at night, but during the day, only a human gifted with clairvoyance (thanks to a magic ointment they rub into their eyes) would be able to see them in all their disguises. Fairies don't hesitate to respond to requests or provide bread (which has the particularity of never diminishing) and cakes (sometimes with a jug of cider) or even healing potions, as long as the request is formulated with respect and politeness. Gifts also include lard, butter, wine, a purse that never runs out, unwearable clothes that fit children, magic wands, enchanted ships. Some tales even mention that these fairies run schools where human children are admitted if they ask: here they learn to metamorphose, to see illusions and invisible things. Sociable, the houles fairies are easily visible as long as they remain on land: Fréhel fishermen claim to have seen them dancing many times on the moor.«La mort des fées», Told by Josheph Chrétien in 1880, in Plévenon, on Occasionally, some of them commit petty theft by lifting lobster traps or grazing their invisible flock on someone else's pasture. This prompts farmers and fishermen to set traps for them, which the fairies easily foil. They have no malicious intent, however. According to Françoise Morvan, they take in human children but do not abandon changelings. Philippe Le Stum cites the tale of La Houle de Chêlin, where a child is exchanged by these fairies. Houles fairies often and easily volunteer to become godmothers to unborn children, and treat adopted human children with as much consideration as their own. Life with them is said to be so pleasant that seven years seem like seven months, and "twenty years seem like one day".
Depending on where they live, the houles fairies speak different languages. Those on the north coasts of Upper Brittany and Guernsey are said to speak "coastal Gallo", while the Normandy houles fairies speak "city French". They are able to read and write, and can use this mode of communication to exchange with humans.
Location
Paul Sébillot lists numerous houles to which popular folklore associates two or three legends involving these fairies: in Cancale, Saint-Briac, Saint-Jacut (Houle Causseul), Saint-Cast, Étables (houle Notre-Dame), Cap Fréhel, and a dozen in the commune of Plévenon. He describes one in Erquy which, instead of "houle", is called "Goule de Galimoux". The Saint-Énogat grotto, well known to Dinard bathers in his day, is also called the "Goule-ès-Fées". The island of Guernsey also has its houles and fairies. Houles are not permanent habitats for fairies: there are stories of houles collapsing or being dug out by the fairies themselves.
The location of houles fairies, from the coast of Cancale to that of Tréveneuc, is known with great precision. Paul Sébillot has commissioned other folklorists to find similar tales in neighboring regions. Lower Brittany knows no houles fairies, attributing coastal caves to korrigans. In Normandy, very few legends recall these creatures, with one tradition attributing fairy-like inhabitants to the houles, known as "fairy holes".«Houles et trous des fées dans le Cotentin et les Îles anglo-normandes» in Guide Gallimard : Basse-Normandie, Calvados, Manche, Orne
On the other hand, very similar tales have been collected on the island of Guernsey, where a Creux-des-Fées lined with mica makes it shine like gold. Edgar MacCulloch sees this as the origin of the legend that fairies possess great wealth and go out dancing at night when the moon is full.
Collected stories and legends Sébillot lists around fifty tales or fragments of legends involving the inhabitants of the houles. He refers to the fairy tales of the houles as "the most curious and peculiar [...] of all those told in the Gallot country". The first fairy tale he collected in his career was "La Houle Cosseu", entrusted to him in 1866 by Anselme Carré, son of a fisherman from Saint-Jacut-de-la-Mer, whom he had met at the college in Dinan. A few years later, he collected Auguste Lemoine's tale of the "Goule-ès-fées", published in Littérature orale de la Haute-Bretagne with many patois words following its version told in "dialecte gallo de la côte".
A popular legend from Plévenon recounts that the houles fairies of Cap Fréhel washed their clothes at the Gaulehen pond, in the middle of the arid moor. They spread their linen, the whitest you'd ever see, over the surrounding lawns. Anyone who could get there without batting an eyelid would be allowed to take them; but no one who tried could succeed. As soon as they moved their eyelids, the linen became invisible. The fairies of the Teignouse houle, in Plévenon, had an ox grazing on the moor; one day, it strayed from the moor and passed through the wheat, causing damage. The farmers who had been wronged complained to the fairies, who compensated them by giving them a nice slice of bread, warning them never to give it to a stranger. The bread lasted two years and then disappeared, because a piece had been cut off for a beggar.Told in 1879 by Scolastique Durand, from Plévenon. According to the tale "L'école des fées", the Corbière houle in Saint-Cast was home to fairies who taught their children at school. One day, the eldest (human) child of a neighboring family heard the fairy wake up her own children to go to school, and asked her to do the same with the other siblings. These human children were taught the art of using wands and seeing illusions."L'école des fées" narrated by François Marquer () in 1881. See A story collected on the island of Guernsey tells of a ploughman who tried to take the fairy cake uninvited, and was punished for doing so.