Jasmin's Witch - An Investigation into Witchcraft and Magic in South-West France during the Seventeenth Century

A masterpiece of historical detective work by the best-selling author of Montaillou. That classic text recreated the daily life of a medieval village in the Pyrenees; here Professor Le Roy Ladurie applies equal powers of imaginative insight and historical analysis to a tale of the supernatural. Beginning with Francouneto, a narrative poem written by a Gascon hairdresser-poet called Jasmin in 1842, he probes its text to show that the events musrt be based on a real village, real people, and a real witch. He then looks at parallel cases of Gascon witchcraft, considers why witches cause impotence and bad harvests all over the world and illuminates the role of such beliefs in popular culture and present tradition. Finally, in his brilliant Postscript he fits together the last pieces of the jigsaw to reveal the exact identity (and the house) of the witch herself...