Trémeur, it is said, had great adventures. As he loved war, he killed several giants, ogres, and ferocious beasts which devastated the country.
It is good to tell you that he had sworn not to marry, and in this he was perhaps not wrong, seeing that, if a beauty had turned his head, goodbye glue and the rest … You understand.
Yet the devil, the one we call "Old Guillaume", not the lugubrious Satan, but a comical, tender, and good-natured devil; therefore, this devilish prankster had also sworn to play a trick on Trémeur, because Trémeur, by converting, had played another one on him. Satan wanted to make him fall in love, naturally, to make him lose his mind a second time.
So one day our man, while passing through a forest, met a venerable old man, who cried like a Madeleine, except that he had an ugly red beard.
"What is the matter with you, old father?" he told him with compassion. "Why are you crying?"
“I have reason to cry,” replied the other, squeaking. "Do you see, over there, the high walls of a cursed mansion? Well! My only daughter is there, a prisoner of an evil ogre, who must eat her or marry her tomorrow; which is pretty much the same thing."
"Ah!" said Trémeur, “I’m not saying no; but I don't like to get involved in adventures where there are women; it's never worth anything."
"Oh! Oh!" cried the tempter, “you are a strange person, but my daughter will not be eaten any less, since you, who seem so brave, do not have the heart to…"
"Stop there, old man! It has never been said that Trémeur was a coward; for the head, maybe, but the heart is strong; So, since the weather is overcast, I'm going to look for your daughter. In the meantime, pray for me."
The red man made a sort of roar at these words, but Trémeur was already on his way, and as he could not turn his head away, he did not see the old rascal making a caper on his cloven feet and making a grimace like a man possessed.
That's going well, as the sexton said.
I will not waste time telling you how the son of Comorre split the ogre in two with a single blow of an ax and saved the daughter from the devil. Ah! It’s not what he did best in truth; because it is said that the daughter of the devil still runs through the world and that her granddaughters, evil thoughts, fly and spread like horrible vapors over sad humanity.
Source: Trémeur ou l'omme sans tête from the French book Contes et légendes de Basse-Bretagne published in 1891.
I am writing translations of folk tales that I found in public domain French books, so that people who do not understand French may enjoy them too.
Now that Trémeur is on his own, he is killing ogres and ferocious beasts.
But he tries to not be involved with women so that he does not lose his head again.
One day, he is sent by the jovial devil to save his daughter from an ogre.
As my daughter Roseline was going back home to Richmond, she dropped me off in the afternoon at the Abbotsford International Airport.
I took a plane to Calgary where Kati was waiting for me. I was at her son Péter's house before 9 PM.
This morning I played with Adam and Olivér, Kati's two grandsons.
-- Vincent Celier
