The devil and the well

Lo Potz de las Fadas… The Well of the Fairies in occitan. This is one of the names of the Big Well, which has inspired people for centuries.
Gaping hole, source of life, or way to the hell…The Big Well gave birth to a large number of legends and fabulous stories. Haunted by spirits, it always fascinated our ancestors. Even today the passers-by approaching it slowly bend over the edge, attracted by an irresistible curiosity, and worried at the same time by what they are going to discover in it…

They won’t see a lot in fact, because for security reasons the top is covered with glazed railings. It keeps the secrets and mysteries of the well… what is the secret that someone wants to hide from our eyes ???…

The Devil himself would have thrown seven men into it. The legend says one night, a long time ago, seven archers were singing and making noise in the streets, swearing against the apostles and Saint Gimer. These non-believers met a donkey which was covered with a very rich cloth. They seized it, and one after the other rose on the back of the donkey. The animal lengthened as they took place on it, so that they all could sit down on its back !

Suddenly the beautiful cloth changed into a funeral pall, and the donkey began to run in the streets. It stopped first at the cemetery, where graves opened, leaving passage to the died, who intoned a funeral lament.

Then the donkey, which was in reality Satan, went to the Big Well and dived into the depth with the seven archers. They still belong to him.

But the Well did not just gave birth to strange and disturbing stories staging malefic spirits. It also knew how to inspire the muses of poetry, as still testify many occitan poems from the 16th and 17th centuries…