“In Trizac, in the wood of Marlhiou, where mounds of earth are found, rests Cottenghe, a Gaulish city of invisible treasures, left in the custody of serpents.”
-Paul Sébillot
Professional treasure-hunting has never been for the faint of heart. In Mamluk and Ottoman Egypt, those fortunate enough to own kutub al-mutālibīn (treasure-hunting manuals) needed to memorise a series of charms in order to distract or banish greedy demons. European treasure-hunters also had to prepare for magical confrontations with hostile spirits. Satan and his nitpicking functionaries played no games; destiny-changing wealth was theirs to give, and it was never given away without a fight. Safety was only guaranteed if instructions were followed to the letter. Even then, unlicensed adventurers who failed to inform local authorities of their exploits often faced prosecution.
Amateur fortune hunters likewise had to pay the price unless they were able to win the good favour of supernal powers. For instance, one such story tells how a local woman named Cattine Leybros stumbled upon the remains of Cottenghe (or Cotteughes), an abandoned Medieval-era village in the forested heights of Cantal (a département of Auvergne).
In the tale, which was popularised in the nineteenth-century by French historian Henri Durif, Leybros observes two serpents (coulevres)–each with a golden ring around its neck–emerging from the ruins. After waiting patiently for the jewel-loving snakes to leave, Leybros swoops down on their lair and snatches up a vase full of silver coins. The heist takes place on Maundy Thursday–and in a show of piety, Leybros goes to her nearest church and places the sacred stash on the altar. The next day, the two serpents–evidently seeking to recover their treasure–are found dead at the altar.
Another version of the tale, which appears in the fifth volume of Jean-Baptiste de Ribier du Châtelet’s Dictionnaire statistique ou Histoire, description et statistique du département du Cantal (1857), describes “Colteughe” as a former haunt of fairies. Ribier du Châtelet, citing the experience of a wandering “mountain-dweller” (montagnard), explains that persons who go treasure-hunting in the lost city on Maundy Thursday or Easter Sunday can find a vast slab bearing a large bronze ring carefully hidden underneath stones and bushes. This trapdoor, Ribier du Châtelet notes, leads to a secret underground chamber containing gold coins.
In both versions of the story, treasure-hunting success is directly linked with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here the suggestion is that Christ, like Moses of eld (whose staff “swallowed” the serpents produced by Egyptian sorcerers), has dominance in the spirit world–at least during Holy Week. Neither the montagnard nor the pauvre femme featured in Durif’s and Ribier du Chatelet’s anecdotes are priestly, Latin-speaking scholastici vagantes; rather they are devout commoners.
The two serpents in the tale, which Durif calls “obviously two genies”, probably could also be classified as Dracs. Dracs–somewhat like the fire-breathing dragons of mythology–were an especially crafty class of supernatural beings. Possessing a nature that was subtler than air, the Drac was the ideal cat burgler, an imp that easily pilfered others’ chests and kitchen cabinets by zooming through the air and transforming into various shapes.
In Cantal, as in German, Baltic, Scandinavian, and Slavic states, it was often in the employ of witches and sorcerers. Since the Drac’s antics also included frightening cattle, stealing horses, and generally making rural life a living hell, Cantalians were well-versed in Drac lore and counter-charms. “There is no end to the tales told of the doings of this Drac,” wrote the English travel writer Frances M. Gostling in her book, Auvergne and its People (1911). He is, she explained, “only too common among the desolate mountain villages of Cantal.”
Yet Dracs are no longer a public feature of today’s Cottenghe. Gone–it seems–are its goblin days of yore. Day-tripping adventurers, fresh from the local auberge, are guided to its moss-covered vestiges by internet reviews and government-funded signage. All human guests, however, retreat to their homes before dark–and this is perhaps when the nightly resurrection of Cottenghe begins.
Here, far away from the human eye, the Drac’s elven relatives awaken from their slumber. Bedecked in ghostly gems that shimmer in the rays of the moon, they recount in galliard-dance the sagas of their lost city while cursing the Church who sunk it into the depths. But as the sun–like their thorn-crowned archenemy–rises from its sleep, the fay-folk vanish, forever concealing Old Cottenghe’s remaining treasures from mortal explorers.
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