travels with a donkey in the cévennes

by "AF" - the london magazine, vol. xxxiv, may 1765; reprinted in
montague summers, werewolf (1933), Public Domain, Link



a book purchase from yesterday (robert louis stevenson one squid bookmarx bargain bucket). the other book was an ethnography of creative writing courses (ditto).

initially stevenson can tell us nothing (except how much hard work it is to beat a recalcitrant donkey up hill and down dale) but as soon as he gets a goad (and the donkey becomes used to her new owner) he becomes more observant . he sets out on the 23rd of september with modestine the donkey and sells her on (and completes the rest of the journey by stagecoach) on october 3rd. remind horsemouth to revisit it at the appropriate time.

the locals are still terrorised by the beast of gévaudan  Élie berthet's 1858 novel la bête du gévaudan attributes the attacks (in part) to a werewolf.

even more worrying, for the raised protestant but catholic curious stevenson, were the hermits wandering around - most notably at our lady of the snows. stevenson is well primed he used to study a copy of marco sadeler’s hermits as a child and has a copy of peyrat’s pastors of the desert (a history of clandestine protestant lay preachers) with him tucked in his sleeping bag (and was familiar with samuel bastide’s les pasteurs du désert).

horsemouth goes to work this afternoon.