Fairy Tale of the Month - La Corriveau

                The story is simple.  In St. Vallier and Quebec City, a witch, is a descendant of a famous French poisoner, La Voisin.  She commits all manner of crimes, hiring out her skills and killing her husbands. .  She was hung until her corpse rotted away, but on certain nights, her spirit or skeleton tries to convince a man to carry her across to the  Isle of Sorcerers (Isle d’ Orleans) where the witches are meeting.  He refuses and survives because of prayer.  The only way to get rid of her he discovers the next day is to bury her bones.


View from the Promenade in Quebec City

She is called La Corriveau or the Witch of St Vallier.  She will get you. 

               Her story has inspired a variety of products – beer, a rock band, and countless witches in various historical novels (she is usually also shown to be a poisoner of great skill descended from, or even is, the famous La Voisin (of the Poison Affair that rocked the Frenc Court in the 1600s) .

               The truth is far, far different and seems to be tied into the English gaining control over French Canada.

               Marie Corriveau belonged to a prominent  family outside of Quebec.  She was married twice, and had children with her first husband, who died in 1760, a year after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, where the French lost Quebec City to the English, when the English took control over a largely French population.

               She married again to Louis Etienne-Dodier, who apparently beat and abused her badly enough that she appealed to Major James Abercrombie to be allowed to leave him.  He refused her.  On Jan 26, 1763, Marie-Joseph Corriveau’ father charged her husband with breaking terms of an agreement and the on the following day, Dodier was found dead, supposedly killed by a horse, though both Marie-Joseph Corriveau and her father were charged with his murder. Abercrombie was, in part, angry because the village had been trying to cover things up to insure the British didn’t intervene.  There were two trials by military tribune. In the first trial, her father was found guilty of murder and she was found guilty as an accessory.   Her father confessed, and she collaborated.  She was sentenced to be hung and gibbeted (her corpse hung in chains).  She had to pay for her own gibbet.  (The gibbeting of a woman was extremely unusual and France has stopped the practice.)



La Corriveau's Gibbet


Her corpse was hung for five weeks and then it was secretly taken down and buried.  The legends really didn’t take off until 1851 when the gibbet was unearthed and then in 1863 with the work of Gaspe.  First she became a witch, a cursed being, an evil temptress who killed so many in many historical novels.  She appears in some form during various Halloween activities in and around Quebec City.  Yet, in modern times, her reputation and story have been cast in a more sympathetic light.

               In some ways, she illustrates how society adapts or confronts similar stories about various witches and ghosts.  What other tales and stories have changed over time?


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