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.
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| 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.)
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| 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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