Beast of the Week: Le Loup Garou

Bonjour. Get your flea collars, play some Celine Dion music, and butter your baguettes, folks. This week, we are going to howl at the moon, consume the flesh of the innocent, and plant our potatoes incorrectly. Our Beast of the Week is Le Loup Garou.

We all know about werewolves. They change with the moon, growl and prowl about, and are generally quite disagreeable until the sun comes up. The idea of werewolves has been around for many, many moons, and there are different iterations of the beast in every nook and cranny of the world. French Canada—New France, or Habitation de Quebec—have their own legend of a shape-shifting wolfman. Le Loup Garou is a werewolf that stalks the land like other, malevolent mythical wolf-people would. But here’s where it differs from the wolves we know of from pop culture such as the Wolfman, Teen Wolf, and (gag) Twilight. Le Loup does not emerge from the skin of man upon basking in the light of the full moon. A man is said to be cursed to roam the land as a werewolf if he misses Easter Mass seven years in a row, makes a deal with the devil, or plants potatoes on a Sunday. Yes. Potatoes. On a Sunday. 

The mythology surrounding Le Loup Garou originated within the Catholic community of New France, or Francophone Canada. Tales of the beast were quite common in the mid- to late-1700s in the Quebec area. The legend is a combination of Catholicism and Indigenous shape-shifting lore, combined with the goings-on in France in the region of Gevaudan in the 1760s. In this region, across the pond from Canada, a beast of sorts killed around one hundred people, and the rumor was that a werewolf was terrorizing the countryside. News of this travelled over the Atlantic, and combined itself with Indigenous folklore to birth the legend of the shape-shifting man-beast: Le Loup Garou.

But wait. Le Loup Garou is always a curse, but not always a wolf. A man is most commonly cursed to wolf form, but, despite the name, can be transformed into a number of different animals. Animals associated with the Loup Garou curse include pigs, oxen, cats, calves, or owls. 

Le Loup Garou curse has specific rules. Once you miss your seven masses, or strike your deal with the pitchfork-wielding man down under, or plant potatoes while watching Sunday night hockey, you change into the beast. But when you are in beast form, you retain your human consciousness. You know what you are, what you are doing, and have full control of your mind and your body. This curse will not last forever. Typically, unless it is broken, it will last 101 days, then you can go back to your normal self. The spell can be broken if someone recognizes the human in his animal form, and draws blood by hitting it with a rock or stabbing it with a knife or gardening tool. Le Loup Garou will then change back, but neither party can ever speak of it to anyone, or they will both be cursed to wander the land as Le Loup Garou. 

So if you skip mass to plant a potato on a Sunday, and while doing your forbidden gardening, you decided to promise your soul to the devil for a cool, refreshing beer, you’re cursed. Enjoy lapping up your maple syrup and poutine out of a dog dish.