In our house, we have lutins.
Les lutins have been quite an education in watching belief being born. I read about them in one of those big tomes of Québécois folklore I keep winding up with: a Northern French survival of Germanic or Celtic belief in household gods that hung on (hangs on?) in the distant villages of Québec where, in the middle of Arctic night, you can totally believe in things like werewolves. While not invisible, they are generally too clever to be seen by human eyes. They can change their appearance and often consort with “noteworthy animals of the neighborhood,” whom they often disguise themselves as. Something akin to the English hobgoblin, at least in the original sense: a goblin (or elf) of the hob (hearth). I explained the concept to Melissa, and she got all excited, like when I told her about French Catholic werewolves for the first time.
Then, one fateful day, she came home and was astonished that the dishes were done. She asked if I’d done it, and I looked up from my book and idly said “oh, les lutins must have done it.” She was curious, so I explained that when they’re pleased, les lutins will do minor chores like sweeping or a few dishes. When they’re displeased, I said, they get mischievous, like gremlins: they hide small things and pull down books and stop up heat and water. They’re trying to bring attention, I explained, to the things that displease them.
Well, asked my wonderfully credulous wife, what displeases them?
My mind raced. Well, I reasoned, they were not Québécois, but French-Canadian, a belief that did not survive la revolution tranquille but smacks of a dark, Catholic, illiterate, un-electrified past that endured until the 1960s. So, I said, they love the things of summer: music and laughter and cooking smells and light and good cheer and tidiness and warmth and dry, snug, hygge places. And they abhor l’hiver: Darkness. Cold. Wet. Clutter. Silence. Strife.
She nodded with solemn face, for she understood such creatures well.
Strange things began to happen. When the salon and cuisine and chambre were tidy and warm, when the house was filled with bubbling stew smells and néo-trad and Hebrew prayer and conversation, chores really were done when no one was looking. Missing items turned up. The whole household moved a little easier. And when the house was cold and silent, when clutter piled up in the corners and on the tables, when arguments broke out…well, then, wires were tangled and things hidden. My passport. My watch. Once, my wallet out of my pants.
Melissa asked how to propitiate them when they were upset like this. I told her, eh bên, ils sont francos, et pis…
We left out Belgian ale and good cheese, and I told these beings I had made up for amusement that we were sorry, we would work on being tidier, cheerier, friendlier, but until then, have these. Both were gone by morning.
When Melissa was away on some errand or other in the evenings, I began to turn on all the lights and play néo-trad over the sound system. While making soupe aux pois or Irish stew. Just in case.
The real turning point, for me, was when I saw Sophie in two places at once. Melissa’s min-pin, or, as I call her, “the bat-eared tremble rat,” was inside when I took out the garbage that night, and stayed there. Aside from the huge hound who lived up front, there were no other dogs in the neighborhood.
When I saw Sophie sneaking around in the weeds, I thought she’d escaped. But when I went inside, there she was on the couch, dozing.
“Noteworthy animals of the neighborhood, whose form they often take for a disguise.”
A few weeks later when I saw Sophie and Sophie together just outside the front door, I wasn’t nearly as surprised. And when Melissa dubbed the nearby field where we walked Sophie every night, “le champs des lutins,” I nodded, because it looked like exactly the kind of field where les lutins would gather, light their bonfires, pull out their fiddles and squeezeboxes, and chant their fairy chansons for their own saints’ days.
When we moved to our new house, we put out beer and cheese, and I invited les lutins to be welcome in our new home as they had felt more than welcome in our old one. Still, sometimes, we find the dishes taken care of and fresh socks laid out for us. And, sometimes, we mutter that such-and-such article has been spirited away because we have not played enough music lately.
I have watched every part of this process happen. I usually caused it to happen. I am perfectly aware that my lutins are as much my invention as historical folklore, and at any rate, fictional all the same. They are no more real than Tintin, loup-garou, or Jean Valjean. I also completely believe in les lutins, les p’tites bâtards embarbés who are too clever to be seen and whom Sophie knows on an intimate basis. They are a true bokono, a lie that makes us better people that is too useful to discard. Les lutins teach us to be modest, clean, and polite, they remind us to keep our space warm and dry and bright, they invite us to the cheerful hedonism of music and beer and conversation. They even encourage us to use more French, since we both naturally code-switch when the subject comes up. What pleases them is, by and large, what is good for us, Roscoe and Melissa Mathieu.
So.
Do you have lutins in your house?
And if not, whyever not?
Recent Comments