page_title: Groac'h
section_title: La Groac'h de l'Île du Lok
hierarchical_section_title: Groac'h / Stories and collected legends / La Groac'h de l'Île du Lok
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Illustration de Théophile Busnel pour le conte d'Emile Souvestre, la Groac'h de l'île du Lok
context_page_description: A groac'h is a kind of Breton water-fairy. Seen in various forms, often by night, many are old, similar to ogres and witches, sometimes with walrus teeth. Supposed to live in caverns, under the beach and under the sea, the groac'h has power over the forces of nature and can change its shape. It is mainly known as a malevolent figure, largely because of Émile Souvestre's story La Groac'h de l'île du Lok, in which the fairy seduces men, changes them into fish and serves them as meals to her guests, on one of the Glénan Islands. Other tales present them as old solitary fairies who can overwhelm with gifts the humans who visit them.
  Several place-names of Lower Brittany are connected with the groac'h, especially the names of some megaliths in Côtes-d'Armor, as well as the island of Groix in Morbihan and the lighthouse of La Vieille. The origin of those fairies that belong to the archetype of "the crone" is to be found in the ancient female divinities demonized by Christianity. The influence of Breton writers in the 19th century brought them closer to the classical fairy figure.
context_section_description: The most famous story evoking a groac'h is La Groac'h de l'Île du Lok, collected, written and arranged by Émile Souvestre for his book Le Foyer breton (1844).  Houarn Pogamm and Bellah Postik, orphan cousins, grow up together in Lannilis and fall in love, but they are poor, so Houarn leaves to seek his fortune.  Bellah gives him a little bell and a knife, but keeps a third magic object for herself, a wand.  Houarn arrives at Pont-Aven and hears about the groac'h of Lok Island, a fairy who inhabits a lake on the largest of the Glénan Islands, reputed to be as rich as all the kings on earth put together.  Houarn goes to the island of Lok and gets into an enchanted boat in the shape of a swan, which takes him underwater to the home of the groac'h.  This beautiful woman asks him what he wants, and Houarn replies that he is looking for the wherewithal to buy a little cow and a lean hog.  The fairy offers him some enchanted wine to drink and asks him to marry her.  He accepts, but when he sees the groac'h catch and fry fish which moan in the pan he begins to be afraid and regrets his decision.  The groac'h gives him the dish of fried fish and goes away to look for wine.
  Houarn draws his knife, whose blade dispels enchantments. All the fish stand up and become little men. They are victims of the groac'h, who agreed to marry her before being metamorphosed and served as dinner to the other suitors.  Houarn tries to escape but the groac'h comes back and throws  at him the steel net she wears on her belt, which turns him into a frog. The bell that he carries on his neck rings, and Bellah hears it at Lannilis.  She takes hold of her magic wand, which turns itself into a fast pony, then into a bird to cross the sea. At the top of a rock, Bellah finds a little black korandon, the groac'h's husband, and he tells her of the fairy's vulnerable point.  The korandon offers Bellah men's clothes to disguise herself in.  She goes to the groac'h, who is very happy to receive such a beautiful boy and yields to the request of Bellah, who would like to catch her fish with the steel net.  Bellah throws the net on the fairy, cursing her thus: "Become in body what you are in heart!". The groac'h changes into a hideous creature, the queen of mushrooms, and is thrown into a well.  The metamorphosed men and the korandon are saved, and Bellah and Houarn take the treasures of the fairy, marry and live happily ever after.
  For the scholar Joseph Rio this tale is important documentary evidence on the character of the groac'h.  Souvestre explained why he chose to place it on the island of Lok by the multiplicity of versions of the storytellers which do so.  La Groac'h de l'île du Lok was even more of a success in Germany than it had been in Brittany.  Heinrich Bode published it under the title of Die Wasserhexe in 1847, and it was republished in 1989 and 1993.  The story was likewise translated into English (The Groac'h of the Isle) and published in The Lilac Fairy Book in 1910.  Between 1880 and 1920 it served as study material for British students learning French.
caption: Houarn in the groac'h's magic boat. Engraving after Théophile Busnel [fr], from Contes et légendes de Basse-Bretagne (1891).
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