Plaquemines Parish is about as far south as you can get in Louisiana. It's where the Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico and the land surrenders to a crazy quilt of bayous, dark ponds and vegetation-choked waterways that meander right into a gator's maw.
On a hot summer night in Naomi, Jesuit Bend, Bohemia and other wide spots in the road, shrimpers and oil riggers share a beer with Cajun women who not only shoot and fish better, but whip them at pool.
The talk often turns to werewolves.
The natives believe in them. Oh, not the ones that Hollywood dished up in the 1930s. The real deal. The shape-shifters that migrated from France to Nova Scotia (Acadia) and then to Louisiana's swamps and woodlands when the British exiled the Acadians from Canada.
Andrea Roman is a parish native who has been stranded in the desert since she was 19, when her parents moved to Mesa. Now a Phoenix real-estate agent, Roman remembers those summer nights in her grandfather's tavern in Burwood, on the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi. They're mostly good memories. Mostly.
"I still dream about werewolves," she said, without a laugh.
"My mama used to tell me that if I didn't behave myself, she'd sic the loup garou on me. That was what we called these things.
"One night, when I had been particularly bad, she did. A loup garou came and stood at the foot of my bed. I was a really good girl after that - at least for a while. Later, I thought it had probably been my grandmother, helping my mother out. But, you know, I could never prove it. My grandmother always said it wasn't her."
Ensemble cast of creepies
The loup garou is a superstar of authentic Cajun folklore. The creature and the tales about it are a far cry from the kooky gators and saucy ducks in Mike Artell's Petite Rouge: A Cajun Fairy Tale, which has been musically adapted by Joan Cushing for Tempe's Childsplay. That's basically for fun - but like the European fairy tale that inspired Artell, there's a dark, scary side to the Cajun lore.
Anger a loup garou and you're asking to be rent apart. Get on the wrong side of the feufollet, the mysterious will-of-the-wisps that float over the swamps, and they will lead you disastrously astray. Steer clear of Letiche, an abandoned, illegitimate child who was reared by alligators and now has lizardlike skin, webbed hands and feet and a very large chip on his scaly shoulder.
There are dozens, maybe even hundreds more, ranging from fairies to frights, monsters to shadow men. Not all are harmful; many have a distinct affection for humans and a tolerance of their foibles.
"Like any European-influenced culture, the Cajuns have their legends and monsters and the boogeymen who come and get little kids," Artell said. "These date back hundreds of years - and because the Cajun landscape has its swamps and bayous, many of the stories are centered around those dark and sinister environments."
Artell isn't sure that Cajuns are affected by these stories any more than are other rural cultures.
"In ancient times, people always had their suspicions about things they didn't understand," he said. "As the people grew more sophisticated, the tales become allegories useful for teaching lessons about life or, in many cases, were retained because they were entertaining."
The man who knows
One of the best sources of information on Cajun tales is the Center for Acadian and Creole Folklore at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and the man to talk to is Professor Barry Jean Ancelet, Cajun born and bred and an expert on regional folk tales. His book Cajun & Creole Folk Tales, available through Amazon.com, lists more than 100 "folk tales, magic tales, legends, tall tales and creature tales."
"There's a pretty wide range of stories available," Ancelet said. "Cajuns and Creoles alike seem to have a strong interest in the little man or the unlikely hero who succeeds in spite of all expectations. There's a strong flavor of the Brer Rabbit tales in the stories and elements from the French, Spanish, German, African and Anglo-Irish cultures."
Ancelet began collecting folk material in 1973, when he was a college student.
"I grew up in my father's barbershop hearing the stories - and my maternal grandfather was a well-known storyteller," he said. These tales "provide us with information about who we are and why we are (and) help us understand why we laugh at certain things and why we favor certain popular heroes. Most of these stories were told, they weren't written down. They amounted to a living library."
Roman has Ancelet's book as well as many others on Cajun life.
"I have two children and I want them to understand that part of me," she said. "I never sicced the loup garou on them, but I did read them the stories at bedtime and, now, they're reading them on their own. My oldest boy proposed to his wife at a Phoenix Cajun restaurant. I was so proud of him. She's not Cajun, of course, and she recently told me that she wasn't sure she would read the same stories to her children. Personally, she found them frightening.
"I told her, 'So is CNN. Those old stories pass along a lot of good tips for getting on with life. And, besides, sometimes, it's good to be scared.'"
(Original headline: Backwater bayous give rise to Cajun folk tales )
