La Chasse-galerie, linocut, 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2025
I look forward to it every year! It's time for Folktale Week. Hosts post their 7 prompts for artists and/or writers to create illustrations or tell stories on these themes inspired by folktales, folklore, fables, myth and fairytales! There’s always a lot of magic submissions and it’s open to all. Most of the action is on Instagram (see @folktaleweek for more information) but you can find artists and writers sharing on other socials too. I am going to post my new illustrations here, starting with Day 1: Night.
I wanted to once again make sure I included some Canadian folklore. So for the Day 1 prompt Night I knew what to illustrate!
This hand-carved, hand-printed 11” x 14” lino block print on lovely Japanese paper illustrates the famous French Canadian folktale of the Chasse-galerie, or the Flying Canoe. The tale tells of some hardworking voyageurs in their timber camp, who miss their sweethearts back home, 100 leagues or 500 km away. After a night of heavy drinking on New Year’s Eve they decide they need to visit, despite being required to work the next day. The only way to make it there are back in time is to run the Chasse-Galerie; that is, they have to make a pact with the Devil so their canoe can fly through the air and speed them home and back in time. The Devil demands that if they mention God or touch the cross of any church steeple during their voyage they will forfeit their souls. The voyageurs swear off any more rum to keep their heads clear and they paddle as they speed through the air to the New Year’s Eve festivities where they dance and celebrate with their sweethearts. Eventually they notice it’s getting late and they rush back to the canoe, but their navigator is drunk. Their course back is dangerous and erratic. The navigator narrowly misses church steeples and begins swearing and blaspheming. The men are terrified they will loose their souls so the gag the navigator and elect a new navigator, but the first one tries to resume and they crash into a pine tree. Several versions exist of their various fates, either outwitting the Devil or doomed to fly the canoe through hell and reappearing in the sky each New Year’s Eve.
The popular folktale is believed to a a syncretism between a French version of the Wild Hunt folklore where a man named M. Galerie is chased by the devil all night and local Indigenous tales of a flying canoe. I love how you can trace a sort of family tree of folktales and find familial connections between stories. For me this print is another in my ongoing collection of slightly sinister Yuletide folklore.
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