The Coulobre of Fontaine-de-Vaucluse

At the end of a narrow valley, hemmed in by white limestone cliffs, lies the village of Fontaine-de-Vaucluse — «the spring of the closed valley». There the Sorgue surges out of a deep blue-green pool whose depth no one knew. The villagers said: as deep as hell.

In that abyss, the old Provence women told, lived the Coulobre. She was a female dragon, with the scales of a salmon trout, the wings of a bat, and a breath like a chimney. When the rains fell and the pool swelled, she crept from the water, spread her wings and devoured cattle, sheep and children. The Sorgue itself, they said, was her spittle.

In the sixth century Saint Veranus was bishop of Cavaillon, a day’s journey to the south. The people of the Vaucluse came to him, imploring him to drive away their dragon. Veranus did not hesitate. He walked into the valley, alone, with his bishop’s staff and his book of psalms.

At the edge of the abyss he knelt. He read aloud the psalm: «Confregisti capita draconum in aquis» — thou hast broken the heads of the dragons in the waters. Then the Coulobre roared out of the depths, beat her wings and exhaled vapours. But Saint Veranus did not falter. With his staff he pointed in the direction of Saint-Maixent in Poitou. Against her will the dragon flew away, over the Mont Ventoux and over the Loire, and vanished into the marshes of Niort. There she was later slain — but that is another story.

The Sorgue flowed thereafter clear and dragonless through the valley. The villagers acclaimed their bishop a saint and built him a chapel. Saint-Véran is today a village in the Hautes-Alpes — the highest in France — and many churches in Provence bear his name.

Eight centuries later the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch came to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. He lived sixteen years in the village, wrote there his love poems for Laura and sang the spring as «la chiusa valle», the closed valley. Sometimes, he said, he heard at night something rumbling deep beneath his window — but that will have been the Sorgue, hurling itself against the rocks. The Coulobre has been silent since Veranus. To this day no one has reached the bottom of the Fontaine.