The Peluda
La Velue · the source’s French name
A shaggy local monster associated with the Huisne, preserved in an anonymous legend pamphlet. This record follows the excerpt made available by the Sarthe archive.
Quick answer
The Peluda is recorded here under the French name La Velue. The anonymous pamphlet’s quoted description gives it an enormous egg-shaped body, long green hair and sharp projections whose sting is fatal.[1: quoted description]
Quick facts
| Dragon terminology | Comparative category used by the site — Dragon is this Codex’s comparative shelf label. The selected pamphlet is named La Velue; the Sarthe archive describes its monster as part dragon, part serpent. That modern archival description is not presented as the anonymous author’s exact terminology or a universal species classification. |
|---|---|
| Record type | Individual creature in a local legend |
| Source name | La Velue |
| Source realm | The Huisne and La Ferté-Bernard in the archive’s account |
| Source marker | Archive notice, paragraph beginning “L’auteur de l’opuscule”; original page number not supplied |
| Evidence limit | An excerpt and institutional summary, not an independently consulted complete edition |
The excerpt and the archive’s account
The archive presents the creature as a survivor of the Deluge emerging from the Huisne. Its summary places the terror around La Ferté-Bernard in the fifteenth century, describes attacks on people and animals, and associates its anger with destructive floods. These statements are the archive’s summary, distinguished here from its explicitly quoted passage.[1: contextual paragraphs]
The notice does not supply a complete narrative or its ending. A slayer, a rescued maiden and a method of killing the monster are therefore not reconstructed here from later retellings.
Description and translation
The quoted French distinguishes the hair from the sharp points emerging among it. “Sharp projections” paraphrases pointes acérées; the lethal piqûre is a prick or sting. The excerpt does not describe these projections being launched. The archive separately compares the monster’s size to a large ox.[1: description]
The available passage cannot establish a fixed limb count, wings, flight or fire-breathing. An illustrator’s decisions should not fill those gaps in the text.
Source realm: the Huisne in local legend
The record sits on the Folklore places shelf because its named setting is local legendary geography. It does not establish a biological habitat or a separate fantasy kingdom. The fifteenth-century setting reported by the archive is not the date of a surviving medieval manuscript.[1]
Names, dates and source boundaries
The Peluda retains the intake’s identifying name; La Velue preserves the title of the selected French witness. The French adjective means hairy or shaggy. This record does not claim that Peluda appears in the pamphlet or establish the history of that alternative name.
The archive calls the author anonymous and gives the imprint as undated. Commons assigns 1889, citing an 1892 Le Mans library catalogue, p. 27. That date is reported bibliographical information, not a date independently read from the pamphlet’s title page.[1][2]
Text and artwork references
- 1La Velue, légende sarthoise
Anonymous. Le Mans: imprimerie E. Lebrault, undated in the holding archive’s notice; 1889 is reported by reference 2. Archives départementales de la Sarthe, 13 F 747, collection Louis Calendini. Selected section: the physical-description excerpt quoted in the archive’s “La Velue” exhibition notice, paragraph beginning “L’auteur de l’opuscule”; no original pagination supplied. Adjacent contextual paragraphs are cited as the institution’s summary, not a direct transcription. French excerpt paraphrased in English. The stable archived notice, captured 25 July 2022, was consulted; the complete pamphlet was not.
Read the archival excerpt and holding reference ↗ - 2La Velue pamphlet cover
Illustration signed A. Raouleau; digitized source credited to the Département de la Sarthe. Commons dates the pamphlet to 1889 and marks the image public domain (PD-old-70-expired; Public Domain Mark). Its bibliographical note cites the Catalogue de la bibliothèque de la Ville du Mans, second part, Le Mans: A. Drouin, 1892, p. 27, for the date and three-page extent. That catalogue entry was not independently readable during preparation. The cover is linked for consultation, not reproduced.
Cover provenance, bibliography and public-domain statement ↗
