Matagot

In the old farmhouses of Gascony there were two chests set either side of the hearth, and they served as chairs. One was the salt box. The other, in certain houses, was the matagotière. A neighbour came in out of the cold one winter afternoon, was told to sit and warm himself, and took the chest on the left. The two men talked until the talk ran out. Then the visitor stood to go, and found that he could not stand. His host reached over and knocked softly on the lid, the way you would wake a child. Come on, little one. Let him go. This one is a friend. The neighbour got up, walked home very fast, and understood at last where all the gold in that house had been coming from.

The thing in the chest goes by different names depending on which road you came in by. In Provence it is the matagot. In Gascony it is the mandagot or mandragot. Around the Loire it is the matangon, and in Brittany they call it the chat d’argent, the silver cat, which is the plainest name of the lot and tells you exactly what it is for. Provençal gave the word that the folklorists eventually carried north with them, and matagot is now the name it answers to across the whole country.

Getting one is the hard part, and the difficulty is deliberate. The matagot crosses the countryside only once a year, between midnight and sunrise, and nobody knows which night. Anyone who wants it must therefore go out to the ambush every single night and wait. The trick is a hen, tied at a crossroads where four roads meet, because the matagot is greedy and will smell it and come. The hunter crouches in the hedge, springs, and takes the creature by the tail. Then the rules tighten. It goes into a sack, and it must not be hurt or roughly handled. The sack goes over the left shoulder. The walk home is made without speaking and without turning around, whatever is heard on the road behind, and there is always something heard on the road behind.

After that, the arrangement is almost domestic. The matagot lives in a chest, or under its master’s bed. It is fed bread, meat, the good things from the table, and the first mouthful of every dish goes to it before anyone else eats. In return, every morning, there is a silver écu in the chest. Some say a fistful of gold louis, as much as two cupped hands can hold. The man makes his fortune inside a year and can walk about with a cane like a gentleman, and his neighbours, who are not stupid, work out fairly quickly what he has in the house.

Nobody knows what it looks like. That is not evasion, it is the tradition’s own position: very few people ever claimed to have seen one, and those who did were not eager to say so. The consensus picture is a black cat, curled in the dark under the bed or shut in its box, though it has also been reported as a rat, a fox, and a monkey. Day and night it lies there. It does not speak. It does not sleep. It broods, and now and then it amuses itself by playing a small trick on somebody who does not know it is in the room.

The reason it might be a monkey, or a mole, is that it may not have started out as an animal at all. South of the Loire, the mandrake was commonly called the herb of the matagot. The belief attached to the mandrake root was the same belief in every particular: keep it wrapped in fine silk and linen, feed it, care for it, and you will never be poor again. The root is fleshy and forked and does a grotesque impression of a small crouching body with arms and legs, and country people came to treat it as a beast rather than a plant, sometimes calling it a mole. The Occitan folklorist Antonin Perbosc, who spent his life collecting these stories in Quercy and the country around it, thought the plant came first and the animal grew out of it, the mandragore sliding by a syllable or two into the mandagot, until the beast had eaten the memory of the root entirely.

The price is where the story turns. The matagot is a diabolical gift, or a diabolical purchase, and what it costs is not money. In many tellings its keeper has traded his salvation for his prosperity. In Brittany the transaction was more procedural: go to a crossing of five roads, call up the Abominable, and a black cat will come to you out of the dark with other animals in attendance. Hand it a purse with something in it, and the next morning it brings the purse back with twice as much. Sometimes the same cat is said to serve nine masters in succession, and only the ninth is taken to hell, which is either a mercy or an argument for not being ninth.

Neglect it and it turns. A Gascon sorcerer who abandoned his silver cats far from home once his fortune was made was found strangled by them. And the ending is bad even for the careful. When its master comes to die, he must give the matagot away, and his heirs, who know exactly what is being offered, do not always want it. Until someone accepts, he cannot die. He simply lies there in agony, for as long as it takes.

Against all this stands one plain fact from the record. In the nineteenth century, at Belle-Isle-en-Terre, a man paid an old woman who claimed to be a witch three hundred francs for a mandragot. After eight nights it had brought him nothing at all. He took her to the justice of the peace, who ordered her to give the money back. The court did not rule on whether silver cats exist. It ruled that this one had not worked.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a matagot?

A matagot is a wealth-bringing spirit of French folklore, usually appearing as a black cat, that lives in its owner’s house and leaves money in his chest every morning. It is known as the mandragot in Gascony and the chat d’argent, or silver cat, in Brittany. The wealth is not free: most versions of the story say the owner has pledged his soul for it.

How do you catch a matagot?

The traditional Gascon method is to tie a hen at a crossroads where four roads meet and lie in wait for it, since the matagot is greedy and will come to the bait. It must be seized by the tail, put into a sack without being harmed, and carried home over the left shoulder. The captor has to make the whole journey home without speaking and without looking back, no matter what he hears behind him.

What do you have to feed a matagot?

It is fed from its owner’s own table, on bread, meat and whatever else is good, and it must be given the first mouthful of every dish before anyone else eats. This is not a courtesy but the condition of the arrangement. An owner who neglects or insults his matagot can expect it to take revenge, and one Gascon sorcerer who abandoned his silver cats after making his fortune was strangled by them.

What does a matagot look like?

Most often it is described as a black cat, though it has also been reported as a rat, a fox and a monkey. The folklore is unusually honest about the fact that almost nobody claimed to have seen one, so its appearance is poorly attested. It is generally imagined curled under its master’s bed or shut inside the chest where it keeps the money.

Is the matagot connected to the mandrake?

Yes, and the connection runs deep. South of the Loire the mandrake was known as the herb of the matagot, and the same beliefs attached to both: wrap it, feed it, care for it, and you will never be poor. The folklorist Antonin Perbosc argued that the mandrake myth came first and that the plant’s forked, almost animal-shaped root gradually turned into a real beast, the mandragore becoming the mandagot and then the matagot.

Can you get rid of a matagot?

Only by giving it to someone who agrees to take it, and this has to be done before its owner dies. Until a new keeper accepts the matagot, the old one cannot die, and he lingers in a long and painful agony. Some accounts say a single matagot passes through nine masters, and that only the last of them is carried off to hell.

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