Cheval Mallet

Also Known As: also cheval Malet; corrupted locally to Merlet and Merlette; the name is usually traced to malle, a trunk or travelling case, or to the Middle French mallier, a horse that carried the trunks
Region/Culture: Western Europe
Mythos: French Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: It waits on a night road already saddled and bridled, and whoever mounts it is carried in an unstoppable gallop that ends at daybreak with the rider dead.
Role in Mythos: A night horse of the Vendée, the Poitou and the pays de Retz, held to be an instrument of the Devil and sometimes the Devil himself, who punishes the traveller willing to accept an easy ride home.
Relation to Humans: It works entirely by consent, offering itself to people too tired to be careful and taking only those who climb into the saddle of their own accord. A traveller carrying holy water, a marked coin, or a medal of Saint Benedict can survive the ride, and in a few tellings can commandeer the animal for the night.

The lane out of the marsh runs so deep between its earth banks that the sky above it is only a strip, and the man walking home from the fair has been on his feet since before dawn. Ahead of him, standing quietly in the cut, is a horse. White as the fog coming off the water, saddled, bridled, reins hanging loose at exactly the height of a tired hand. No owner anywhere. No sound but its breathing. What happens next is the same in every telling, because what a tired man does is the same in every telling.

He gets on. That is the whole of the trap, and it is why old women in Vendée kitchens could still frighten children with the Cheval Mallet well into the nineteenth century. The horse never chases anybody. It does not have to. It stands there being beautiful and patient and unaccountably available, and along the black roads of the old Poitou that was enough.

Claude Seignolle, who set down the Poitevin version in the middle of the twentieth century, described a magnificent courser with a glossy black coat and splendid harness working the sunken lanes on the darkest nights. It leans toward the traveller. It goes soft and affectionate under a stroking hand. Then the man is in the saddle, congratulating himself on an easy return, his head already full of the family sitting up for him, and the horse begins to run.

It runs like a hurricane coming off its chain. Smoke pours from its nostrils. Its eyes light the horizon. It goes so fast that its feet stop touching the ground, and the wind of its passing bends flat the giant trees that a storm cannot shift from their solemn stillness. Rivers are nothing to it. Towns and villages file past as quickly as things in a dream, and a rider could cross the whole world this way in a single night without the animal tiring once. He would also be dead. Toward morning the Cheval Mallet throws him down, and he breaks his back and his neck on the road.

Other tellings vary the ending without softening it. Some riders are trampled where they land. Some are carried over a drop. A great many are taken straight to water, a pond, a fountain, the Vienne, and held under. Hoofprints of a strange shape are sometimes found in the mud beside the body, which is the only evidence anyone ever gets.

Colour depends on where the story is told. In the Vendée the horse is white, fog white, the pale of a shroud rather than the pale of anything alive. In the Saintonge it is black. Either way the harness is immaculate and the animal is superb, and the beauty is the mechanism. One Vendéen collection printed in 1862 adds the detail that the cheval Malet sometimes presents itself with neither head nor tail, which does not stop it galloping the instant it feels weight on its back.

Where it came from, the region never settled. The stories put it in the Devil’s service, and often go further and call it the Devil, or a damned soul working something off. Léopold Favre’s Glossaire du Poitou, de la Saintonge et de l’Aunis of 1868 records it as white and magnificently harnessed, approaching a weary traveller with great gentleness and letting itself be petted, then carrying the too trusting rider off at full stretch toward a pool to drown him. If the man has taken holy water on waking, or has the presence of mind to make the sign of the cross, he gets away with a cold bath, and the cheval Malet, which Favre says is nothing other than a werewolf, flees with hideous neighing that carries down into the depths of the woods.

The other escapes are oddly commercial. Six coins marked with a cross thrown down in front of the animal will stop it. So will a marked sou. Best of all is the medal of Saint Benedict, known in the country as the witches’ cross, whose ring of letters stands for a Latin order to Satan to get behind, to stop offering worthless things, and to drink his own poison. That medal does more than repel the horse. It hands the animal to its wearer for one night.

An 1862 collection of Vendéen legends tells of a man from Saint-Benoist-sur-Mer, a haunter of taverns and late gatherings, who met a very friendly palfrey one evening. It folded its knees so he could settle himself properly in the saddle. He had barely gathered the reins before he was going through marsh, plain, hill, scrub and stream at a speed that made no sense at all. Twenty times the horse tried to unseat him and twenty times he held on, until it gave up and carried him back to the spot where it had taken him, streaming with sweat, dust and blood, and alive, because of the medal at his throat.

Others simply treated the thing as transport. Henri Dontenville recorded the words a man used in Poitevin dialect, ordering the Cheval Mallet in the name of great Saint Benedict to obey him, to carry him to Paris, which he had wanted to see for a long time, and afterwards to bring him back to his wife. Seignolle has a man from Saint-Philbert-du-Pont-Charrault who made an incomparable journey on its back and was standing in the capital at first light, having paid his fare with a marked coin, and who then spent three of the happiest days of his life there. The moral Seignolle attaches is the tidiest in French folklore. Do not travel on an unknown horse. Always keep the price of the journey in your pocket.

The animal also rides in company. Benjamin Fillon printed a Vendéen song of the hunt of Guillery in which the Cheval Mallet forms part of the train that follows the unknown huntsman across the winter sky at midnight, along with the garache, the aloubi, the crow, the witch, the goblin, the will-o’-the-wisp, the polecat, the wolf and a ghost dressed in white. Any man in a state of mortal sin who found himself in the path of that procession was seized as it went by, set on the Cheval Malet, and swept along with the rest until daylight claimed him. His body turned up at some crossroads in the morning, disfigured, an object of horror, left for the wolves.

Its powers all follow from the opening move. It is inexhaustible, faster than anything with legs, stopped by no obstacle, and its back is said to lengthen to take three riders and more, a stretching that Dontenville thought had something serpentine in it. It can pass for an ordinary loose horse at the roadside. It knows precisely what an exhausted man wants.

Its limits are just as tight. It works at night and it is finished by dawn. It cannot cross the sign of the cross, holy water, or a saint’s medal. It can be bought off with small change, provided the change carries a cross. It never takes anyone who refuses the ride. Everything it does depends on the traveller climbing into the saddle himself, and it has no way at all of making him.

Traces of it survived outside the stories. Paul Sébillot recorded the people of Saint-Benoist-sur-Mer walking out each spring to rub a handful of clover on a fallen granite slab outside the village, called Gargantua’s quoit and once a dolmen, as insurance against several perils including the Cheval Mallet. At Saint-Lumine-de-Coutais there was a festival of the horse Merlette built around an oak and a set of costumed players, one of them dressed as the animal, which the church authorities disliked and which was banned in 1791. In the Poitou a fierce and tireless person could be called a real cheval Mallet, and it was not entirely an insult. Guy Pillard went looking in the Deux-Sèvres, which sits in the middle of the old Poitou and by every reasonable expectation should have kept its own versions, and found that not one of them had survived.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Cheval Mallet?

The Cheval Mallet is a malevolent horse from the folklore of the Vendée, the Poitou and the pays de Retz in western France. It appears at night as a beautiful horse, already saddled and bridled, and offers itself to a traveller worn out by a long walk home. Anyone who mounts it is carried off in a gallop that ends at daybreak with the rider dead.

How do you escape the Cheval Mallet?

You pay it, or you bless yourself. Holy water and the sign of the cross reduce the ride to a soaking, six coins marked with a cross thrown in front of the horse will halt it, and a marked sou serves as the fare for the journey. The strongest protection is a medal of Saint Benedict, called the witches’ cross in the region, which in some tellings lets the wearer command the animal for a night.

What does the Cheval Mallet look like?

It appears as a superb horse in immaculate harness, saddled and bridled as though someone had just dismounted. In the Vendée it is white, the colour of marsh fog, while in the Saintonge it is black, and its eyes throw enough light to show the road ahead as it runs. A Vendéen collection of 1862 adds that it sometimes shows itself with neither head nor tail.

Where does the name Cheval Mallet come from?

The name is usually traced to malle, a trunk or travelling case, or to the Middle French mallier, meaning a horse that carried the trunks. The spelling wavers between Mallet and Malet, and the form Merlet or Merlette appears as a local corruption. Usage also wavers between a proper name for one individual animal and a common noun for a type.

Is the Cheval Mallet connected to the Wild Hunt?

Yes, in at least one Vendéen tradition. Benjamin Fillon printed a song in which the Cheval Mallet rides in the train that follows Guillery across the winter sky at midnight, alongside the garache, the will-o’-the-wisp, a witch and a ghost dressed in white. Men caught in a state of mortal sin were thrown onto its back and carried off until dawn, and their bodies were found at crossroads in the morning.