Wolves were the terror of the countryside.

The village mayors gave rewards for every head of a wolf or wolf-cub brought them.[184] This wood, which Jeanne could see from her threshold, was the Bois Chesnu, the wood of oaks, or possibly the hoary [_chenu_] wood, the old forest.[185] We shall see later how this Bois Chesnu was the subject of a prophecy of Merlin the Magician.
[Footnote 184: Alexis Monteil, _Histoire des Francois_, vol.i, p.
91.] [Footnote 185: _Trial_, index, under the words _Bois Chesnu_.] At the foot of the hill, towards the village, was a spring[186] on the margin of which gooseberry bushes intertwined their branches of greyish green.

It was called the Gooseberry Spring or the Blackthorn Spring.[187] If, as was thought by a graduate of the University of Paris,[188] Jeanne described it as _La Fontaine-aux-Bonnes-Fees-Notre-Seigneur_, it must have been because the village people called it by that name.

By making use of such a term it would seem as if those rustic souls were trying to Christianise the nymphs of the woods and waters, in whom certain teachers discerned the demons which the heathen once worshipped as goddesses.[189] It was quite true.

Goddesses as much feared and venerated as the Parcae had come to be called Fates,[190] and to them had been attributed power over the destinies of men.