Marsh-drowned treasures

Trevor @ Monday July 12th 2004 03:43

Nick Lloyd writes that

The legend of “El bruel“, which refers to a strange mournful bellow that echoed over the lakes, is another reminder of the once vast marshes. The story goes that a wicked merchant, instead of using his wealth to help the people of Castelló during a winter of great hardship and hunger, loaded all his belongings onto a pair of oxcarts and tried to transport them by night across the marshes to a ship waiting at Empuries. He lost his way and he and his treasures were lost in the treacherous terrain. The sound of “El bruel” was the low of the one of the oxen as they drowned. Nowadays it is attributed to the boom of a bittern.

I suspect that this story is based on the tale of the famously wicked and mean King John of England, who famously (and wickedly) lost his treasures in The Wash in an age when folks like ostensibly Leicester res/dom Cathar-killer Simon de Montfort (whose death is still celebrated in Languedoc) had a weekend hideaway in the south of France, an age moreover when Provençal and Langue d’Oc-ian stories and style were dearly sought after in Catalonia.


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