With its narrow streets and half-timbered houses, it was voted France’s favorite village in 2016. But Rochefort-en-Terre, nestled in the heart of Morbihan, is also a land of mystery. This is where the witch Naïa would have raged between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. We use the conditional because in the end we know very little about this mysterious creature, an ageless woman with no known home.
The only literature about him is an article signed by Charles Géniaux in 1899 in the British journal World Wide Magazine. Having gone to investigate in the small Breton village, the French novelist had managed to meet and take a picture of the witch, alternately sitting on a bench with a wooden stick or reading the lines of the hand of a young woman. An ugly creature with eyes that “inspired dread, sunken in their sockets and glassy like those of the dead”, he wrote.
A woman insensitive to pain
But on reading his story, as detailed as it is, the mystery still remains on the identity of Naïa, of which there is no trace in the civil status. “Even the village elders have never heard of it,” says Patrice Hubert, founder with his partner Emmanuelle of the Naïa Museuma gallery museum of imaginary arts which opened its doors in 2015 in the park of the castle of Rochefort-en-Terre.
According to legend, Naïa was born in the neighboring village of Malansac to a bonesetter father. She would have lived in the ruins of the castle but several villagers would have crossed her in various places at the same time. Endowed with the gift of ubiquity, she was also insensitive to pain. “I put burning matches in his hand and I can guarantee the absolute insensitivity of his skin to attacks by fire,” says Charles Géniaux. She cracked the embers, let them burn in her open palm, and, starting over several times, established a tiny pyre which burned by blackening only the place of the hand. »
Doubts about its existence
Neither eating nor drinking, the witch was also known locally for reading the future. Some went to consult her for love stories while others fled like the plague from this fortune teller. Some even attributed evil powers to this erudite woman whose mysterious voices came from her belly. A bit dubious, Charles Geniaux On the contrary, she thinks “a skilled ventriloquist” who, mischievously, took pleasure in frightening the gallery. As for its insensitivity to fire, it would come “from the trick used by flame-eating acrobats: an insulating body placed on the skin. »
Did Naïa have magical powers? Did she even exist or is she a character invented from scratch by Charles Géniaux? Impossible to answer. “It’s a bit like a police investigation,” says Patrice Hubert. There are a lot of guesses and theories about him and that’s what keeps the mystery going. But deep down, no one really wants to know. »