The legend of the countess Brayère
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The tops
You know what? The tradition says the famous countess Brayère (from the name of one of her land, in Picardy, Northern France) married one Auvergne dauphin.
She lived in the Château-Dauphin, in the 13th century… and the legend says she was an ogress! In the literal sense…
In fact, she wasn’t, of course: the lady simply suffered from leprosy and was horribly disfigured. She lived like a recluse, people thought she was a kind of monster, an ogress who devoured everything…
The poor countess was in fact very generous: at the end of her life, she gave a lot for the poor. To expiate for her crimes, said gossips… Aah, don’t listen to them, please!
She gave a part of her forest in Auvergne to those poor ones. She even founded the very first Templar knights’ castle of the area, in Montferrand city!
We can see in Château-Dauphin castle Jeanne de Joyeuse’s grave, Gilbert de La Fayette’s wife. In fact, it would be the grave of our ogress, says the local tradition.