LA DIABLESSE

Seduction, deceit

La Diablesse, whom the Creole storytellers often pronounce la jablesse, haunts the night roads of Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Martinique and Guadeloupe. The accounts describe her as a superb woman, dressed in a great old-fashioned gown and crowned with a wide hat that conceals her face; beneath the petticoats, one human leg and one ending in a cow's hoof. She appears at the roadside, at crossroads or at dances, seduces a man with a look or a word, then draws him away from the lights. At the moment he thinks to reach her, she vanishes: the unfortunate loses his way, falls into a ravine or wanders until morning, when he does not die of fright. Folklore offers defences, such as taking off one's clothes and putting them back on inside out to break the charm. Born of creolisation, La Diablesse mingles the European imagination of the cloven-hoofed devil, whose French name she bears, with Caribbean figures of seductive women-spirits. She remains one of the favourite characters of the Antillean evening gatherings and their moral tales — a warning addressed to the living against appearances too perfect.