Chez Humbug

06/02/2024

🐾 i know How Nice It Is If You Are Able To Have Your Dogs On Hol With You And So This Is Why We Welcome Up To Three Dogs For Free! 🙌


25/01/2024

About to enjoy my 20th chocolat chaud Bar L'ours Brun Puy St Vincent

16/12/2023

So interesting…

In September 1731, villagers in Songy in the French province of Champagne saw a strange girl stealing apples from an orchard. The girl was dark-skinned, barefoot, wearing animal skins, and carrying a club. When a dog from the village went after the girl, she killed it with a single blow, then climbed a tree and hid among the branches. In time they were able to coax the girl down and capture her. They estimated that the girl was between 10 and 18 years old. After a thorough washing it was determined that she was actually fair-skinned. The girl had long, claw-like nails and spoke only in shrieks and growls, and she astonished the villagers by eating raw meat. When she was forced to eat cooked meat, she couldn’t keep it down, and after being kept on a “civilized diet” her teeth began to fall out.

The girl’s origin was a mystery and her case made her something of a celebrity. She eventually learned to speak French and was given the name Marie-Angélique Memmie Le Blanc.

How Marie-Angélique came to be living feral in a French forest remains a mystery. She later told of being sold into slavery along with another girl and ending up in France after a shipwreck. Some who have studied her case speculate that she may have been an American Indian brought to France as a child by a woman who later died of the plague. According to one theory she was an “Eskimo child” someone brought to France. Some speculate that her ability to learn to speak suggests that she had some familiarity with language as a child (feral children who miss the “language window” are typically unable to learn a language).

After briefly being a nun, Marie-Angélique traveled Europe and became acquainted with royalty, scientists, and aristocrats. Wealthy patrons assured that she lived a comfortable life, one quite different from her time sleeping in trees and eating raw rabbits and frogs.

Marie-Angélique Memmie Le Blanc, f/k/a “The Wild Girl of Champagne,” died in Paris on December 15, 1775, two hundred forty-eight years ago today.