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Throughout Brittany take care to avoid
the streams or the old wash-places, or you may meet a night washer woman.
These unhappy spirits are condemned to spend their nights washing spectral
laundry for their earthly sins, such as not having used enough soap on
the laundry of others, infanticide, or having washed on the sabbath. Frequently
hostile, if you make the sign of the cross they dissappear, but get too
close and they will wrap you in their linen and drown you in the washing
pool.
At Coefferie at the end of the last century a strange woman would, on the stroke of midnight, be seen washing at the public wash-house. She was refered to as the bedouin due to her white costume and dark skin. A young girl once took pity on the poor soul and asked her what crime she had committed, if she wished that prayers were said for her, or candles burnt to free her soul. Instead of a repy she caught a packet of laundry in her face and fell. She fled and lost her reason. The bedouin was never seen again.
