CANADA: The Handsome Dancer

How then was the Devil dressed?

O, he was in his Sunday's best;

His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,

And there was a hole where his tail came through.

—Robert Southey

To give the Devil his due, he is a flashy dresser—if one can believe the folklore of the Quebec villages along the lower St. Lawrence. Some of the villagers are sure, as their ancestors were before them, that they have met the Devil socially. To them he is le Beau Danseur—the Handsome Dancer.

The legend of the Handsome Dancer,...

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