From the well-known Gorg dels Banyuts, legend has it that every night, between ten and twelve o’clock, the ghost of Count Arnau escapes from hell. On the back of his black horse, surrounded by fire and accompanied by an infernal pack, he sets out on a night hunt through the lands of Ripolles, in Girona. The crowing of a black rooster warns the count that his macabre and peculiar recreation must end and he must return to hell.

This mythical feudal lord, whose ambition and cruelty had no limit, dominated those lands with an iron fist. He plundered villages, squeezed his vassals, and those who resisted his abuses were hanged. If anything characterized this fearsome lord, it was his unbridled lust. He pursued all the peasant women and took the youngest and most beautiful to his castle. It so happened that at that time a beautiful nun was appointed abbess of the monastery of San Juan, so beautiful that the count felt inevitably attracted to her. The abbess was called Adelaisa, and became the obsession of the count, who pursued her relentlessly until she finally gave herself up. One night when the abbess accompanied Count Arnau on his night hunt, the dogs of his own pack turned on them and bit them to death. It is said that after learning of this episode, the Pope expelled the nuns from the abbey of St. John and that, since then, on that same night every year the pack is heard.

This mythical character coincides roughly with Arnau de Mataplana, Count of Pallars, who lived in the first half of the 14th century. The real Count Arnau abused the despicable right of pernada, by which he could sleep with any maiden of his fief before she married any of his servants.

His figure, evoked with diabolical traits, was also associated with another fact. In the year 1017, the nuns of the convent of San Juan were expelled by order of the pope, due to the supposedly dishonest life of the community. Although behind their expulsion was the ambition of another count, who wanted to annex the lands controlled by the abbey, the charge of the papal bull accused them of being “whores of Venus”.

The stories that circulated about Count Arnau and the rumors of the papal bull ended up coming together, despite the gap between the real Count Arnau and the expulsion of the nuns. In its origins, the legend of Count Arnau did not speak of a specific nun, but was added later by poets. The character of the eternal hunter is often identified with the devil since the Viking sagas, but also with the hero-king of the legend of King Arthur. Both sides of the coin are present in the legendary figure of Count Arnau.

Source:

Arrizabalaga Mónica. (2018). El diabolico Conde Arnau. In España: La Historia Imaginada: De Los Antiguos Mitos a Las Leyendas contemporáneas (pp. 136–140). essay, Espasa.