Cheval Gauvin
The Cheval Gauvin is a legendary evil horse of Franche-Comté, France and the Jura Mountains in Switzerland. It is said to wander along watercourses, through forests and graveyards, and to attempt to kill those who ride it, either by drowning them or throwing them into an abyss.
A legend relating to this horse was first collected in Chamblay by Désiré Monnier, who published it in 1854. Identical stories are also told in Montbarrey, Joux, Dole, in France as well as in the Swiss canton of Jura and in the Bernese Jura. In Switzerland, the horse gallops through villages and abducts young girls. Several legends are attached to it, one of which makes it the mount of the medieval lord Amauri III de Joux. A woman's account of meeting him in the Chamblay cemetery has been commented on and told since the 19th century. A harbinger of death, the Gauvin horse seems to have acted as a bogeyman for children. Perhaps the result of a goblin's transformation, he joins a large number of legendary Jura horses.