When the not very bright grandson of the old sorciere burnt himself when throwing petrol on his barbecue, the village mayor knew who to call.

Not the sapeurs-pompiers (firemen) - although the blaze was soon large enough to warrant them - but an even more important attender of fires.

A friend who was watching it suggested calling for medical help as B was now pathetically beating out the last flames on the arms of his T-shirt.

The mayor shrugged a dismissal. "Not for burns. The coupeur de feu works faster."

Still baffled as a man arrived and pulled B into his house, my friend said: "But he doesn't have a medical bag with him. And anyway what the hell is a coupeur de feu?"

"Exactly what it says," said the mayor. "He can take away the pain of the burns."

Having lived opposite the deadly curses of the sorciere for several years before her removal to a retirement home, J is well used to the continuing old practices of our bit of rural France.

So he took the fact of a man or woman drawing out fire pain with remarkable aplomb. "How does he do it?"

The mayor was horrified. "We don't ask that. It's his secret. If everyone knew we'd all be coupeurs and where would that end?"

Well, indeed. My mother always said the gypsies had given her the words to pacify volatile, rolling-eyed horses. As I was trying to master one at the time, a country away, I asked for the secret.

"Oh, no, I'd lose the power then," she said. "If you start giving the secret away where would it all end?"

See, the same words? Spooky, non?

Anyway, that's an aside.

Both J and I thought no more of the coupeurs de feu - literally fire sappers or cutters until a fascinating article appeared in Le Nouvel Observateur.

It revealed that the healers have moved from the depths of the country where their names and numbers are passed by word of mouth and into France's sophisticated medical realm.

Many hospitals throughout the country keep a healer's details on file to give if requested and sometimes even prompt the request.

And there is no reserve in admitting it. At Rodez hospital a coupeur de feu and 10 other traditional healers from the area are available from their lists.

The coupeur seems particularly successful when it comes to radiotheraphy burns.

Oncologist Alain Marre says he brings the subject up first often so patients know they can. And while he admits that what healers do is neither rational nor scientific, it works. He cites several cases in the article.

In the Haute Savoie, many emergency services in the department frequently call on coupeurs de fer to help burn victims.

One surgeon in Albi told the magazine: "Ninety nine per cent of the patients ask for a coupeur de feu and when I worked in the Basque Country, it was just the same."

Healers must not accept money for their services and among the rules is that the secret must only be passed on to younger people.

It usually involves a prayer and the sign of the cross but the words themselves cannot be spoken to others or the gift slips away. And where would it all end?

The patients need only be met once or sometimes not at all but it is necessary for the coupeur to have a detailed list of time of treatments; even to have a text message sent immediately before going under.

However, it's advisable to only seek help from one healer at a time because otherwise the secrets get mixed up and it doesn't work.

I find it strangely reassuring to live in a society prepared to accept, without mockery, the many, mysterious ways handed down through generations of wise men and women.

The closer to the land a country stays it seems, the more both the access and openness to the secrets of the ancients.

Such healers are just another layer of this complex country, which, like Ireland, as I've written before, seems to have merely a veil between past and present.

There are times of the year, even of the day here, when one feels another century co-existing, and others walking the same route equally semi-aware of the thin veil.

Little wonder then that the sorcieres and the coupeurs de feu continue to work their magic, for magic it surely is.

The French also love their fortune tellers. The mayor, who called for coupeur after the grandson's stupidity, has a monthly appointment with his.

This too he talks of as if all the world does and is astonished to be told it's not so. But then as his family were often the victims of the sorciere's more vicious curses, he likes to be one step ahead always.

And the grandson? He was back at the barbecue the following day, hands a little redder but showing no sign of pain as he roughly shovelled the red hot coals.

It's a shame my mother kept her secret. I could have been France's horse tamer, famed for the power to tame the untamable.

Perhaps some things are not meant to be or where would it all end?