Part 14 (1/2)
These practices are, in spite of the exertions of the clergy, said to be still carried on in secret.
In the month of May they strew the street before their houses with reeds, on fete days, and there they frequently pa.s.s their evenings, sitting in groups, and telling to each other superst.i.tious stories, which are eagerly listened to, and thus handed down from father to son.
The _orfraie_ and the screech-owl are looked upon with terror in the Landes: their approach to any dwelling bodes evil in all forms: the dead quit their tombs at night and flit about in the fens, and covered with their white shrouds come wandering into the villages, nor will they quit them till the prayers and alms of their friends have calmed their perturbed spirits.
The various tribes of the Landes, form, as it were, in the midst of France, a separate people, from their habits and customs: they are called, according to their locality, Bouges, Parants, Mazansins, Couziots, or La.n.u.squets: they are generally a meagre race, and subject to nervous affections; taking little nourishment, and living a life of privation and fatigue. Obliged to labour for their support, like most people in the departments of the Pyrenees, and to dispose of the products of their industry, they have usually fixed places of repose; each peasant drives his cart drawn by two oxen, and carries with him the food for those patient animals, who are the very picture of endurance.
His own food is generally coa.r.s.e, ill-leavened bread, very hardly baked, and made of coa.r.s.e maize, or rye-flour, which he sometimes relishes with _sardines_ of Galicia. He gives his oxen a preparation of dried linseed from which the oil has been extracted, and which he has made into flour, and he then lets them loose on the Landes for a time, while he s.n.a.t.c.hes a hasty sleep, soon interrupted to resume his journey. The dwellings of these people are sufficiently wretched: low, damp, and exposed to both the heat and cold by the rude manner in which they are constructed; a fire is kept in the centre of the princ.i.p.al room, from which small closets open: they sleep in general under two _feather beds_, in a close, unwholesome air, many in the same room. Still their domestic arrangements seem a degree better than those of the Bretons, and their dirt does not appear so great, bad as it must necessarily be.
The dress of the men is a large, heavy, brown stuff cloak, or a long jacket of sheepskin, with the fur outwards; to which, when gaiters of the same are added, there is little difference between them and the animals they tend: a very small _berret_, the cap of the country, covers merely the top of their heads, and is but of little use in sheltering them in rainy weather. The women wear large round hats with great wings, adorned with black ribbon, and sometimes with a herb, which they call Immortelle de Mer;[12] the young girls frequently, however, prefer a small linen cap, the wings of which are crossed over the top of the head.
[Footnote 12: See for these particulars, Athanasie Maritime.--_Du Mege_.]
Shepherds are almost always clothed in sheepskins, and in winter they wear over this a white woollen cloak with a very pointed hood. These are the people who make their appearance on stilts, called _Xicanques_, and traverse the Landes with their flocks, crossing streams of several feet deep, and striding along like flying giants. They have always a long pole, with a seat affixed, and a gun slung at their backs, to defend them from the attack of wolves. Monotonous enough must be the lives of these poor people, for months together, alone, in a solitary waste, where not a tree can grow, with nothing but a wide extent of marshy land around, and only their sheep and dogs as companions; but they are accustomed to it from infancy, and probably are comparatively insensible to their hards.h.i.+ps, at least it is so to be hoped. Seated on his elevated seat, the shepherd of the Landes occupies himself in knitting or spinning, having a contrivance for the latter peculiar to this part of the country. Their appearance, thus occupied, is most singular and startling.
A dignitary of Bordeaux is said once to have prepared a fete to an Infanta of Spain, the destined bride of a French prince, in the Landes; in which he engaged a party of these mounted shepherds, dressed in skins, and covered with their white mantles and hoods, to figure, accompanied by a band of music, and pa.s.sing under triumphal arches formed of garlands of flowers: a strange scene in such a desert, but scarcely so imposing to a stranger as the unexpected apparition of these beings in the midst of their native desolation.
The Landais seldom live to an advanced age: they marry early, are very jealous, and are said to enjoy but little of the domestic happiness attributed to the poor as a possession; they are accused of being indifferent to their families, and of taking more care of their flocks and herds than of their relations: they are docile and obedient to authority; honest, and neither revengeful nor deceitful.
Whether from affection or habit, they show great sensibility on the death of neighbours or friends. The women cover their heads, in the funeral procession, with black veils or ap.r.o.ns, and the men with the pointed hood and cloak. During the whole year, after the decease of a father or mother, all the kitchen utensils _are covered with a veil_, and _placed in an opposite direction to that in which they stood before_; so that every time anything is wanted the memory of the dead is revived.
The Landais, on the sea-coast, are, like the Cornish people, reproached, perhaps falsely, with being _wreckers_; and their cry of ”Avarech!
Avarech!” is said to be the signal of inhumanity and plunder.
Their marriages are attended with somewhat singular ceremonies, and their method of making love is equally strange: after church, on a fete day, a number of young people, of both s.e.xes, dance together to a monotouous tune, while others sit round in a circle on their heels, watching them. After dancing a little time, a pair will detach themselves from the rest, squeeze each other's hand, give a few glances, and then whisper together, striking each other at the same time; after which they go to their relations, and say they _are agreed_, and wish to marry: the priest and notary are called for, the parents consent, and the day is at once fixed.
On the appointed day, the _n.o.bi_ (future husband) collects his friends, and goes to the bride's house, where he knocks; the father, or some near relation, opens to him, holding by the hand an _old woman_, whom he presents: she is rejected by the bridegroom, who demands her who was promised. She then comes forward with a modest air, and gives her lover a flower; who, in exchange, presents her with a belt, which he puts on himself. This is very like the customs in Brittany, where scenes of the kind always precede weddings.
When the bride comes to her husband's house, she finds at the door a broom; or, if he takes possession of her's, a ploughshare is placed there: both allegorical of their duties. The distaff of the bride is carried by an old woman throughout the ceremonies.
The Landais, altogether, both as to habits, manners, and general appearance, form a singular feature in the aspect of this part of France.
CHAPTER XV.
PORTS--DIVONA--BORDEAUX--QUINCONCES--ALLeES--FIRST IMPRESSION--CHARTRONS--BAHUTIER--BACALAN--QUAYS--WHITE GUIDE--S^{TE} CROIX--ST. MICHEL--ST. ANDRe--PRETTY FIGURE--PRETTY WOMEN--PALAIS GALLIEN--BLACK PRINCE'S SON EDWARD.
TAVERNIER has said, in speaking of the most celebrated ports, ”three only can enter into comparison, one with the other, for their beauty of situation and their _form of a rainbow_, viz., Constantinople, Goa, and Bordeaux.” The poet, Chapelle, thus names this celebrated city:--
Nous vimes au milieu des eaux Devant nous paraitre Bordeaux, Dont le port en croissant resserre Plus de barques et de vaisseaux Qu'aucun autre port de la terre.
The commendatory address to his native city, by the poet, Ausonius, is often quoted; and has been finely rendered by M. Jouannet, whom I venture to translate.
I was to blame; my silence far too long Has done thy fame, my n.o.ble country, wrong:
Thou, Bacchus-loved, whose gifts are great and high, Thy gen'rous sons, thy senate, and thy sky, Thy genius and thy grace shall Mem'ry well Above all cities, to thy glory, tell.
And shall I coldly from thy arms remove, Blush for my birth-place, and disown my love?
As tho' thy son, in Scythian climes forlorn, Beneath the Bear with all its snows was born.
No, thy Ausonius, Bordeaux! hails thee yet; Nor, as his cradle, can thy claims forget.
Dear to the G.o.ds thou art, who freely gave Their blessings to thy meads, thy clime, thy wave: Gave thee thy flow'rs that bloom the whole year through, Thy hills of shade, thy prospects ever new, Thy verdant fields, where Winter shuns to be, And thy swift river, rival of the sea.