Part 9 (2/2)

Every year, on the fourth Sunday in Lent,--called by the Church ”_Laetare_ Sunday,” because during the ma.s.s of the day was chanted the pa.s.sage beginning _Laetare Jerusalem_,--the peasants of Bar held a rustic festival. This was their well-dressing when they went together to drink from some spring and to dance on the gra.s.s. The peasants of Greux kept their festival at the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Bermont; those of Domremy at the Gooseberry Spring and at _l'Arbre-des-Fees_.[206]

They used to recall the days when the lord and lady of Bourlemont themselves led the young people of the village. But Jeanne was still a babe in arms when Pierre de Bourlemont, lord of Domremy and Greux, died childless, leaving his lands to his niece Jeanne de Joinville, who lived at Nancy, having married the chamberlain of the Duke of Lorraine.[207]

[Footnote 206: Concerning the Sunday and the Festival of the Well-Dressing at Domremy, see _Trial_, index, under the word _Fontaine_.]

[Footnote 207: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 67, 212, 404 _et seq._ S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. xx-xxii.]

At the well-dressing the young men and maidens of Domremy went to the old beech-tree together. After they had hung it with garlands of flowers, they spread a cloth on the gra.s.s and supped off nuts, hard-boiled eggs, and little rolls of a curious form, which the housewives had kneaded on purpose.[208] Then they drank from the Gooseberry Spring, danced in a ring, and returned to their own homes at nightfall.

[Footnote 208: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 407, 411, 413, 421.]

Jeanne, like all the other damsels of the countryside, took her part in the well-dressing. Although she came from the quarter of Domremy nearest Greux, she kept her feast, not at Notre-Dame de Bermont, but at the Gooseberry Spring and _l'Arbre-des-Fees_.[209]

[Footnote 209: _Ibid._, pp. 391-462.]

In her early childhood she danced round the tree with her companions.

She wove garlands for the image of Notre-Dame de Domremy, whose chapel crowned a neighbouring hill. The maidens were wont to hang garlands on the branches of _l'Arbre-des-Fees_. Jeanne, like the others, bewreathed the tree's branches; and, like the others, sometimes she left her wreaths behind and sometimes she carried them away. No one knew what became of them; and it seems their disappearance was such as to cause wise and learned persons to wonder.

One thing, however, is sure: that the sick who drank from the spring were healed and straightway walked beneath the tree.[210]

[Footnote 210: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 67, 209, 210.]

To hail the coming of spring they made a figure of May, a mannikin of flowers and foliage.[211]

[Footnote 211: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 434.]

Close by _l'Arbre-des-Dames_, beneath a hazel-tree, there was a mandrake. He promised wealth to whomsoever should dare by night, and according to the prescribed rites, to tear him from the ground,[212]

not fearing to hear him cry or to see blood flow from his little human body and his forked feet.

[Footnote 212: _Atropa Mandragor_, female mandragora, _main de gloire_, _herbe aux magiciens_. _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 89, 213. _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 236.]

The tree, the spring, and the mandrake caused the inhabitants of Domremy to be suspected of holding converse with evil spirits. A learned doctor said plainly that the country was famous for the number of persons who practised witchcraft.[213]

[Footnote 213: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 209.]

When quite a little girl, Jeanne journeyed several times to Sermaize in Champagne, where dwelt certain of her kinsfolk. The village priest, Messire Henri de Vouthon, was her uncle on her mother's side. She had a cousin there, Perrinet de Vouthon, by calling a tiler, and his son Henri.[214]

[Footnote 214: This is probable but not certain. _Trial_, vol. ii, pp.

74, 388; vol. v, p. 252. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, _Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc_, pp. xviii _et seq._; 7, 8, 10, _pa.s.sim_. C. Gilardoni, _Sermaize et son eglise_, published at Vitry-le-Francois, 1893, 8vo.]

Full thirty-seven and a half miles of forest and heath lie between Domremy and Sermaize. Jeanne, we may believe, travelled on horseback, riding behind her brother on the little mare which worked on the farm.[215]

[Footnote 215: Capitaine Champion, _Jeanne d'Arc ecuyere_, Paris, 1901, 12mo, p. 28.]

At each visit the child spent several days at her cousin Perrinet's house.[216]

[Footnote 216: Boucher de Molandon, _La famille de Jeanne d'Arc_, p.

627. E. de Bouteiller et G. de Braux, _Nouvelles recherches_, pp. 9 and 10. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. xlv _et seq._]

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