Miejour; or, Provençal legend, life, language and literature, in the land of the Felibre

Front matter

MIE JOUR; OR, PROVENCAL LEGEND, LIFE, LANGUAGE, AND LITERATURE, IN THE LAND OF THE FELIBRE. BY J. DUNCAN CRAJG, D.D., INCUMBENT OF THE " MOLYNEUX," DUBLIN, Author of " Real Pictures of Clerical Life in Ireland," "La Debonado," "The Handbook of Modern Provencal Language," etc. " C'est icy un Uvre de bonne soy."— Michael de Montaone. LONDON : JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. 1877. A 11 rights reserved. £iv0crtbcb. WITH MUCH LOVE, TO MY DEAR WIFE, ADELAIDE CRAIG.

Preface

. This book has been chiefly written with the hope of inviting attention to the remarkable literary phenomena which the Provencal Languages at the present day afford — in the great number of poems, some of exquisite beauty, which have been written in them by the Felibres of the South. An acquaintance of more than twenty years with Provenge and the Riviera, and the different dialects of that sunny shore, has convinced me that a wide field for philological research exists in these grand old dialects, and in their affinities with the Phœnician, the Greek, the Celtic, and — perhaps to us more generally interesting — the English language. VI PKEFACE. The whole Southern land of France seems to have suddenly become vocal with song. The Felibres or Troubadours of our day have stirred the very hearts of the people with their spirit-stirring strains.

I trust that we shall ere long see some earnest effort made to give to these fiery Southrons, in their own loved dialects — in the mother tongue of their hearts — that precious book which is able to make us wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. It may be said that the French Language is sufficient for the wants of the people. If so, why did Mistral write "Mirelle" and "Calendau" — these noble epics — in the Provencal ? Why do Roumanille, Mathieu, Aubanel, and a host of other Felibres, compose their sweet poems and lyrics in the dialect that millions love ? Nor need there be any jealousy on the part of the statesmen of Northern France, when they view this spontaneous, unaided, irresistible growth of Provengal nationality of language and literature. Despite the predictions of Nostradamus of Selon, there will be no more a Southern kingdom, with Avignon as

PREFACE.

. capital. This dream of other statesmen besides those of France will never have existence. But instead of endeavouring to crush the Provencal language, let it but have fair play. And should any reader who may glance at these lines be induced to bestow upon Southern France that best gift, the Word of God in its own Provengal tongue — whether in dialect of Marseille, Avignon, or of Languedoc — I shall not regret that this work was written, should it be the means of giving to Provenge that Book which teaches love to God, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and loyalty to the Government of the land. J. DUNCAN CRAIG. 18 Vesey Place, Kingstown, Dublin, April, 1877. CONTENTS. Chap. Page 1. Marseilles and the Felibres I 2. Louis de Marolles, Martyr 10 3. The ViUa Millaia 20 4. The Quai St. Pierre 24 5.

A Stroll through the Cours 29 6. Monsieur Gardane 33 7. How the Pont de Gardane got its Name .... 38 8. Isle St. Honorat 44 9. The Monk of the Isles of Gold 53 10. The Legend of St. Marguerite 58 11. The Pharo of Antibes 65 12. Frere Richard 73 13. The Drummer of Arcolo 79 14. Septentrion 87 15. The Cap d' Antibes 95 16. The Story of the Old Chateau of the Cap d' Antibes . . 100 17. Lou Bast Bagno CONTENTS. Chap. P*ge 18. Fort Bacon HO 19. Fifty Years After .113 20. Lou Mot de Santo Claro 121 21. Friends Abroad 125 22. French Pastors 133 23. 'Neath the Olive Trees 144 24. La Cabro de Moussu Sequin 158 25. The Auberge of the Esterel 165 26. The Hunter of the Esterel 177 27. The Vernons and De Eavenels 182 28. A Strange Visitor 188 29. The Struggle for Life 194 30. Rescued 200 31. A Sinister Rendezvous ... .... 204 32.

Raoul to the Rescue 210 33. The Spanish Pedlar 215 34. The Monk 222 35. Victory 227 36. Isle St. Marguerite 235 37. From Cannes to Agay 245 38. The Roman Quarries of Agay ....... 251 39. About Insects and Scorpions ..... . 262 40. Paraoulos de Vouloun 268 41. Orange Flowers 273 42. The Tenant of Villa Bertrand 284 43. The Grand Pine 293 44. Le Montagne des lncourdoules 304 45. The Golden Goat of Les lncourdoules ..... 308 46. Taragnigna gjj 47. Rosette at Home CONTENTS. XI Chap. Page 48. The Treasure Seekers 326 49. The Cabanoun on Fire 334 50. Nice, and the Var 342 51. Vila Franca 350 52. Thunny Fishing 355 53. The Wicked Host 364 54. Horrors of Monte Carlo 369 55. The Dying Student 374 56. Mentone 381 57. Origin of the Provengal Language 384 58. Provengal Literature of the Past — Its Predisposing Influences 401 59.

The Troubadours ...•...-. 408 60. The Crusade against the Albigenses ..... 415 61. The Troubadour in Catalonia 423 62. The Provengal Troubadours of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 427 63. The Troubadours of our Day - 432 64. Provengal Word Hunting 448 65. Three Provengal Poets of our Day . . . . . . 462 66. La Tour de Barbentano 470 67. At Avignon with the Felibrige . . . . . . 476 68. Lou Tian ERRATA. Page 22, for Curio read Carlo. Page 136 and 137, for Aisle read Asile. Page 283, for read Ev-koKvittco. Page 397, for neaayos read 7reAayos. MIE JOUR

Chapter I. Marseilles And The Felibke

" One lesson I can leave you for every day : Be good . . . and let who will be clever. Do noble deeds, not dream them, all day long - And so make life, death, and that vast forever, One grand sweet song." — G. Kingsley. An advertisement in the Guardian met my eye as I was ponder ing wistfully where to go. The charge of a very large congregation, almost single-handed, had made it necessary that a change should be had. Incessant speaking had made rest incumbent for the throat, and a residence either at Mentoni or Nice suggested itself as being very desirable. Old associations connected with the latter place had almost induced me to endeavour to renew them, when I read the announcement of a villa to be let, a quarter of an hour's walk from Cannes, sheltered from the Mistral, 'situated in an elevated position, with bracing air — the season extending from the 1st of October to the end of May.

It was truly a great matter to know that after a few day's time we had a home before us, and the first day of November saw us en route from Kingstown for the Villa Millaia. A It is certainly advisable when going south not to defer departure till December. When we arrived at Marseilles, the weather was still summerlike, but in a few days it changed materially. I had been in the great southern metropolis when the city resounded with the tramp of troops marching for embarkation for the Crimea. Now it seemed quiet enough. The Cannebiere, thronged with its sunburnt citizens, displayed its magnificent warerooms, filled with the choice productions of the East. An itinerant astronomer, bearing a huge telescope, offered a pleasing prospect of the moon for two sous a-head. It was really worth the money, when the glass revealed the mountains thereof, and so the crowd around seemed to think, as they pressed forward to avail themselves of this notable opportunity of seeing remote places.

To Napoleon III. Marseilles owes very much — the Rue Imperiale stretching from the Quai Napoleon through the old town, connects the port with the docks of La Joliette, and is a souvenir of his zeal for the adornment of the great city of the south. But although there are many modern buildings to be seen, it is really wonderful how little of historic monument Marseilles can show. In other days, upon the fagade of the Hotel de Ville, a Latin inscription used to be deciphered : — " Marseille is daughter of the Phoceans, she is sister of Eome ; she was the rival of Car thage. She opened her gates to Julius Cesar, and defended herself gloriously against Charles the Fifth." And now, out of all the monumental riches that might reason ably be expected to remain in such a time-renowned city, what exists to recall the past 1 M. Mery tells us that the house 55 Rue des Grands-Carmes is the house of Milo — the very Milo who slew Claudius, and whom Cicero defended so badly in his manuscript, and so well iu his after pleading — but alas ! the proprietor of No. 55 some thirty years ago deemed it to be too antique for modern taste, and so the house of Milo was thrown down and a new structure erected on its site.

Did Milo, when he wrote to Cicero, and told him, " Had you defended me as well before the Judge as you have spoken for me afterwards, I would not now be an exile," ever contemplate that his house should have lingered •eighteen hundred years 1 The old city of Marseilles — the real Massilia — has no love for the Franciots, as it terms in derision those who speak the French language. "Sieu Sanjanen" — I am of (the quartier) St. Jean — is the boast haughtily spoken of the poorest of its eons. The provengal spoken in Massilia is the purest of all the dialects of this grand old tongue, and its inhabitants cling to its use with a loving fervour — the greater as they behold the efforts made by Government to supplant their mother tongue by the introduction, into all theschools, of the French, as the language of instruction.

It is almost touching to witness the devotion with which, all through the south of France, the people cling to their loved provengal tongue. The child may learn French in school, but he uses his mother language when he plays with his comrades, or when at evening, seated by the logs on the hearth, he hears the old legends of Loup garou, or watches the revolving ■coulougna1 which his sister holds. Since the last fifty years a noble band of troubadours have again re-appeared in the south, to show us that the grand old provengal has not lost its power to charm the mind. Jacques Jasmin of Agen, whose charming Frangpnette and 1 The Coulougna is the staff covered with flax, which the southern maidens almost invariably carry when they move about, and keep on spinning as they g). inimitable Mes Soubenis place him, warm-hearted Gascon, among the greatest poets of any day.

Frederic Mistral, whose glorious epics, Mirelle and Calendau, and sweet minor poems of L'lsclo del Or, or the Isles of Gold, have worthily and by common consent placed him as chief of the poetic band, known as the Felibres, whose works have already won an European fame. Joseph Roumanille, whose warm-hearted grasp of the hand still lingers in my recollection, and whose obras, both in poetry and prose, have assigned him one of the chiefest ranks among the Felibrige, or society of the Felibres, of which band of poets he is the Grand Chancellor. Anselme Matthieu, whose exquisite lyrical poems betra^ all the grace of the scholar and the refined poet, and whose generous welcome shown to me at Avignon I cannot easily forget. Theodore Aubanel, whose poems show great power of melody ; and Buonaparte Wyse, the Felibre, whose wondrous command of the provengal, as shown in his charming book, " The Blue Butterflies " — Li Parpaionus blu — has placed this generous Irish gentleman in a high station among the Felibrige.

It is strange how comparatively little is known as yet in England of the great poems of the Felibre.1 Mirelle has found a worthy translator in M. Crichton,- who has entered with 1 The word Felibre is a singular one. My friends Frederic Mistral, Anselme Matthieu, Joseph Rounuuiille, and some four others were assembled one evening in a garden of roses, 'neath the shade of a trellised vine, to form an association of poets using the proveneal language. Sud denly an old wrinkled woman appeared, and as she looked upon the band, exclaimed thrice, " Felibre — Felibre — Felibre " — and then this aged sybyl vanished from the garden. ' ' Let us call ourselves Felibre, " cried Frederic Mistral — and so the name began. I forgot to question Roumanille as to this story when at Avignon. At all events si non e vero e ben trovato. real poetic power and ardent sympathy into the conception of the great Felibre.

Grant has translated it into prose with much spirit, but although nearly every great foreign University has its professor of the provengal language, and although German and Russian literature has been much enriched of late years by translations from the provengal Felibrige, and by investigation into their different dialects, still but little attention has been paid to these noble languages of the south by English philologists. Although Longfellow has many years ago given us his exquisite rendering -of Jasmin's " Blind Maiden of Castel Cuilhe," he has not that I know of translated any of the more modern works of the Felibrige. The Felibre are not confined to poets. Artists, sculptors, painters, provengal philologists, are enrolled also in their num ber ; aud every year a great demonstration takes place in one of the old cities of the south in honour of the society.

At Nimes, this year of 1876, some eighteen thousand persons congregated to hear Roumanill e pronounce his oration on Jan Reboul, at the great fete held in honour of the deceased poet. Among other passages of beauty there is one in which the orator thus speaks : — " Dison que li paret an d'auriho. Ah ! se, coume an d'auriho, avien uno lengo e parlavon. Li paret dou leg2ndari chambroun de Jan Reboul, soun soulas, soun refuge e soun ouratori, qu' an vesita tant e di mai ilustre pelegre di beu e grands art, — se parlavon ! e se disien tout go que nous cantaro e nous countavo .aqui lou Felibre, dins sa lengo naturalo, e se 1' ausias, n' en sarias mereviha, M. M, e n' aurias pas proun de man per aplaudi I"1 i This is in the dialect of Avignon, which differs somewhat from that .of Marseilles. I will translate it for the benefit of tbe reader who may The mercantile sailing marine — La marine a voiles — of Mar seilles, represents a total of 524 vessels of all tonnage and classes, and measuring 77,398 tons.

Now, every year this mercantile marine, impelled by canvas, is giving way to steam vessels. Now, as Marseilles is considered the Liverpool of France, it will be perhaps interesting to observe that in the year 1875,, belonging to Marseilles, Beneath .... 30 tons there were 262 vessels of total 1,852 tons. From 30 to 50 „ „ 5 „ „ 202 „ „ 100 to 200 „ „ 41 ,, „ 5,839 „. „ 200 to 300 „ ,, 59 ,, ,, 14,806 ,, „ 300 to 400 „ „ 52 „ „ 17,52S „ „ 400 to 500 ,, „ 34 ,, ,, 15,135 ,, ,, 500 to 600 „ „ 12 „ „ 6,5S8 „ „ 600 to 700 „ „ 12 ,, ,, 7,824 ,, ,, 700 to 800 ,, „ 4 ,, „ 2,907 ,, „ 800 to 1000 ,, „ 2 „ ,, 1,665 ,, Out of this commercial fleet 193 vessels, amounting to 737" tons; are employed in what is technically termed la petite peche,. or coast fishing. The coasting trade employs 76 vessels, representing 3,162 tons.

The European and Mediterranean waters employ 72 vessels (total tonnage thereof, 6,469), and 183 ships of a total tonnage of 67,030 tons, and occupied in long voyages in all parts of the world. This fleet is manned by 3,845 sailors, and in a few years not have studied the lengo d' O : — "They say that walls have ears. Ah ! if they have ears, they have a tongue and speak. The walls of the legendary little chamber of Jan Reboul — his solace, his refuse and his oratory, which so many illustrious pilgrims 1 1 the beautiful and sub lime arts have visited — if they would speak, would tell us all that the Felibre sang and said there ; and if you heard it, you would be so astonished that you would not have hands enough to applaud !" steam ships will have superseded very many of this mercantile sailing fleet.

The same complaint of lowness of freights is heard at Mar seilles as it is in our own leading seaports. The French mercantile marine labours under a great dis advantage — the difficulty of procuring sufficient freight. In every ten ships that arrive at French quays at least four have to depart in ballast trim. The manufactures of a country may be exceeding rich and prosperous, and yet its mercantile navigation may be in a state of decay. The value of its exports may bo immense, and yet all the time its merchant navy and seamen may be diminishing. French exports, such as silks, may be very valuable ; they may employ thousands of workmen at Lyons to produce their rich tissues, and yet they will not employ in their sea transit by any means the amount of tonnage or of seamen that much inferior in value cargoes of coal, iron, or wood would require.

If, therefore, a French ship has but a small outward bound cargo — say to India — it must charge for its homeward voyage some five pounds a-ton for freight. Whereas a British ship of same tonnage can always take out a full cargo of coals, for which it will receive two pounds per ton, and thus be enabled to charge at least thirty shillings a ton less freightage for the return voyage. The decay of seamen along the French shore of the Mediter ranean is beginning to be felt severely. The railways have absorbed already a great amount of the old coasting trade, and freight which used to be slowly wafted along under the triangular canvas of the Tartanes is now conveyed speedily to its destination by the coast railway. Another great cause of the decay of seamen is the diminishing of la petite peche, or the fisheries conducted along the coast, which fisheries were the nurseries of the mercantile marine.

If the reader will refer to a good map of the Golfe de Lyon, he will observe that along the coast line there are many Etangs or Estang in the Provengal, which large lakes are connected with the sea by narrow channels. These passages are termed Graus, a name derived from Latin Gradus. The passages sometimes admit feluccas, or lahut, into the Etangs, and some times are so shallow that they gradually dry up, and form, by accumulation of sand driven in by the waves, a barrier instead of a passage to the sea water, which would season the Etang. Sometimes, when the Etang is low in the dry season through deficiency of rain, the graus become choked with reeds, and the water finds difficulty in penetrating. It is easy, then, to see that fever and ague become perpetual around these Etangs, thus denied communication with the sea.

And the fishermen who used to fish their waters are obliged to desert their dangerous shores. Hence a great decrease has arisen in the number of these hardy Pescaires, as they are termed in the Provengal ; and, of course, the supply of seamen falls short, which used to be largely recruited from the fishing population of these now marshy and pestilential lagoons. If the world lasts so long, a century or so more will see these dangerous marshes transformed, no doubt, into fertile fields of maize and pine forests and wildernesses of florin grass. And that which is now a source of danger will then be changed into one of greater profit to the inhabitants of the south. The sponge commerce is a very remarkable branch of the Marseilles traffic. The fishers on the Barbary coast of the Mediterranean denominate their sponges, "sponges of Marseille;" and these come strung in chaplets or rosaries weighing about twelve or fourteen pounds each, and twenty -four of these chaplets are grouped together like a large ball.

The sponges are of large tissues, and are used for domestic purposes. The rarest sponges arrive at Marseilles from the Syrian coasts, and sometimes from the islands of the Greek Archipelago. The perfumers, by a chemical process, whiten these, thus rendering them more valuable, but insalubrious to the user. Sixty or seventy thousand kilogrammes, or about 160,000 pounds weight of sponge, are annually imported into Marseilles from Turkey, Greece, Syria, Barbary, Italy, and even Malta. About 60,000 pounds weight of sponges are exported from Marseilles yearly, after being picked and washed, to the United States, Russia, Italy, and even as far as to China and Japan. The importation of sponges into all the ports of France iu 1875 was 246,666 kilogrammes ; in round numbers, 540,000 pounds, representing a value of three millions of francs, as against two millions of francs in 1873.

The exportations, however, which amounted to one million and a half of francs value of sponge in 1873, only arose to a quarter of a million francs value of sponge in 1876. We can see then, very clearly, that the use of the sponge is becoming an institution in France.

Chapter II. Louis De Maeolles, Maette

"We implicitly believe that none fear men less than those that fear God most." — The Times on Havelock. The Etang de Berre, or the great inland sea, which derives its name from the village of Berre, situated some nine miles from Marseilles, forms a conspicuous feature in the scenery around the southern metropolis. When one come3 upon its broad expanse — hovered over by sea-gulls, and dotted with white sails — you can scarcely realise that you are not gazing upon the Mediterranean itself. The formation of these Etangs is interesting. The sea in the vicinity of the flat shores of some portions of the Gulf of Lyons is so shallow, that in some places a man might wade out several hundred feet without being out of his depth — a striking contrast to the Mediterranean bathing the Esterelles, the mountain alps and the mountain shores of Les Maures, where at once very deep water is gained.

A heavy sea at once arises when the wind increases in the shallow waters, and the sands are carried by the waves and. deposited off the mouth of the curving shore bays. In course of time other matter, kept in solution by the sea, is thrown up on the sand lines, and sea-weed and drifted debris — shells and pebbles, floating wood, and dead animal matter, all combine to form the rampart which the sea forms against its own progress. Thus the Etang de Berre has evidently been formed — its waters running through one narrow channel into the Mediter ranean. It must be apparent that navigation is dangerous in the shallow portions of the Mediterranean, such as the waters before Cette, those which wash the shores of Aigues-Mortes — that inland city of the dead mariners — and along the Camargue, trodden by the fleet hoofs of the wild horses, snorting fire as they gallop in vast troops along the salt plain.

The tartanes and feluccas of the coasting seamen have oftentimes many a perilous storm to encounter when the mighty sea rolls along the shallow reaches, and thunders upon the low flat shore. Cumbered as they too often are with a piled-up deck-load, they sometimes are exposed to imminent peril. The Gulf of Lyons well deserves its name. Guillaume de Nangis, in his history of Saint Louis, says : " The sea of the Lyon is so called because it is ever rough, tossed with waves, and cruel." And two marble lions which decorate the portal of the fagade of the Church des Saintes-Maries, situated on the south-east extremity of the Isle of the Camargue, at the mouth of the Petit Rhone, which M. Charles Lentheric describes as one of the most striking types of the fortress churches con structed in the twelfth century upon the shores of the Medi terranean, seem to favour the derivation of the name of this turbulent gulf, in opposition to those who would deduce it from the city of Lyons.

The unpleasantness of the harbour of Marseilles is well known, but it may not be as well known that this very ill odour of the waters prevents a great danger to the shipping which have escaped the perils of the Mediterranean. Some fifty years ago an effort was made to purify the waters of this port ; and the Marseillais delighted in the fragrant sea odour, so unwonted and strange to them. Alas ! ere long,. swarthy sea captains began to perceive that the hulls of their ships were being perforated by thousands of sea-worms, whose ravages the foul water had kept at a distance ; and before the danger to the vessels lying in the port became so great that at last the purification of the harbour had to cease, and the foul waters returned to taint the atmosphere, but to banish the destroying worms.

In fact, in other harbours of the Mediter ranean this plague of maritime worms is dreaded also. The line of railway from Marseilles to Cannes, being only a single line of rails, seems to be cautiously worked by the officials thereof. Long delays, with red flags floating to tell of danger, encountered us as we swept along. The last time that I had come up from Marseilles to Nice, I had lively recollections of the miseries of being shut up in the coupe of the diligence, cramped into a middle place between two slumbering natives, who, when they did not sleep, smoked away as we wearily moved onwards. How sad a romance might not each carriage tell of this long train, in which we swept past La Civitat, built underneath the Eagle's Beak rock, with coral fishers' feluccas drying their white canvas in the sun, and the deep blue Mediterranean gleaming with innumerable sheening rays of dancing light !

It is a mistake for those who are unhappily in confirmed decline to go far from home. It is so sad when every kilo metre of the journey seems to add another iron link to the long chain that forms behind, dragging back the mournful sufferer to the loved ones at home. And yet how true are the words of an earnest divine of the last century : " I have never felt greater comfort than when I have been in the deepest affliction." And, truly, many an hour in a distant land I have felt more consolation, more joy in the realised presence of God when, in the solitude of one's room, the heart has gone forth in prayer to Him who loves us, than when strong and well at home one has almost forgotten the times of illness. How singularly at times a single verse will impress the mind. I never pass through Heidelberg since without a grateful remembrance of the old church, the aged minister, the faltering voice that read forth the prophetic utterance of Jeremiah — " Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him : but weep sore for him that goeth away : for he shall return no more, nor see his native country."

That quiet autumnal Sunday evening— how it lingers in memory still — the Gasthaus zum Ritter, with its ancient legend carved on its fac,ade in Latin — " Unless the Lord build th e house, they labour in vain who build it." Quaint old edifice, . unharmed amid the sieges aud ruin of the town, bearing forth its inscription as though to tell the truth of the Divine Word by this earthly displayal of it. And then the sad text that came home to my heart, as I mournfully fancied that alone and friendless 1 should die and never tell again the glad story to troubled hearts, of the love of the divine Saviour who had bought them with the price of His precious blood. I am firmly persuaded that the best way for an invalid to enter on the path of recovery of health, is to have the happy consciousness that the burden of sin is removed from off the troubled heart, by believing in the only Sin-Bearer, the Lord Jesus Christ, and thus realising that He has already paid our debt, and that we are free from condemnation for ever.

" He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." Grand testimony of St. John the Baptist to the Saviour's mighty power of giving life eternal to even the chiefest sinner. The convicts of Toulon are now a recollection of the past. The yellow sleeves and red caps and green caps and red jackets with yellow trousers, that marked the chained forgats when last I remained at Toulon, are no longer to be met with. They have all been exiled to New Caledonia, and the in habitants of the white bastides will no longer anxiously bar their doors, when the boom of the cannon tells of the forgats' ■escape. The Tower of Constance at Aigues-Mortes, and the Hopital des Forgats at Marseilles and Valence, are the three dread prisons in whose dreary cells the Huguenot martyrs used to be confined. One of the saddest pictures in the sufferings of the professors of the Reformed faith in France is connected with Marseilles and the Mediterranean.