has taken place in the ideas and in the customs of my village than
had been seen in the centuries before the Revolution. Already half
the ceremonies, Celtic, Pagan, or of the Middle Ages, that in my
childhood I have seen in their full vigor, have disappeared. In
a year or two more, perhaps, the railroads will lay their level
tracks across our deep valleys, and will carry away, with the
swiftness of lightning, all our old traditions and our wonderful
legends.
It was in winter about the carnival season, the time of year when,
in our country, it is fitting and proper to have weddings. In
summer the time can hardly be spared, and the work of the farm
cannot suffer three days’ delay, not to speak of the additional
days impaired to a greater or to a less degree by the moral and
physical drunkenness which follows a gala-day. I was seated beneath
the great mantelpiece of the old-fashioned kitchen fireplace when
shots of pistols, barking of dogs, and the piercing notes of the
bagpipe told me that the bridal pair were approaching. Very soon
Father and Mother Maurice, Germain, and little Marie, followed by
Jacques and his wife, the closer relatives, and the godfathers and
godmothers of the bride and groom, all made their entry into the
yard.
Little Marie had not yet received her wedding-gifts,--favors, as
they call them,--and was dressed in the best of her simple clothes,
a dress of dark, heavy cloth, a white fichu with great spots of
brilliant color, an apron of carnation,--an Indian red much in
vogue at the time, but despised nowadays,--a cap of very white
muslin after that pattern, happily still preserved, which calls to
mind the head-dress of Anne Boleyn and of Agnes Sorrel. She was
fresh and laughing, but not at all vain, though she had good reason
to be so. Beside her was Germain, serious and tender, like young
Jacob greeting Rebecca at the wells of Laban. Another girl would
have assumed an important air and struck an attitude of triumph,
for in every rank it is something to be married for a fair face
alone. Yet the girl’s eyes were moist and shone with tenderness. It
was plain that she was deep in love and had no time to think of the
opinions of others. Her little air of determination was not absent,
but everything about her denoted frankness and good-will. There was
nothing impertinent in her success, nothing selfish in her sense of
power. Never have I seen so lovely a bride, when she answered with
frankness her young friends who asked if she were happy:
“Surely I have nothing to complain of the good Lord.”
Father Maurice was spokesman. He came forward to pay his
compliments, and give the customary invitations. First he fastened
to the mantelpiece a branch of laurel decked out with ribbons; this
is known as the _writ_--that is to say, the letter of announcement.
Next he gave to every guest a tiny cross made of a bit of blue
ribbon sewn to a transverse bit of pink ribbon--pink for the bride,
blue for the groom. The guests of both sexes were expected to
keep this badge to adorn their caps or their button-holes on the
wedding-day. This is the letter of invitation, the admission ticket.
Then Father Maurice paid his congratulations. He invited the
head of the house and all his _company_,--that is to say, all
his children, all his friends, and all his servants,--to the
benediction, _to the feast, to the sports, to the dance, and to
everything that follows_. He did not fail to say, “I have come _to
do you the honor of inviting you_”; a very right manner of speech,
even though it appears to us to convey the wrong meaning, for it
expresses the idea of doing honor to those who seem worthy of it.
Despite the generosity of the invitation carried from house to
house throughout the parish, politeness, which is very cautious
amongst peasants, demands that only two persons from each family
take advantage of it--one of the heads of the house, and one from
the number of their children.
After the invitations were made, the betrothed couple and their
families took dinner together at the farm.
Little Marie kept her three sheep on the common, and Germain tilled
the soil as though nothing had happened.
About two in the afternoon before the day set for the wedding,
the music came. The music means the players of the bagpipe and
hurdy-gurdy, their instruments decorated with long streaming
ribbons, playing an appropriate march to a measure which would
have been rather slow for feet foreign to the soil, but admirably
adapted to the heavy ground and hilly roads of the country.
Pistol-shots, fired by the young people and the children, announced
the beginning of the wedding ceremonies. Little by little the
guests assembled, and danced on the grass-plot before the house in
order to enter into the spirit of the occasion. When evening was
come they began strange preparations; they divided into two bands,
and when night had settled down they proceeded to the ceremony of
the _favors_.
All this passed at the dwelling of the bride, Mother Guillette’s
cottage. Mother Guillette took with her her daughter, a dozen
pretty shepherdesses, friends and relatives of her daughter, two or
three respectable housewives, talkative neighbors, quick of wit and
strict guardians of ancient customs. Next she chose a dozen stout
fellows, her relatives and friends; and last of all the parish
hemp-dresser, a garrulous old man, and as good a talker as ever
there was.
The part which, in Brittany, is played by the bazvalon, the village
tailor, is taken in our part of the country by the hemp-dresser and
the wool-carder, two professions which are unusually combined in
one. He is present at all ceremonies, sad or gay, for he is very
learned and a fluent talker, and on these occasions he must always
figure as spokesman, in order to fulfil with exactitude certain
formalities used from time immemorial. Traveling occupations, which
bring a man into the midst of other families, without allowing him
to shut himself up within his own, are well fitted to make him
talker, wit, storyteller, and singer.
The hemp-dresser is peculiarly skeptical. He and another village
functionary, of whom we have spoken before, the grave-digger, are
always the daring spirits of the neighborhood. They have talked so
much about ghosts, and they know so well all the tricks of which
these malicious spirits are capable, that they fear them scarcely
at all. It is especially at night that all of them--grave-diggers,
hemp-dressers, and ghosts--do their work. It is also at night when
the hemp-dresser tells his melancholy stories. Permit me to make a
digression.
When the hemp has reached the right stage, that is to say, when
it has been steeped sufficiently in running water, and half dried
on the bank, it is brought into the yard and arranged in little
upright sheaves, which, with their stalks divided at the base, and
their heads bound in balls, bear in the dusk some small resemblance
to a long procession of little white phantoms, standing on their
slender legs, and moving noiselessly along the wall.
It is at the end of September, when the nights are still warm,
that they begin to beat it by the pale light of the moon. By day
the hemp has been heated in the oven; at night they take it out to
beat it while it is still hot. For this they use a kind of horse
surmounted by a wooden lever which falls into grooves and breaks
the plant without cutting it. It is then that you hear in the night
that sudden, sharp noise of three blows in quick succession. Then
there is silence; it is the movement of the arm drawing out the
handful of hemp to break it in a fresh spot. The three blows begin
again; the other arm works the lever, and thus it goes on until the
moon is hidden by the early streaks of dawn. As the work continues
but a few days in the year, the dogs are not accustomed to it, and
yelp their plaintive howls toward every point of the horizon.
It is the time of unwonted and mysterious sounds in the country.
The migrating cranes fly so high that by day they are scarcely
visible. By night they are only heard, and their hoarse wailing
voices, lost in the clouds, sound like the parting cry of souls
in torment, striving to find the road to heaven, yet forced by an
unconquerable fate to wander near the earth about the haunts of
men; for these errant birds have strange uncertainties, and many a
mysterious anxiety in the course of their airy flight. Sometimes
they lose the wind when the capricious gusts battle, or come and go
in the upper regions. When this confusion comes by day, you can see
the leader of the file fluttering aimlessly in the air, then turn
about and take his place at the tail of the triangular phalanx,
while a skilful manœuver of his companions forms them soon in good
order behind him. Often, after vain efforts, the exhausted leader
relinquishes the guidance of the caravan; another comes forward,
tries in his turn, and yields his place to a third, who finds the
breeze, and continues the march in triumph. But what cries, what
reproaches, what protests, what wild curses or anxious questionings
are exchanged in an unknown tongue amongst these winged pilgrims!
Sometimes, in the resonant night, you can hear these sinister
noises whirling for a long time above the housetops, and as you
can see nothing, you feel, despite your efforts, a kind of dread
and kindred discomfort, until the sobbing multitude is lost in
boundless space.
There are other noises too which belong to this time of year, and
which sound usually in the orchards. Gathering the fruit is not
yet over, and the thousand unaccustomed cracklings make the tree
seem alive. A branch groans as it bends beneath a burden which has
reached, of a sudden, the last stage of growth; or perhaps an apple
breaks from the twig, and falls on the damp earth at your feet with
a dull sound. Then you hear rush by, brushing the branches and the
grass, a creature you cannot see; it is the peasant’s dog, that
prowling and uneasy rover, at once impudent and cowardly, always
wandering, never sleeping, ever seeking you know not what, spying
upon you, hiding in the brush, and taking flight at the sound of a
falling apple, which he thinks a stone that you are throwing at him.
It is during those nights, nights misty and gray, that the
hemp-dresser tells his weird stories of will-o’-the-wisps and
milk-white hares, of souls in torment and wizards changed to
wolves, of witches’ vigils at the cross-roads, and screech-owls,
prophetesses of the graveyard. I remember passing the early hours
of such a night while the hemp-dressing was going on, and the
pitiless strokes, interrupting the dresser’s story at its most
awful place, sent icy shivers through our veins. And often too the
good man continued his story as he worked, and four or five words
were lost, terrible words, no doubt, which we dared not make him
repeat, and whose omission added a mystery yet more fearful to the
dark mysteries of the story which had gone before. It was in vain
the servants warned us that it was too late to stay without doors,
and that bedtime had sounded for us long since; they too were dying
to hear more; and then with what terror we crossed the hamlet on
our way home! How deep did the church porch appear to us, and how
thick and black the shadows of the old trees! The graveyard we
dared not see; we shut our eyes tight as we passed it.
But no more than the sacristan is the hemp-dresser gifted solely
with the desire of frightening; he loves to make people laugh; he
is sarcastic and sentimental at need, when love and marriage are
to be sung. It is he who collects and keeps stored in his memory
the oldest songs, and who transmits them to posterity. And so it
is he who acts at weddings the part we shall see him play at the
presentation of little Marie’s favors.
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
II
The Wedding Favors
When all the guests were met together in the house, the doors
and windows were closed with the utmost care; even the garret
window was barricaded; boards and benches, logs and tables were
placed behind every entrance, just as if the inhabitants were
making ready to sustain a siege; and within these fortifications
solemn stillness prevailed until at a distance were heard songs
and laughter and the sounds of rustic music. It was the band of
the bridegroom, Germain at the head, followed by his most trusty
companions and by the grave-digger, relatives, friends, and
servants, who formed a compact and merry train. Meanwhile, as they
came nearer the house they slackened their pace, held a council
of war, and became silent. The girls, shut up in the house, had
arranged little loop-holes at the windows by which they could see
the enemy approach and deploy in battle array. A fine, cold rain
was falling, which added zest to the situation, while a great
fire blazed on the hearth within. Marie wished to cut short the
inevitable slowness of this well-ordered siege; she had no desire
to see her lover catch cold, but not being in authority she had
to take an ostensible share in the mischievous cruelty of her
companions.
When the two armies met, a discharge of firearms on the part of the
besiegers set all the dogs in the neighborhood to barking. Those
within the house dashed at the door with loud yelps, thinking that
the attack was in earnest, and the children, little reassured by
the efforts of their mothers, began to weep and to tremble. The
whole scene was played so well that a stranger would have been
deceived, and would have made his preparations to fight a band of
brigands. Then the grave-digger, bard and orator of the groom, took
his stand before the door, and with a rueful voice, exchanged the
following dialogue with the hemp-dresser, who was stationed above
the same door:
_The Grave-digger_: “Ah, my good people, my fellow-townsmen, for
the love of Heaven, open the door.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Who are you, and what right have you to call
us your dear fellow-townsmen? We don’t know you.”
_The Grave-digger_: “We are worthy folk in great distress. Don’t
be afraid of us, my friends. Extend us your hospitality. Sleet is
falling; our poor feet are frozen, and our journey home has been so
long that our sabots are split.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “If your sabots are split, you can look on the
ground; you will find very soon a sprig of willow to make some
_arcelets_ [small curved blades of iron which are fastened on split
sabots to hold them together].”
_The Grave-digger_: “Willow _arcelets_ are scarcely strong enough.
You are making fun of us, good people, and you would do better
to open your doors. We can see a splendid fire blazing in your
dwelling. The spit must be turning, and we can make merry with you,
heart and belly. So open your doors to poor pilgrims who will die
on the threshold if you are not merciful.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Ah ha! so you are pilgrims? You never told us
that. And what pilgrimage do you come from, may I ask?”
_The Grave-digger_: “We shall tell you that when you open the door,
for we come from so far that you would never believe it.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Open the door to you? I rather think not. We
can’t trust you. Tell us, is it from Saint Sylvain of Pouligny that
you come?”
_The Grave-digger_: “We have been at Saint Sylvain of Pouligny, but
we have been farther still.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Then you have been as far as Saint Solange?”
_The Grave-digger_: “At Saint Solange we have been, sure enough,
but we have been farther yet.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “You are lying. You have never been as far as
Saint Solange.”
_The Grave-digger_: “We have been farther, for now we are come from
Saint Jacques of Compostelle.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “What absurdity are you telling us? We don’t
know that parish. We can easily see that you are bad people,
brigands, nobodies, and liars. Go away with your nonsense. We are
on our guard. You can’t come in.”
_The Grave-digger_: “Ah, my poor fellow, take pity on us. We are
not pilgrims, as you have guessed, but we are unlucky poachers
pursued by the keepers. Even the police are after us, and if you
don’t hide us in your hay-loft, we shall be taken and led off to
prison.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “And who will prove you are what you say you
are, this time? For you have told us one lie already that you can’t
maintain.”
_The Grave-digger_: “If you will let us in, we shall show you a
pretty piece of game we have killed.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Show it right away, for we have our
suspicions.”
_The Grave-digger_: “All right, open the door or a window to let us
pass the creature in.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Oh, no, not quite so foolish. I am looking at
you through a little chink, and I can see neither hunters nor game
amongst you.”
Here an ox-driver, a thick-set fellow of herculean strength,
detached himself from a group where he had stood unperceived, and
raised toward the window a plucked goose, spitted on a strong iron
bar decorated with tufts of straw and ribbons.
“Ho, ho!” cried the hemp-dresser, after cautiously extending an arm
to feel the roast. “That isn’t a quail nor a partridge; it isn’t
a hare nor a rabbit; it’s something like a goose or a turkey. Upon
my word, you’re clever hunters, and that game didn’t make you run
very far. Move on, you rogues; we know all your lies, and you had
best go home and cook your supper. You are not going to eat ours.”
_The Grave-digger_: “O Heavens, where can we go to cook our game?
It is very little for so many as we, and, besides, we have neither
place nor fire. At this time every door is closed, and every soul
asleep. You are the only people who are celebrating a wedding at
home, and you must be hardhearted indeed to let us freeze outside.
Once again, good people, open the door; we shall not cost you
anything. You can see that we bring our own meat; only a little
room at your hearth, a little blaze to cook with, and we shall go
on our way rejoicing.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Do you suppose that we have too much room
here, and that wood is bought for nothing?”
_The Grave-digger_: “We have here a small bundle of hay to make the
fire. We shall be satisfied with that; only grant us leave to place
the spit across your fireplace.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “That will never do. We are disgusted, and
don’t pity you at all. It is my opinion that you are drunk, that
you need nothing, and that you only wish to come in and steal away
our fire and our daughters.”
_The Grave-digger_: “Since you won’t listen to reason, we shall
make our way in by force.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “Try, if you want; we are shut in well enough
to have no fear of you, and since you are impudent fellows, we
shall not answer you again.”
Thereupon the hemp-dresser shut the garret window with a bang, and
came down into the room below by a step-ladder. Then he took the
bride by the hand, the young people of both sexes followed, and
they all began to sing and chatter merrily, while the matrons sang
in piercing voices, and shrieked with laughter in derision and
bravado at those without who were attempting an attack.
The besiegers, on their side, made a great hubbub. They discharged
their pistols at the doors, made the dogs growl, whacked the walls,
shook the blinds, and uttered frightful shrieks. In short, there
was such a pandemonium that nobody could hear, and such a cloud of
dust that nobody could see.
And yet this attack was all a sham. The time had not come for
breaking through the etiquette. If, in prowling about, anybody were
to find an unguarded aperture, or any opening whatsoever, he might
try to slip in unobserved, and then, if the carrier of the spit
succeeded in placing his roast before the fire, and thus prove the
capture of the hearth, the comedy was over and the bridegroom had
conquered.
The entrances of the house, however, were not numerous enough for
any to be neglected in the customary precautions, and nobody might
use violence before the moment fixed for the struggle.
When they were weary of dancing and screams, the hemp-dresser began
to think of capitulation. He went up to his window, opened it with
precaution, and greeted the baffled assailants with a burst of
laughter.
“Well, my boys,” said he, “you look very sheep-faced. You thought
there was nothing easier than to come in, and you see that our
defense is good. But we are beginning to have pity on you, if you
will submit and accept our conditions.”
_The Grave-digger_: “Speak, good people. Tell us what we must do to
approach your hearth.”
_The Hemp-dresser_: “You must sing, my friends; but sing a song we
don’t know,--one that we can’t answer by a better.”
“That’s not hard to do,” answered the grave-digger, and he
thundered in a powerful voice:
“‘Six months ago, ’twas in the spring....’”
“‘I wandered through the sprouting grass,’”
answered the hemp-dresser in a slightly hoarse but terrible voice.
“You must be jesting, my poor friends, singing us such time-worn
songs. You see very well that we can stop you at the first word.”
“‘She was a prince’s daughter....’”
“‘Right gladly would she wed,’”
answered the hemp-dresser. “Come, move on to the next; we know that
a little too well.”
_The Grave-digger_: “How do you like this one?”--
“‘As I was journeying home from Nantes.’”
_The Hemp-dresser_:
“‘Weary, oh, weary, was I, was I.’”
“That dates from my grandmother’s time. Let’s have another.”
_The Grave-digger_:
“‘One day I went a-walking....’”
_The Hemp-dresser_:
“‘Along a lovely wood!’”
“That one is too stupid! Our little children wouldn’t take the
trouble to answer you. What! Are these all you know?”
_The Grave-digger_: “Oh, we shall sing you so many that you will
never be able to hear them all.”
In this way a full hour passed. As the two antagonists were
champions of the country round in the matter of songs, and as
their store seemed inexhaustible, the contest might last all night
with ease, all the more because the hemp-dresser, with a touch of
malice, allowed several ballads of ten, twenty, or thirty couplets
to be sung through, feigning by his silence to admit his defeat.
Then the bridegroom’s camp rejoiced and sang aloud in chorus, and
thought that this time the foe was worsted; but at the first line
of the last couplet, they heard the hoarse croaking of the old
hemp-dresser bellow forth the second rhyme. Then he cried:
“You need not tire yourselves by singing such a long one, my
children--we know that one to our finger-tips.”
Once or twice, however, the hemp-dresser made a wry face,
contracted his brow, and turned toward the expectant housewives
with a baffled air. The grave-digger was singing something so old
that his adversary had forgotten it, or perhaps had never even
heard it; but instantly the good gossips chanted the victorious
refrain through their noses with voices shrill as a sea-mew’s, and
the grave-digger, forced to surrender, went on to fresh attempts.
It would have taken too long to wait for a decision of the victory.
The bride’s party declared itself disposed to be merciful, provided
that the bride were given a present worthy of her.
Then began the song of the favors to a tune solemn as a church
chant.
The men without sang together in bass voices:
“‘Open the door, true love,
Open the door;
I have presents for you, love,
Oh, say not adieu, love.’”
To this the women answered from within in falsetto, with mournful
voices:
“‘My father is sorry, my mother is sad,
And I am a maiden too kind by far
At such an hour my gate to unbar.’”
The men took up the first verse as far as the fourth line and
modified it thus:
“‘And a handkerchief new, love.’”
But, on behalf of the bride, the women answered in the same way as
at first.
For twenty couplets, at least, the men enumerated all the
wedding-presents, always mentioning something new in the last line:
a handsome apron, pretty ribbons, a cloth dress, laces, a golden
cross, and even a hundred pins to complete the modest list of
wedding-presents. The refusal of the women could not be shaken, but
at length the men decided to speak of
“A good husband, too, love.”
And the women answered, turning toward the bride and singing in
unison with the men:
“‘Open the door, true love,
Open the door;
Here’s a sweetheart for you, love,
Pray let us enter, too, love.’”
[Illustration: (Ornament)]
III
The Wedding