THE VAL D'OSSAU--THE VIN DE JURANCON--THE OLD BEARNE COSTUME--THE
DEVIL AND THE BASQUE LANGUAGE--PYRENEAN SCENERY--THE WOLF--THE
BEAR--A PYRENEAN AUBERGE--THE FOUNTAIN OF LARUNS, AND THE EVENING
SONG.
The valley of Ossau, one of the finest and most varied of the clefts
running deep into the Pyrenees, opens up behind Pau, and penetrates some
thirty miles into the mountains, ending in two narrow horns, both
forming _cul de sacs_ for all, save active pedestrians and bold
muleteers, the bathing establishment of Eaux Bonnes being situated in
one, and that of Eaux Chaudes in the other. I was meditating as to my
best course for seeing some of the mountain scenery, as I hung over the
parapet of the bridge beneath the castle, and watched the pure, foaming
waters of the Gave bursting over their rocky bed beneath, when a little
man, with a merry red face, and a wonderfully long mouth, continually on
the grin, dressed in a species of imitation of English sporting
costume--in an old cut-away coat, and what is properly called a
bird's-eye choker--the effect of which, however, was greatly taken off
by sabots--addressed me, half in French, half in what he called
English:--Did I wish to go to the baths, or anywhere else in the hills?
The diligences had stopped running for the season; but what of that? he
had plenty of horses and vehicles: he would mount me for the fox-hounds,
if I wished. Oh, he was well known to, and highly respected by,
Messieurs les Anglais; and it was therefore a fortunate thing for me to
have fallen in with him. The upshot of a long conversation was, that he
engaged to drive me up the glen with his own worshipful hands, business
being slack at the time, and that he was to be as communicative as he
might touching the country, the people, their customs, and all about
them. The little man was delighted with this last stipulation, and
observed it so faithfully, that for the next two days his tongue never
lay; and as he was a merry, sensible little fellow enough, and
thoroughly good-natured, I did not in the least repent my bargain. Off
we went, then, in a lumbering old nondescript vehicle, drawn by a
raw-boned white horse, who, however, went through his work like a
Trojan. My driver's name was M. Martin; and the first thing he did was
to pull up at the first public-house outside of Pau.
"Look up there!" he said, pointing to a high-wooded ridge to the right;
"there are the Jurancon vineyards--the best in the Pyrenees; and here we
shall have a _coup-d'étrier_ of genuine old Jurancon wine."
Remembering Henri Quatre's first beverage, I had no objection. The wine,
which is white, tastes a good deal like a rough _chablis_, and is very
deceptive, and very heady: I would advise new-comers to the Pyrenees to
use it but gingerly. The garrison of Pau was changed while I was there,
and the new soldiers were going rolling about the streets--some of them
madly drunk, from the effects of this fireily intoxicating, yet mildly
tasting wine. Our road lay along the Gave--a flashing, sparkling
mountain-stream, running amid groups of trees, luxuriant coppice-wood,
and small fields of yellow Indian corn. Many were the cottages and
clusters of huts, half-hidden amid the vines, which are trailed in
screens and tunnels from stake to stake, and tree to tree; and, on each
side of the way, hedges of box-wood, growing in luxuriant thickets,
which would delight the heart of an English gardener--gave note of one
of the characteristic natural harvests of the Pyrenees. The soil and the
climate are, indeed, such, that the place which, in more northern
mountain regions, would be occupied by furze and heather, is hereabouts
taken up by perfect thickets and jungles of thriving box-wood; while the
laurel and rhododendron grow in bushy luxuriance. Charming, however, as
is the landscape, and thoroughly poetic the first aspect of the
cottages, they are in reality wretched, ricketty, and unwholesome
hovels. In fact, poor huts, and a mountain country, go almost invariably
together. In German Switzerland, the cottages are miserable; and every
body knows what an unwindowed stye is a Highland turf-built bothy. So of
the Pyrenean cottages: many of them--mere hovels of wood and clay, so
rickety-looking, that one wonders that the first squall from the hills
does not carry them bodily away--are composed of one large, irregular
room, having an earthen floor, with black, smoky beams stretching across
beneath the thatch. Two or three beds are made up in the darkest
corners; festoons of Indian corn, onions, and heads of garlic are
suspended from the rafters; and opposite the huge open fireplace is
generally placed the principal piece of furniture of the apartment--a
lumbering pile of a dresser, garnished with the crockery of the
household. In a very great proportion of cases, the windows of these
dwellings are utterly unglazed; and when the rough, unpainted outside
shutters are closed, the whole interior is in darkness. The people,
however, seem better fed and better clothed than the German Switzers. In
the vicinity of Pau, the women wear the brightest silk handkerchiefs on
their heads, are perfectly dissipated in the matter of gaudy ribbons,
and cut their petticoats of good, fleecy, home-spun stuff, so short as
to display a fair modicum of thick rig-and-furrow worsted stockings. The
men, except that they wear a blue bonnet--flat, like that called Tam
O'Shanter in Scotland--are decently clad in the ordinary blouse. It is
as you leave behind the influence of the town, that you come upon the
ancient dresses of the land. Every glen in Bearne has its distinguishing
peculiarities of costume; but cross its boundary to the eastward, and
you relapse at once into the ordinary peasant habiliments of
France--clumsy, home-cut coats only being occasionally substituted for
the blouse.
The old Bernais costume is graceful and picturesque; and as we made our
way up into the hills, we soon began to see specimens; and hardly one of
these but was borne by a fine-looking, well-developed man, or a
black-eyed and stately stepping woman. The peasantry of Ossau are
indeed remarkable, notwithstanding their hard work and frequent
privations, for personal beauty. They have little or no real French
blood in their veins; indeed, I believe the stock to be Spanish, just as
the beauties of Arles, out of all sight the finest women in France, are
in their origin partly Italian, partly Saracen. The women of Ossau are
as swarthy as Moors, and have the true eastern dignity of motion, owing
it, indeed, to the same cause as the Orientals--the habit of carrying
water-vases on their heads. Their faces are in general clearly and
classically cut--the nose thin and aquiline--the eye magnificently
black, lustrous, and slightly almond-shaped--another eastern
characteristic. The dress, as I have said, is graceful, and the colours
thoroughly harmonious. A tight-fitting black jacket is worn over a red
vest, more or less gaudily ornamented with rough embroidery, and
fastening by small belts across the bosom. On the head, a sort of capote
or hood of dark cloth, corresponding to that of the jacket and
petticoat, is arranged. In good weather, and when a heavy burden is to
be carried, this hood is plaited in square folds across the crown of the
head, forming a protection also from the heat of the sun. In cold and
rainy days, it is allowed to fall down over the shoulders, mingling with
the folds of the drapery beneath. Both men and women wear peculiarly
shaped stockings, so made as to bulge over the edges of the sabot, into
which the naked foot is thrust. The dress of the men is of a
correspondingly quaint character. On their heads they invariably wear
the flat, brown bonnet, called the _beret_, and from beneath
it the hair flows in long, straight locks, soft and silky, and floating
over their shoulders. A round jacket, something like that worn by the
women, knee-breeches of blue velvet--upon high days and holidays--and,
like the rest of the costume, of coarse home-spun woollen upon ordinary
occasions, complete the dress. The capa, or hood, is worn only in rough
weather. In the glens more to the westward, low sandals of untanned
leather are frequently used, the sole of the foot only being protected.
Sandals have certain classic associations connected with them, and look
very well in pictures, but they are fearfully uncomfortable in reality.
I saw half-a-dozen peasants tramping in this species of _chaussure_
through the wet streets of Pau amid a storm of snow and rain, and a
spectacle full of more intensely rheumatic associations could no where
be witnessed.
As we jogged along behind the grey horse, the facetious M. Martin had a
joke to crack with every man, woman, and child we encountered; and the
black eyes lighted up famously, and the classic faces grinned in high
delight, at the witticisms.
"I suppose you are speaking Bearne?" I said.
"The fine old language of the hills, sir. French!--no more to be
compared with it than skimmed milk with clotted cream."
"And you speak Spanish, too?"
"Well, if a gentleman contrabanda, who takes walks over the hills in the
long dark nights, with a string of mules before him, wished to do a
small stroke of business with me, I daresay we could manage to
understand each other." And therewith M. Martin winked first with one
eye, and then with the other.
"And Basque," said I, "you speak that also?"
M. Martin recoiled: "No man who ever did live, or will live, could learn
a word of that infernal jargon, if he were not a born Basque. Learn
Basque, indeed!--_Mon Dieu, monsieur!_ Don't you know that the Devil
once tried, and was obliged to give it up for a bad job? I don't know
why he wanted to learn Basque, unless it were to talk to the fellows who
went to him from that part of the country; and he might have known that
it was very little worth the hearing they could tell him. But, however,
he spread his wings, and flew and flew till he alighted on the top of
one of the Basque mountains, where he summoned all the best Basque
scholars in the country, and there he was for seven years, working away
with a grammar in his hand, and saying his lessons like a good little
boy. But 'twas all no use; he never could keep a page in his head. So
one fine morning he gave a kick to the books with one foot, and a kick
to the masters with the other, and flew off--only able to say 'yes' and
'no' in Basque, and that with such a bad pronunciation that the Basques
couldn't understand him."
This authentic anecdote brought us to that portion of the valley in
which we enter really into the Pyrenean hills. Up to this point we have
been traversing a gloriously wooded, and beautifully broken, country.
Ridges of forests, vineyard slopes, patches of bright-green meadow land,
steep, tumbling hills, wreathed with thickest box-wood, have been
rising and falling all around. Lateral glens, each with its foaming
torrent and woodland vista opening up, have been passed in close
succession. Scores of villages, ricketty and poverty-struck, even in
this land of fertility, have been traversed, until, gaining the height
of a ridge which seems to block the way, we saw before us what appears
to be another valley of a totally different character--stern, solitary,
wild--a broad, flat space, lying between the hills, yellow with
maize-fields, the river shining in the midst, and on either side the
mountain-slopes--no mere hills this time, but vast and stately Alps,
heaving up into the regions of the mist, rising in long, uniform slopes,
stretching away and away, and up and up--the vast sweeps green with a
richness of herbage unknown in the Alps, and faintly traced with ancient
mountain-paths, leading from chalet to chalet; here and there a gully or
wide ravine breaking the Titanic embankment; silver threads of
waterfalls appearing and disappearing in the black jaws; and over the
topmost clefts, glimpses of the snowy peaks, to which these stretching
braes lead upwards. The mist lies in long, thin wreaths upon the bosom
of the hills immediately around you, and you see their bluff summits now
rising above it, and then gradually disappearing in the rising vapour.
The general atmosphere is brighter and clearer than in the Alps, and you
imagine a peak a long day's march from you within an easy climb;
cottages, and even hamlets, appear perched at most impracticable
heights; and every now and then, a white gash in the far-up hill-side
announces a marble-quarry, and you see dark dots of carts toiling up to
it by winding ways. These hills are but partially wooded. The sombre
pine here begins to make its appearance, sometimes scattered, sometimes
growing thickly--for all the world like the wire-jags set round the
barrel of a musical snuff-box. The lateral valleys are, however,
frequently masses of forest, and it is high up in these little
frequented passes, that Bruin, who still haunts the Pyrenees, most often
makes his appearance.
"But he is going," said M. Martin--"going with the wild cats and the
wolves. The Pyrenees are degenerating, monsieur; you never hear of a man
being hugged to death now. Poor Bruin! For, after all, monsieur, he is a
gentlemanly beast; he never kills the sheep wantonly. He always chooses
the best, which is but natural, and walks off with it. But the
wolf--_sacré nom du diable!_--the wolf--a _coquin_--a brigand--a _Basque
tonnere_--he will slaughter a flock in a night. _Mon Dieu!_ he laps
blood till he gets drunk on it. A _voleur_--a _mauvais sujet_--a
_cochon_--a dam beast!"
"But do the Pyrenean wolves ever attack men?"
"_Sacré! Monsieur; tenez._ There was Jacques Blitz--an honest man, a
farmer in the hills; he came down to Pau, when the snow was deep, and
the winter hard. I saw him in Pau. Well, in the afternoon he started to
go home again. It looked threatening, and people advised him to stay;
but no; and off he went. Monsieur, that night in his cottage they heard,
hour by hour, the howling of the wolves, and often went out, but could
see nothing. Poor Jacques did not return, and at sunrise they were all
off in search; and sure enough they found a skeleton, clean picked, and
the bones all shining in the snow. Only, monsieur, the feet were still
whole in the sabots: the wolves had gnawed the wood, but could not break
it. 'Take off the sabots!' screamed the wife. And they did so: and she
gave a shuddering gasp, and said, 'They are Jacques' feet!' and tumbled
down into the snow. _Sacré peste_, the cannibals! Curse the
wolves--here's to their extirpation!"
And M. Martin took a goodly pull at a bottle of Jurancon we had laid in
at the last stage. He went on to tell me that sometimes a particular
wolf is known to haunt a district, perhaps for years, before he gets his
_quietus_; most probably a grey-haired, wily veteran, perfectly up to
all the devices of the hunter, who can seldom get a shot at him. Bears
flourish in the same fashion, and come to be so well known, as to be
honoured with regular names, by which they are spoken of in the country.
One old bear, of great size, and of the species in question, had taken
up his head-quarters upon a range of hills forming the side of a ravine
opening up from the valley of Ossau. He was called Dominique--probably
after his fellow Bruin, who long went by the same appellation in the
Jardin des Plantes, and was known by it to every Parisian. The Pyrenean
Dominique was a wily monster, who had long baffled all the address of
his numerous pursuers; and as his depredations were ordinarily confined
to the occasional abstraction of a sheep or a goat, and as he never
actually committed murder, he long escaped the institution of a regular
battue--the ordinary ending of a bear or wolf who manages to make
himself particularly conspicuous. At length the people of the district
got absolutely proud of Dominique. Like the Eagle in Professor Wilson's
fine tale, he was "the pride and the pest of the parish," and might have
been so yet, were it not that on one unlucky day he was casually espied
by the _garde forestiere_. This is a functionary whose duty it is to
patrol the hills, taking note that the sheep are confined to their
proper bounds on the pastures. The man had sat down to his dinner on a
ledge of rock, when, looking over it, whom should he see but the famous
Dominique sunning himself upon the bank below. The _garde_ had a gun,
and it was not in the heart of man to resist the temptation. He fired,
Dominique got up on his hind legs, roaring grimly, when the contents of
the second barrel stretched him on the earth. So great, however, was the
_garde's_ opinion of the prowess of his victim, that he kept loading and
firing long after poor Dominique had quitted this mortal scene. The
carcase was too heavy to be moved by a single man, but next day it was
carried to the nearest village by a funeral party of peasants, not
exactly certain as to whether they ought to be glad or sorry at the
catastrophe.
As we were now well on in October, and as the weather had greatly broken
up, much of the pleasure of my Pyrenean rambles being indeed marred by
lowering skies and frequent and heavy rains--which were snow upon the
hills--the flocks were fast descending from the upland pastures to their
winter quarters in the valley and the plain. Every couple of miles or
so, in our upward route, we encountered a flock of small, long-eared,
long and soft woolled sheep, either trotting along the road or resting
and grazing in the adjacent fields. The shepherds stalked along at the
head of the procession, or, when it was stationary, stood statue-like in
the fields. They were great, gaunt, sinewy men, wearing the Ossau
costume, but one and all enveloped in a long, whitish cloak, with a
peaked hood, flowing to the earth, which gave them a ghastly,
winding-sheet sort of appearance. When a passing shower came rattling
down upon the wind, the herdsmen, stalking slowly across the fields,
enveloped from head to foot in these long, grey, shapeless robes, looked
like so many Ossianic ghosts flitting among the mountains. Each man
carried, slung round him, a little ornamented pouch, full of salt, a
handful of which is used to entice within reach any sheep which he
wishes to get hold of. One and all, like their brethren of the Landes,
they were busy at the manufacture of worsted stockings, and kept slowly
stalking through the meadows where their flocks pastured, with the
lounging gait of men thoroughly broken in to a solitary, monotonous
routine of sluggish life. Many of these shepherds were accompanied by
their children--the boys dressed in exact miniature imitation of their
fathers. Indeed, the prevalence of this style of juvenile costume in the
Pyrenees makes the boys and girls look exactly like odd, quaint little
men and women. The shepherds are assisted by a breed of noble dogs, one
or two of which I saw. They are not, however, generally taken down to
the low grounds, as they are frequently fierce and vicious in the
half-savage state in which it is of importance to keep them, in respect
to their avocations amid the bears and wolves. Among themselves, I was
told that they fought desperately, occasionally even killing each other.
The dogs I saw were magnificent looking fellows, of great size and
power, their chests of vast breadth and depth, and their limbs perfect
lumps of muscle. They appeared to me to be of a breed which might have
been originated by a judicious crossing of first-rate Newfoundlands, St.
Bernard mastiffs, and thorough old English bulldogs; and I could easily
believe that one wrench from their enormous square jaws is perfectly
sufficient to crash through the neck vertebræ of the largest wolf.
As we neared Laruns, the mountain-slopes grew steeper and higher, and
more barren and rugged; the precipices became more fearful; the mountain
gorges more black and deep; and at length we appeared to be entering the
deep pit of an amphitheatre dug in the centre of a group of stormy and
precipitous mountains. Down in this nest lies the little mountain-town
of Laruns; the steep slope of the heathy hill rising on one side of the
single street from the very backs of the houses. M. Martin, on the Irish
principle of reserving the trot for the avenue, whipped up the good old
grey, and we rattled at a canter through the miriest street I ever
traversed, driving throngs of lean, long-legged pigs right and left, and
dispersing groups of cloaked, lounging men, with military shakos, and
sabres--in whose uniform, indeed, I recognised that of my old friends,
the _Douaniers_ of Boulogne and Calais; for true we were approaching,
not indeed an ocean, but a mountain frontier, and Spanish ground was not
so distant as Shakspeare's Cliff from Cape Grinez.
We stopped in the little Place opposite a pretty marble fountain, and at
the door of a particularly modest-looking auberge. As I was getting out,
M. Martin stopped me: "Wait," he said, "and we will drive into the
house--don't you see how big the door is?" As he spoke, it opened upon
its portals. The old grey needed no invitation, and in a moment we found
ourselves in a huge, dark vault, half coach-house, half stable. Two or
three loaded carts were lying about, and lanterns gleamed from the
gloomiest corners, and horses and mules stamped and neighed as they were
rubbed down, or received their provender.
"But where is the inn?"
"The inn! up-stairs, of course."
And then I beheld a rough, wooden staircase, or, rather, a railed
ladder, down which came tripping a couple of blooming girls to carry
up-stairs our small amount of luggage. Following their invitation, I
soon found myself in a vast parlour and kitchen and all--a great shadowy
room, with a baronnial-looking fireplace, and a couple of old women
sitting in the ingle-nook, plying the distaff. The fireplace and the
kitchen department of the room were in the shadow at the back. Nearer
the row of lozenge-pane windows, rose a dais--with a long dining-table
set out--and smaller tables were scattered around. Above your head were
mighty rafters, capitally garnished with bacon and hung-meat of various
kinds. The floor rose and fell in small mountains and valleys beneath
your feet; but, notwithstanding this evidence of rickettyness, every
thing appeared of massive strength, and the warmth of the place, and the
savour of the _cuisine_--for a French kitchen is always in a chronic
state of cookery--made the room at once comfortable and appetising--ten
times better than the dreary _salle_ of a barrack-like hotel.
[Illustration: A PYRENEES PARLOUR.]
In a few minutes, Martin, having attended to the grey, joined me,
rubbing his hands. "This was the place to stop at," he said. "No use of
going further. The mountains beyond were just like the mountains here;
but the people here were far more unsophisticated than the people
beyond. They hav'nt learned to cheat here, yet," he whispered. "And,
besides, you see a good Pyrenean auberge, and at the Wells you would
only see a bad French hotel, which, I daresay, would be no novelty;
while, as for price--pooh! you will get a capital dinner here for what
they would charge you for speaking to the waiter there."
And so it proved. Pending, the preparation of this dinner, however, I
strolled about Laruns. It is a drearily-poor place, with the single
recommendation of being built of stone, which can be had all round for
the carrying. The arrangement of turning the ground-floor into a stable
is universal in the houses of any size, and as these stables also serve
for pig-styes, sheep-folds, and poultry-yards, and as cleaning-day is
made to come round as seldom as possible, it may be imagined that the
town of Laruns is a highly scented one. Through some of the streets,
brooks of sparkling water flow, working the hammers of feeble fulling
mills. Webs of the coarse cloth produced are hung to dry from window to
window, and roof to roof, and beneath them congregate groups of old
distaff-plying women, lounging _duaniers_, and no end of geese standing
half asleep on one foot, until a headlong charge of pigs being driven
afield, or driven home, comes trampling through the mire, and clears the
way in a moment.
The auberge dinner was worthy of M. Martin's anticipations.
Delicately-flavoured soup, and trout of the genuine mountain-stream
breed--the skin gaily speckled, and the flesh a deep red, were followed
by a roasted _jigot_ of mutton, flavoured as only mutton can be
flavoured which has fed upon the aromatic herbage of the high hills--the
whole finished off with a capital omelette, tossed jauntily up by the
neat-handed Phillis who waited upon us, and joked, and laughed, and was
kept in one perpetual blush by M. Martin all through dinner-time.
At length, through all this giggling, a plate was broken.
"There's bad luck, Jeanne," said Martin.
"You know nothing about it," replied Jeanne, pertly. "Any child knows
that to break a plate is good luck: it is to smash a dish which brings
bad luck."
"They have all sorts of omens here in the hills," said my companion. "If
a hare cross the path, it is a bad omen; and if a cow kick over the
milking-pail, it is a bad omen. And they are always fancying themselves
bewitched----"
"No, that we are not," interrupted Jeanne; "so long as we keep a sprig
of _vervene_ over the fire, we know very well that there's not a
_sorciere_ in all the Pyrenees can harm us."
I thought of the old couplet--
"Sprigs of vervain, and of dill,
Which hinder witches of their will."
As the evening closed, the little Place became quite thronged with
girls, come to wash their pails and draw water from the fountain. Each
damsel came statelily along, bearing a huge bucket, made of alternate
horizontal stripes of brass and tin, upon her head, and polished like a
mirror. A half-hour, or so, of gossipping ensued, frequently broken by a
pleasant chorus, sung in unison by the fresh, pure voices of the whole
assembly. The effect, when they first broke out into a low, wailing
song, echoing amongst the high houses and the hill behind, was quite
electrifying. Then they set to work, scrubbing their pails as if they
had been the utensils of a model dairy, and at length marched away, each
with the heavy bucket, full to the brim, poised upon her head--and with
a carriage so steady and gracefully unswerving that, to look at the
pails, you would suppose them borne in a boat, rather than carried by a
person walking.
At night, after I had turned into as snug a bed, with as crisp, and
white, and fresh linen as man could wish for, I was long kept awake by
the vocal performances of a party of shepherds, who had just arrived
from the hills, and who paraded the Place singing in chorus, long after
the cracked bell in the little church had tolled midnight. Nine-tenths
of these people have capital voices. Their lungs and throats are
well-developed, by holding communication from hill to hill; and they
jodle or jerk the voice from octave to octave, just as they do in the
Alps. This said jodling appears, indeed, to be a natural accomplishment
in many mountain countries. The songs of the shepherds at Laruns had
jodling chorusses, but the airs were almost all plaintive minors, with
long quavering phrases, clinging, as it were, to the pitch of the
key-note, and only extending to about a third above or below it. The
music was always performed in unison, the words sometimes French, and
sometimes Bearnais. The single phrase in the former language, which I
could distinguish, and which formed the burden of one of the ditties,
was, "_Ma chere maitresse_." This "_chere maitresse_" song, indeed,
appeared the favourite. Over and over again was it sung, and there was a
wild, melancholy beauty which grew more and more upon you, as the mellow
cadence died away again and again in the long drawn out notes of "_Ma
chere maitresse_."