BÉARN AND THE BÉARNAIS
The Béarnais and the Basques have no historical monuments in their
country anterior to the Roman invasion, and for that matter Roman
monuments themselves are nearly non-existent. Medals and coins have been
occasionally found which tell a story neglected by the chroniclers, or
fill a gap which would be otherwise unbridged, but in the main there is
little remaining of a period so far remote, save infrequent fragmentary
examples of Arab or Saracen art. Of later times as well, the splendid
building eras of Gothic and Renaissance architecture, there is but
little that is monumental, or indeed remarkable for richness.
Architectural styles were strong and hardy, but most often they were a
mélange of foreign forms, combined and presented anew by local builders.
This makes for picturesqueness at any rate, so, taken as a whole, what
the extreme southwest of France lacks in architectural magnificence it
makes up for in quaintness and variety, and above all environment.
The historic memories hovering around Béarn and Navarre are so many and
varied that each will have to establish them for himself if any pretence
at completeness is to be made, and then the sum total will fall far
short of reality. All are dear to the Béarnais themselves, from the
legendary first sip of wine of the infant Henri to the more real, but of
still doubtful authenticity, tortoise-shell cradle. One absorbs them all
readily enough, on the spot, or in any perusal of French history of the
Middle Ages, and the names of the Centulles, the Gastons, the
Marguerites and the Henris are ever occurring and recurring whichever
by-path one takes.
The province of Béarn came to the Centulle house in the ninth century,
and passed by marriage (in 1170) to that of Moncade, from which family
it was transferred as a dowry, in 1290, to Bernard III, Comte de Foix,
on condition that Béarn and Foix should be united in perpetuity. Gaston
IX, a later descendant, by marrying Elénore de Navarre, in 1434, united
the two sovereignties, and Catherine de Foix, his sister, in turn made
over her hereditary rights to her husband, Comte de Pentièvre et de
Périgord.
In spite of this, Béarn and the Béarnais have always kept a distinct and
separate identity from that of their allies and associates, and Henri,
Prince de Béarn, is as often thought of by the Béarnais as Henri, Roi de
Navarre, even though the two titles belonged to one and the same person.
The most brilliant epoch of Béarn was that which began with Henri II and
Marguerite de Valois. The old Gothic castle at Pau had become
metamorphosed into a Renaissance palace, and the most illustrious
princess of her century drew thither the most reputed savants,
litterateurs, and artists in the world, until the little Pyrenean
capital became known as the "_Parnasse Béarnais_." Jean d'Albret and
Catherine were succeeded by their eldest son, who became Henri II of
Navarre, and Henri I of Béarn. This prince was born in the month of
August, 1503, and was given the name of Henri because it was the name of
one of two faithful German pilgrims who passed by, en route to pay their
devotions at the shrine of St. Jacques de Compestelle. The pilgrims were
given hospitality by the king of Navarre, and, because it was thought
meet that the newborn prince should bear a worthy, even though humble
name, he was baptized thus, though the proud countrymen of Béarn did
resent it. The circumstance is curiously worthy of record.
Béarn and Navarre are above all other provinces of France proud indeed
of the great names of history, and Henri Quatre and Gaston Phoebus
were hung well on the line in the royal portrait galleries of their
time. The first was more of a good ruler than a gallant chevalier, and
the second possessed a regal personality which gave him a place almost
as exalted as that of his brother prince. Together they gave an
indescribable lustre to the country of their birth.
In erecting the statue of Henri IV in the Place Royale at Pau the
Béarnais rendered homage to the most illustrious son of Béarn. Without
Henri Quatre one would not know that Béarn had ever existed, for it was
he who carried its name and fame afar. Luchon, Biarritz and Pau are
known of men and women of all nations as tourist places of a supreme
rank, but the mind ever wanders back to the days of the gallant, rough,
unpolished Henri who went up to Paris and, in spite of opposition,
became the first Bourbon king of the French after the Valois line was
exhausted.
The Béarnais--the mountaineers, as they were often contemptuously
referred to at the capital--had a time of it making their way at Paris,
for there was a rivalry and jealousy against the southerners at Paris
which was only explainable by traditionary prejudice.
When Catherine de Medici was making the first efforts to marry off her
daughter Marguerite to Henri, Prince of Béarn, the feeling was at its
height. It is curious to remark in this connection that the two queens
of Navarre by the name of Marguerite were separated by only a half
century of time, and both were to become famous in the world of letters,
the first for her "Heptameron" and the second for her "Mémoires."
The daughter of the Medici would have none of the rough prince of Béarn
and told her mother so plainly, resenting the fact that he was a
Protestant as much as anything.
"My daughter, listen," said the queen mother. "This marriage is
indispensable for reasons of state. The king, your brother, and I
myself, like the king of Navarre as little as you do. That little
kingdom in the high valleys of the Pyrenees is a veritable thorn in our
sides, but by some means or other we must pluck it out."
"I shall go to Nerac, in Gascony," the queen mother continued, "to
conclude a treaty with my sister, Reine Jeanne, the mother of Henri de
Béarn. When an alliance is concluded between the queen of Navarre and
myself your marriage _shall_ take place." This was final!
Tradition--or perhaps it is a fact, though the average traveller won't
remark it--says that the Béarnais are an irascible and jealous people.
Proud they are, but there are no external evidences to show that they
are more irascible or jealous than any other folk one meets in the
French countryside. In the valleys the type is more delicate than that
of the inhabitants of the mountain slopes, and throughout they are
fervidly religious without being in the least fanatical.
The same tradition that says the Béarnais are rough, irascible spirits,
says also that they seek for a summary personal vengeance rather than
let the process of law take its course. There's something of philosophy
in this, if it's true, but again it is reiterated there are no visible
signs that the peasant of Béarn is of the knife-drawing class of
humanity to which belong Sicilians and gypsies. The writer on more than
one occasion has been stalled in the Pyrenees while blazing an
automobile trail up some valley road that he ought not to have
attempted, and has found the Béarnais a faithful, willing worker in
helping him out of a hole (this is literal), and glad indeed to accept
such an honorarium as was bestowed upon him. Nothing of brigandage in
this!
The passing times change men and manners, and when it is recorded by the
préfet of the Basses-Pyrénées that no department ever had so much
law-business going on before in its courts, it shows at least that if
the Béarnais do have their little troubles among themselves, they are
now a law-loving, law-abiding people.
They are good livers and drinkers too, of much the same stamp as the
gallant Gascons, of whom Dumas wrote. It was in a Béarnais inn that the
Prince de Conti saw the following couplet chalked upon the wall:
"Je m'apuelle Robineau,
Et je bois mon vin sans eaux."
Whereupon he added:
"Et moi, Prince de Conti,
Sans eaux je le bois aussi."
The sentiment is not very high; window-pane poetry and the like never
does soar; but it is significant of the good living of past and present
times in France, and in these parts in particular.
The peasant dress of the Béarnais is the same throughout all the
communes. They wear a woollen head-dress, something like that of the
Basques. It is round, generally brown, and usually drawn down over the
left ear in a most _dégagé_ fashion. The student of Paris' Latin Quarter
is a poor copy of a Béarnais so far as his cap goes. In some parts of
the plain below the foot-hills of the Pyrenees,--around Tarbes for
example,--the cap is replaced by a little round hat, a sort of a cross
between that sometimes worn by the Breton, and a "bowler" of the vintage
of '83.
A long blouse-like coat, or jacket, is worn, and woollen breeches and
gaiters, of such variegated colouring as appeals to each individual
himself. In style the costume of the Béarnais is national; in colour it
is anything you like and individual, but mostly brown or gray of those
shades which were the progenitors of what we have come to know as khaki.
The shepherds and cattle guardians, indeed all of the inhabitants of the
higher valleys and slopes, dress similarly, but in stuffs of much
coarser texture and heavier weight, and wear quite as much clothing in
summer as in the coldest days of winter.
The Béarnais speak a _patois_, or idiom, composed of the structural
elements of Celtic, Latin and Spanish. It is not a language, like the
Breton or the Basque, but simply a hybrid means of expression, difficult
enough for outsiders to become proficient in, but not at all unfamiliar
in sound to one used to the expressions of the Latin races. It is more
like the Provençal of the Bouches-du-Rhône than anything else, but very
little like the Romance tongue of Languedoc.
In cadence the Béarnais _patois_ is sweet and musical, and the
literature of the tongue, mostly pastoral poetry, is of a beauty
approaching the epilogues of Virgil.
The _patois_ is the speech of the country people, and French that of the
town dwellers. The educated classes may speak French, but, almost
without exceptions, they know also the _patois_, as is the case in
Provence, where the _patois_ is reckoned no _patois_ at all, but a real
tongue, and has the most profuse literature of any of the anciently
spoken tongues of France.
The following lines in the Béarnais _patois_ show its possibilities.
They were sung when Jeanne de Navarre was giving birth to the infant
prince who was to become Henri IV.
_"Nouste Dame deü cap deü poün,_
_Adyudat-me à d'acquest'hore;_
_Pregats au Dioü deü ceü_
_Qu'emboulle bié delioura ceü,_
_D'u maynat qu'em hassie lou doun_
_Tou d'inqu' aü haut dous mounts l'implore_
_Adyudat-me à d'acquest'hore."_
The significance of these lines was that the queen prayed God that she
might be delivered of her child without agony, but above all that it
might be born a boy.
Béarn was fairly populous in the old days with a well distributed
population, and the towns were all relatively largely inhabited. Now, in
some sections, as in the Pays de Baretous, for example, the region is
losing its population daily, and in half a century the figures have
decreased something like thirty per cent. Like many other Pyrenean
valleys the population has largely emigrated to what they call "les
Amériques," meaning, in this case, South or Central America, never North
America. Buenos Ayres they know, also "la ville de Mexique," but New
York is a vague, meaningless term to the peasant of the French
Pyrenees.
The _bastides_,--the country houses, often fortified châteaux with
dependencies,--originally a Béarnais institution, often remained
stagnant hamlets or villages instead of developing into prosperous towns
as they did elsewhere in the Midi of France, particularly in Gascogne
and Languedoc. Many a time their sites had been chosen fortunately, but
instead of a bourg growing up around them they remained isolated and
backward for no apparent reason whatever.
This has been the fate of Labastide-Ville-franche in Béarn. One traces
readily enough the outlines of the original _bastide_, but more than all
else marvels at the great, four-storied donjon tower, planned by the
father of the illustrious Gaston Phoebus of Foix. This sentinel tower
stood at the juncture of the principalities of Béarn, Bidache and
Navarre. Gaston Phoebus finished this great donjon with the same
generous hand with which he endowed everything he touched, and it ranks
among the best of its era wherever found. The _bastide_ and its
dependencies grew up around the foot of this tower, but there is nothing
else to give the little town--or more properly village--any distinction
whatever; it still remains merely a delightful old-world spot, endowed
with a charming situation. It calls itself a _rendezvous commercial_,
but beyond being a cattle-market of some importance, thanks to its being
the centre of a spider's web of roads, not many outside the immediate
neighbourhood have ever heard its name mentioned, or seen it in print.
In this same connection it is to be noted that all of Béarn and the
Basque provinces are celebrated for their cattle. What Arabia is to the
horse, the Pyrenean province of Béarn, more especially the gracious
valley of Barétous, called the "Jardin de Béarn," is to the bovine race.
Another delightful, romantic corner of Béarn is the valley of the Aspe.
Urdos is its principal town, and here one sees ancient customs as quaint
as one is likely to find hereabouts. Urdos is but a long-drawn-out,
one-street village along the banks of the Gave d'Aspe, but it is lively
and animated with all the gaiety of the Latin life. On a fête day
omnibuses, country carts, donkeys, mules and even oxen bring a very
respectable crowd to town, and there is much merry-making of a kind
which knows not modern amusements in the least degree. Continuous
dancing,--all day and all night--interspersed with eating and drinking
suffices. Something of the sort was going on, the author and artist
thought, when they arrived at five on a delightful June day; but no, it
was nothing but the marriage feast of a local official, and though all
the rooms of the one establishment which was dignified by the name of a
hotel were taken, shelter was found at an humble inn kept by a worthy
widow. She certainly was worthy, for she charged for dinner, lodging,
and coffee in the morning, for two persons, but the small sum of six
francs and didn't think the automobile, which was lodged in the shed
with the sheep and goats and cows, was an excuse for sticking on a
single sou. She was more than worthy; she was gentle and kind, for when
a fellow traveller, a French Alpinist, would find a guide to show him
the way across the mountain on the morrow, and so on down into the Val
d'Ossau, she expostulated and told him that the witless peasant he had
engaged to show him the road had never been, to her knowledge, out of
his own commune. Her interrogation of the unhappy, self-named "guide"
was as sharp a bit of cross-questioning as one sees out of court. "No,
he knew not the route, but all one had to do was to go up the mountain
first and then down the other side." All very well, but which other
side? There were many ramifications. He was sure of being able to find
his way, he said, but the Frenchman became suspicious, and the bustling
landlady found another who _did_ know, and would work by some other
system than the rule of thumb, which is a very bad one for mountain
climbing. This time the intrepid tourist found a real guide and not a
mere "_cultivateur_," as the mistress of the inn contemptuously called
the first.