SONG, DANCE, AND LEGEND
"At eventide it delighted him much to sit by the blazing fire
of fagots on the hearth and tell us tales of the Reign of
Terror, when during the Revolution he had dug a pit and had
hidden there many a poor fugitive. Then my mother would sing
the sweet old Provençal songs, _La Bello Margountoud_, _L'aucen
engabia_....
"Ballads and stories would be told by her while I drank in
with delight the wild legends of Provence."--MISTRAL'S ACCOUNT
OF HIS PARENTS.
There are so many famous things connected with Provence that one never
comes to the end of them. There are dances and festivals and fires on St.
John's Eve in honour of Baal (as there are, or were till quite lately,
in Scotland). There are rich wines and the far-famed _bouillabaisse_,
a dish of fish of mixed sorts, boiled with saffron, and, to feminine
palates, extremely nasty!
Great was our delight to see, in passing a side-road leading to a small
hostelry, a sign-board with the mystic word printed in triumphant letters.
This was local colour indeed! Our enthusiasm rose to boiling-point; I
doubt if even our critical friend could have chilled us at that moment.
Here was Provence and _bouillabaisse_; nothing disappointing; the
concoction not one whit less nauseous than one might have expected!
Dumas writes with ardour about the dish:--
"While polenta and macaroni possess all the characteristics of
primitive and antediluvian simplicity, _bouillabaisse_ is the
result of the most advanced state of culinary civilisation;
comprising in itself a whole epic of unexpected episodes and
extraordinary incidents."
The celebrated wines of Chateauneuf-des-Papes, Sainte Baume, and others I
doubt if we tasted; but all the wines seemed ambrosial to us; especially
when it was "weather for singing the Peyrenolle," a very ancient song
of which only the name remains in this saying of the people.
The dance of the _farandole_ is of Greek origin and must be infinitely
graceful, but alas! we only heard of it, never saw it danced. The dancers
join hands to form chains, each chain led by a man or a woman, who plays
a merry air on the _gaboulet_. These chains, following their leaders,
then form into lines, passing rapidly before one another in contrary
directions--like divergent currents--dancing in time to the music. And
then they swing off into circles and dance round and round maypoles and
walnut-trees, till the whole place is wild with merriment. On occasions
of great rejoicing the people used to dance the _farandole_ through the
streets, all joining in the whirling circles, rich and poor. It was like
a wind of joy flying through the city!
The people of Provence have also some Saracen dances, bequeathed to them
by that marauding people when they lived in the Mountains of the Moors,
in their rock-set fortresses: _Li Mouresco_ and _lis Ouliveto_, which
was danced after the olive harvest.
This pervasive characteristic of dance and song for which Provence is
so famous, doubtless springs from the fact that this people have never
ceased to be pagans.
The clergy of the Middle Ages in vain tried to suppress this element.
There are strange stories of the mingling of ancient customs
and diversions with Christian ceremonies: dancing and songs, the
antique chorus, and love-poems sung or recited in the very churches;
ecclesiastical discipline being far less stringent in the south than in
the north of France, where classic influences had been weaker. Religion
was associated in the minds of the Provençals with gaiety and festivals;
and the clergy, in order to attract and retain the people, had found
it necessary to recognise this pagan spirit which took its origin in
far-off generations when the Greeks founded Marseilles and its numerous
off-shoots; when for five and a half centuries the Romans ruled and
civilised the country. In the ninth and tenth centuries, moreover, the
clergy and the people of the south were more or less closely assimilated,
and this touch of paganism in the priesthood made possible what at first
sight challenges belief.
At Limoges, for instance, during the feast of St. Martial, the people used
to substitute for the words of the Latin liturgy some original couplets
in the Romance tongue: "St. Martial, pray for us, and we will dance for
you," and they furthermore broke out into a dance in the church, without
the faintest sense of incongruity; for to these people worship, song,
and rhythmic movement were parts of one and the same impulse.
And--if one comes to that--on what ground have they been divorced?
The feast of Flora was celebrated in Provence till the sixteenth century,
when it was suppressed; the "mimes" and actors of antiquity were familiar
figures of the Middle Ages; among them a class of women jongleurs who
went about from city to city; and the wild feast of the Lupercal is said
to have had its mediæval representative in this essentially pagan land.
This was the epoch when Latin had about ceased to be a living tongue,
and from its corpse, so to speak, had arisen a multitude of dialects all
over the Roman world, among them the Romance or Provençal, the _Langue
d'Oc_, in which poems and legends were now written. Authors at this
time were nearly always monks, but they treated their subjects with
much freedom, as, for instance, in the _Vision of St. Paul_,[12] who
descends to the Infernal Regions to visit the "cantons of hell" and to
see the luckless sinners in their misery, each tormented appropriately
according to the nature of their transgression. The poem was evidently
a crude forerunner of the Divine Comedy.
From this popular literature the troubadour poetry of the next centuries
sprang, without, however, extinguishing its predecessors, which continued
to exist side by side with the new forms of art.
That character makes destiny is very clearly evidenced in Provençal
history. This rich, eventful, romantic story is just what a people
renowned for _bonté d'esprit_, grace, good looks, poetry, eloquence,
sentiment, passion, must inevitably weave for themselves in the course of
ages. From the time when paleolithic man was making rude stone implements
and living in caves or holes in the earth, this country has been busily
forming and developing the human body and soul, perhaps in a more clear
and visible sequence of progress that can easily be traced elsewhere.
The variety and persistence of ancient legends and customs serves to
indicate the road of evolution from stage to stage with picturesque
vividness. The prehistoric is not far off in this land, where Time
loses its illusory quality and seems to assume the character that all
philosophers attribute to it when they speak of the _Eternal Now_.
The mountains contiguous to the mountains of the Moors, the beautiful
Esterelles, so familiar to visitors on the Riviera, have a legend of
a fairy Estelle, or Esterella, who used to be worshipped there and to
receive sacrifices. The woodcutters dread the apparition. Her smile is
of such unearthly beauty that any man who sees her is so fascinated
that he is for ever drawn by a resistless longing to find her again,
and some "have spent years leaping from crag to crag, while others have
wandered away to lead the life of a hermit in forest shades." Is this
a myth typifying the search after the Ideal and the Beautiful?
The Incourdoules have their Golden Goat which haunts the most inaccessible
fastnesses, living in a cavern full of precious stones and treasure.[13]
One day a mysterious man appeared and began to build a _cabanoun_, or
hut, in a lonely spot. He wore a sheepskin, red turban, and blue sash;
and when a woodcutter spoke to him he laughed mockingly and cried:--
"Taragnigna, Taragnigna!
Fai attension a la mouissara.
Vau a la vigna,
Vau a la vigna--
Vai-ti-pia!
Vai-ti-pia!
Taragnigna mia!"
("Cobweb! cobweb!
Mark that spy!
I am going to the vineyard.
I am going to the vineyard.
We are in danger--we are lost!
Cobweb mine!")
Whereupon an enormous black spider came swinging from the branch of
a pine, with menacing looks. The woodcutter said it was as large as
a _tesa-negra_ (blackhead or linnet). He flees in horror, but can't
resist returning on the morrow to the mysterious _cabanoun_. He feels a
shivering feeling creep over him as he approaches, and is again greeted
by a burst of laughter. "_Ha, ha, ha, mon vieux, toccan li cique sardino
ensen_" ("Let us touch the five sardines together, neighbour," _i.e._,
shake hands--common Provençal expression).
"Taragnigna! Taragnigna!
Fai attension a moun Vesin!"
and the great spider fixed his eyes on Sieur Guizol, the woodcutter, and
ran nimbly down its silken cord. Then the strange host comes down from
among the rafters and begins to talk. Finally, he tells his guest that
he has come to seek the _Cabro d'Or_, and breaks out again in a wild
song--"Taragnigna, you and I are going to make our fortunes."
"Barba Garibo, e giorno, leve vo!
Porte de zenzibo,
Dame do a tre mério.
Un ome come vo
Ch' ha vist tante cause
E ben giust che se repause
Che vos par d'aisso?
Barba Garibo! Barba Garibo!"
("Uncle Garibo! it is day, arouse thyself!
Bring dry raisins,
Two or three small new potatoes--
A man like you,
Who so many things hast seen,
It is most just he should repose himself.
What think you of it? What think you of it?
Uncle Garibo! Uncle Garibo!")
And the spider seemed to dance in a wild ecstasy, vibrating on his line
with immense impetus, quite close to Sieur Guizol's face.
Then Guizol asks if his host really believes in the Golden Goat, and
the man addresses the spider indignantly.
"Ha! dost thou hear him Taragnigna? He doubts that the _Cabro d'Or_
lives here! But he won't doubt when he gets some of his gold!"
And then he goes on to say that after that he will marry Guizol's
daughter, Rosette, and they will all go down to the woodcutter's home,
and the spider shall dance Li Mouresco every night.
"And thou shall give us _lis Ouliveto_," he adds, addressing the
formidable insect; "for the Sieur does not know perhaps that I am a
_cornamousaire_."
He draws out a bagpipe and commences to play.
"What, _brave ome!_ art thou going to dance? Now let me see if you have
forgotten the farandole," and the musician lilted up a wild fantastic
tune, "and Sieur Guizol's feet began to keep time to the music, and anon
faster and faster as the player played, faster and faster poor Guizol
danced, while the spider swung about as though in rapture."
Thus the poor woodcutter is drawn under the will of the recluse and his
spider, and night after night, against his better judgment, against his
wish, he goes to meet the sorcerer at the hole in the mountain where
the Golden Goat guards his treasure.
* * * * *
Guizol is set to work to excavate, the other watching and holding aloft
two pine-torches. Fortunately for Guizol, Gastoun, the lover of Rosette,
had followed him one night, wondering uneasily at his regular absences
from home. Suddenly the gold-seeker leaps up, seeing a flag of stone.
"The treasure!" he yells. There is not a moment to lose, for if they do
not get the gold before the goat awakes, the chance is over.
"Oh, thou dear little _bletta oulivié_" (olive rod used for gold finding),
"thou didst not deceive me after all," the man shouts, pouncing on a
vase and other buried objects. They begin to find the gold, when the
sorcerer suddenly takes an iron bar and knocks down his companion and
thrusts him into the hole crying, "Gold, gold, all mine now!"
But Gastoun rushes in and the two engage in a death-wrestle in the pitch
darkness.
"_Lo cabro d'or, lo dian!_" screams the man and rushes away past his foe,
who is dressed in a goat-skin; and so finally the story ends happily
with the rescue of the stunned Guizol and the betrothal of Gastoun and
Rosette.
When Gastoun afterwards visited the _cabanoun_ of the recluse, he found
it all burnt and a blackened skull lying among the stones. "A rustling
sound was heard and a huge black spider ran hastily across the stones and
climbed on the dead man's skull," fixing its eyes on the intruder. Then
it shot out its line and wafted itself to the few half-burnt rafters,
"and there it swung round and round in a perfect gavotte." And for many
a day after, as it was rumoured in the mountains, there were strange
sounds at nightfall from the ruined _cabanoun_, and the peasants said
they heard the drone and cry of the _cornemuse_ and saw a skeleton seated
on a stone playing a horrible dance.
This story--founded on a legend that is said to exist in some form or
other all over the world--affords a quick picture of the place and the
people; but it is further remarkable as a story which seems founded on
some case of mesmeric power, probably by no means uncommon among these
mountaineers, a Celtic people, it is said, and perhaps for that reason
especially sensitive to this mysterious force.
There is a version of the legend at Nice in which the treasure-chamber
is under the bed of the Paglion. On a round table a life-sized gold goat
and kid are watched over by an exemplary demon who takes only an hour's
sleep out of the twenty-four. If a bold adventurer can then creep in
and blow the golden trumpet that the demon is so ill-advised as to keep
handy for the purpose at his side, that imprudent spirit is forced to
remain fixed to the chair, while a swarm of little goblins come trooping
in to offer their services in carrying the treasure to any spot that
the seeker may decide.
The entrance to this treasure-chamber is the house of a magician between
the Tina dei Pagani (the Pagan's Wine-vat, or Roman amphitheatre) and
the temple of Apollo, at Cimiez. The district is somewhat haunted by
demons and the sort of society that they frequent. The Witches' Rock,
rising high beyond Mont Chauve in inaccessible crags, was dear to the
uncanny crew, and it was here they danced their "unearthly reels."
On the Rocca di Dom at Avignon witches and wizards (_masc_ and _masco_)
used to assemble in the far-off days when there were only a few windmills
built upon the rock.
The story of the Hunchback of the Rocca di Dom is told of other places
also, but it seems to suit this spot better than any. Duncan Craig gives
a picturesque version of it.
The hunchback wandered up one night when the mistral was thundering
over the hill, setting the sails of the windmills tearing madly round.
And the moonlight was shining on the rock, calm through all the tumult.
The man can have had no tendency to insomnia, for he fell fast asleep
in the uproar, and when he woke it was to sounds of barbaric music and
the clashing of cymbals. And presently La Rocca was alive with a crowd
of faces, high-crowned conical hats, black satins and silks; and to the
great scandalisation of the watcher, grave and respected citizens of
Avignon arm-in-arm with the witches. And they were all dancing as hard as
they could dance, and the dust raised by the mistral whirled with them,
and the windmill sails tore round scrooping and creaking. New arrivals
would come on the scene, and these would receive strange salutations.
"Bon Vèspre, Cousin Chin!" ("Good evening, cousin dog.") "Bono sero,
Cousin Cat!" "Bono niue, Coumpaire Loup!" ("Good-night, gossip Wolf.")
"Coume vai, Misè Limace?" ("How are you, Mistress Snail?") "Pas maw,
pas maw, Cousin Jano."
And so they danced to their Saracenic music, and presently they began
to sing together a curious doggerel:--
"Dilun, Dimars e Demecre tres! Dilun, Dimars e Demecre tres!" ("Monday,
Tuesday, and Wednesday, three.") And they sang it over and over and over
again.
At last this seems to have got upon the poor man's nerves, for suddenly
he starts up and shouts--
"Dijou, Divendre, e Dissate, sieis." ("Thursday, Friday, and Saturday,
six.")
"Oh, lou brave gibous!" shriek the witches in chorus. "The dear hunchback
has come up here to complete our verse for us; Zou, we will make a man
of him."
And they come towards him in a whirling circle, dancing round and round
him till he is dazed and dazzled and seems to lose consciousness, when
suddenly he finds himself breathless on the rock alone and--straight as
a pine!
Another hunchback, hearing of this strange cure, went up to La Rocca on
a night of storm, all ready to finish the witches' rhyme for them. This
time it was:--
"Dilun, Dimars, e Demecre tres,
Dijou, Divendre, e Dissate sieis."
"E Dimenche, set," cried the hunchback, with enthusiasm. Whereupon there
was an awful howl and a great shudder that convulsed all the wicked crew.
"Who dares to speak of the Holy Day in these our revels?" a voice asked.
"Es lou gibous, lou marrit gibous! Zou, la gibo, la gibo. Gibo davans,
gibo darriè!"
And the luckless man found that, so far from being cured, he was
now doubly deformed--the old hump on the back and a new one on the
chest--through the malicious sorcery of the witches of La Rocca.
* * * * *
Provence is full of proverbs and quaint sayings, many of them very like
our own country saws about the weather and so forth.
"Ne per Magio, ne per Magiàn,
Non te leva o pelicàn."
("Neither for May, nor for warmest May,
Your winter coat should you take away.")
"Se Febraro non febregia
Mars marsegia."
("If February be not cold
March will pierce the young and old.")
"Non est tout or che relus," is our old friend, "All is not gold that
glitters."
There is a Nizard proverb very neatly put. "Experience keeps a school:
and it is the only one where thoughtless men will learn."
Another saying expresses an all too common fate in a few words: "A dou
mau de la cabro de Moussu Sequin, que se bategue touto la niue 'me lou
loup, e piei lou matin, lou loup la manje."
("He had the bad fortune of Monsieur Sequin's goat, which fought all
night with the wolf, and then the wolf eat him in the morning.")
There are many madrigals and songs of all sorts, all of them
characteristic; most of them inexpressibly charming. Perhaps the best
known is Magali, a quaint and tender expression of undying love which
death itself cannot daunt. Magali persistently refuses and flees from
the love of her adorer, who declares he will follow her even to the grave.
The following few quatrains taken here and there, will give the character
of the poem:--
"Less than the sound of wind that murmurs
Care I for thee or heed thy lay;
I'll be an eel, and in the ocean
Through the blue waters glide away."
"O Magali, if thou dost turn
Eel in the ocean,
Then 'tis a fisher I will be
And fish for thee."
"If in the sea thy net thou castest
And in its toils I fall a prey,
I'll be a bird, and to the forest
On my light pinions fly away."
"O Magali, if thou dost turn
Fowl in the forest,
Then 'tis a fowler I will be
And capture thee."
"Vain is thy passion, vain thy pursuit,
Never a moment shall I stay,
But in some oak's rough bark I'll guise me,
And in the dark woods hide away."
"O Magali, if thou dost turn
Oak in the forest,
Then 'tis the ivy I will be,
And cling to thee."
* * * * *
"Should'st thou once pass yon convent's portals,
Naught shalt thou find but lifeless clay;
Round me the white-veiled sisters weeping,
As in the grave my corpse they lay."
"O Magali, when thou, alas!
Art dead and silent,
I'll be the earth that buries thee:
Then mine thou'lt be."
"Now I believe no mocking mean'st thou;
Faithful thy vows; my heart they move,
Take from mine arm this crystal bangle,
Wear it in token of my love."
"O Magali, see how the stars
That bright were shining
Now thou art come, O Magali,
Turn pale and flee."[14]
It is most singular what an effect of song there is everywhere in this
country. The rivers seem to sing as they flow; the tall yellow reeds
sing as the wind stirs them; the olives have a little whispered canzo
of their own, and the mistral--even he roars a sort of rough baritone
in the general concert. No wonder the troubadours were born in this most
lyrical of lands.
They had songs for every possible occasion: the morning song or _aubade_,
the _serena_ or evening song, the _canzo_ or love-song, the _tenso_
for argumentative moods, the _descort_ when reproaching a cruel lady,
the complicated _sestina_ for moments of unbridled literary energy, the
_sirvente_ for general expression of views, the _planh_ or complaint, for
laments, as, for example, when Folquet of Marseilles (whose acquaintance
we are to make presently) writes of the death of Count Barral, Viscount
of Marseilles.[15]
"Like one who is so sad that he has lost the sense of sorrow,
I feel no pain or sadness; all is buried in forgetfulness.
For my loss is so overpowering that my heart cannot conceive
it, nor can any man understand its greatness."
In the following translation of some extracts from a tenso, the
troubadours Bernart de Ventadour and Peirol discuss relations of personal
feeling and artistic creation:
_Peirol._ Little worth is the song that does not come from the heart,
and as love has left me, I have left song and dalliance.
_Bernart._ Peirol, you commit great folly, if you leave off those for
such a reason; if I had harboured wrath in my heart, I should have been
dead a year ago, for I also can find no love nor mercy. But for all that
I do not abandon singing, for there is no need of my losing two things.
And so they go on sharpening their wits in gay debate.
The _Ballada_ is the merriest and most joyous of all these songs. It is a
dance-song of the people dating from Greek times. It is sung and danced
by one person only, and seems to be a sort of outburst of individual
joy and delight in life. Its secret is said to lie in the "rhythm and
graceful waving motion, in conjunction with the musical accent"; the
effect, says Hueffer, "must have been of surpassing charm."
"A l'entrada del tems clar, eya
Per joya recommençar, eya,
E per jelos irritar, eya,
Vol la regina mostrar
Q'el' est si amoroza,
Alavi, alavia, jelos
Laissaz nos, laissaz nos
Ballar entre nos, entre nos."
("At the beginning of the bright season, eya,
In order to begin again joy, eya,
And to irritate the jealous, eya,
The queen resolves to show how amorous she is,
Away, away, ye jealous,
Let us, let us dance by ourselves, by ourselves.")