THE MAGI KINGS
The eve of the Feast of Epiphany it was the custom for all the children
of our countryside to go forth to meet the three kings, the wise men
from the East, who with their camels and attendants and all their suite
came in procession to Maillane there to adore the Holy Child.
One such occasion I well remember.
With hearts beating in joyful excitement, eyes full of visions, we
sallied forth on the road to Arles a numerous company of shock-headed
urchins and blonde-headed maidens with little hoods and sabots, bearing
our offerings of cakes for the kings, dried figs for their pages, and
hay for the camels.
The east wind blew, which means it was cold. The sun sank, lurid, into
the Rhône. The streams were frozen, and the grass at the water’s edge
dried up. The bark of the leafless trees showed ruddy tints, and the
robin and wren hopped shivering from branch to branch. Not a soul was to
be seen in the fields, save perhaps some poor widow picking up sticks
or a ragged beggar seeking snails beneath the dead hedges.
“Where go you so late, children?” inquired some passer-by.
“We go to meet the kings,” we answered confidently.
And like young cocks, our heads in the air, along the white, wind-swept
road we continued our way, singing and laughing, sliding and hopping.
The daylight waned. The bell-tower of Maillane disappeared behind the
trees, the tall dark pointed cypresses and the wide barren plain
stretched away into the dim distance. We strained our eyes as far as
they could see, but in vain. Nothing was in sight save some branch
broken by the wind laying on the stubbly field. Oh, the sadness of those
mid-winter evenings when all nature seemed dumb and suffering.
Then we met a shepherd, his cloak wrapped tightly round him, returning
from tending his sheep. He asked whither we were bound so late in the
day. We inquired anxiously had he seen the kings, and were they still a
long way off. Oh, the joy when he replied that he had passed the kings
not so very long since--soon we should see them. Off we set running with
all speed, running to meet the kings and present our cakes and handfuls
of hay.
Then, just as the sun disappeared behind a great dark cloud and the
bravest among us began to flag--suddenly, behold them in sight.
A joyful shout rang from every throat as the magnificence of the royal
pageant dazzled our sight.
A flash of splendour and gorgeous colour shone in the rays of the
setting sun, while the blazing torches showed the gleams of gold on
crowns set with rubies and precious stones.
The kings! The kings! See their crowns! See their mantles--their flags,
and the procession of camels and horses which are coming.
We stood there entranced. But instead of approaching us little by little
the glory and splendour of the vision seemed to melt away before our
eyes with the sinking sun, extinguished in the shadows. Crestfallen we
stood there, gaping to find ourselves alone on the darkening highway.
Which way did the kings go?
They passed behind the mountain.
The white owl hooted. Fear seized us, and huddling together we turned
homewards, munching the cakes and figs we had brought for the kings.
Our mothers greeted us with, “Well, did you see them?”
Sadly we answered, “Only afar--they passed behind the mountain.”
“But which road did you take?”
“The road to Arles.”
“Oh, poor lambs--but the kings never come by that road. They come from
the East--you should have taken the Roman road. Ah dear, what a pity,
you should have seen them enter Maillane. It was a beautiful sight, with
their tambours and trumpets, the pages and the camels--it was a show!
Now they are gone to the church to offer their adoration. After supper
you shall go and see them!”
We supped with speed, I at my grandmother’s, and then we ran to the
church. It was crowded, and, as we entered, the voices of all the
people, accompanied by the organ, burst forth into the superbly majestic
Christmas hymn:
This morn I met the train
Of the three great kings from the East;
This morn I met the train
Of the kings on the wide high road.
We children, fascinated, threaded our way between the women, till we
reached the Chapel of the Nativity. There, suspended above the altar,
was the beautiful star, and bowing the knee in adoration before the Holy
Child we beheld at last the three kings. Gaspard, with his crimson
mantle, offering a casket of gold; Melchior, arrayed in yellow, bearing
in his hands a gift of incense; and Balthazar, with his cloak of blue,
presenting a vase of the sadly prophetic myrrh. How we admired the
finely dressed pages who upheld the kings’ flowing mantles, and the
great humped camels whose heads rose high above the sacred ass and ox;
also the Holy Virgin and Saint Joseph, besides all the wonderful
background, a little mountain in painted paper with shepherds and
shepherdesses bringing hearth-cakes, baskets of eggs, swaddling clothes,
the miller with a sack of corn, the old woman spinning, the
knife-grinder at his wheel, the astonished innkeeper at his window, in
short, all the traditional crowd who figure in the Nativity, and, above
and beyond all, the Moorish king.
Many a time since those early days it has chanced that I have found
myself upon the road to Arles at this same Epiphany season about dusk.
Still the robin and the wren haunt the long hawthorn hedge. Still some
poor old beggar may be seen searching for snails in the ditch, and still
the hoot of the owl breaks the stillness of the winter evening. But in
the rays of the setting sun I see no more the glory and crowns of the
old kings.
Which way have they passed, the kings?
Behind the mountain.
Alas this melancholy and sadness clings always around the things seen
with the eyes of our youth. However grand, however beautiful the
landscape we have known in early days, when we return, eager to see it
once more, something is ever lacking, something or some one!
“Oh, let me, dreaming, lose myself down yonder
Where widespread cornfields, red with poppies, lie,
As when a little lad, I used to wander
And lose myself, beneath the self-same sky.
Some one, searching every cover,
Seeks for me, the whole field over,
Saying her angelus piously;
But where yon the skylarks, singing,
Through the sun their way are winging,
I follow so fast and eagerly.
O poor mother! loving-hearted,
Dear, great soul! thou hast departed;
No more shall I hear thee, calling me.”[4]
(From “Les Isclo d’Or.” Trans. Alma Strettell).
Who can give me back the ideal joy and delight of my child-heart as I
sat at my mother’s knee drinking in the wonder-tales and fables, the old
songs and rhymes, as she sang and spoke them in the soft sweet language
of Provence.
There was the “Pater des Calandes,” Marie-Madeleine the poor
fisher-girl, The Cabin-boy of Marseilles, the Swineherd, the Miser, and
how many other tales and legends of Provence to which the cradle of my
early years was rocked, filling my dreams with poetic visions. Thus from
my mother I drew not only nourishment for my body but for my mind and
soul, the sweet honey of noble tradition and faith in God.
In the present day, the narrow materialistic system refuses to reckon
with the wings of childhood, the divine instincts of the budding
imagination and its necessity to wonder, that faculty which formerly
gave us our saints and heroes, poets and artists. The child of to-day no
sooner opens his eyes than his elders try to wither up both heart and
soul. Poor lunatics! Life and the day-school, above all the school of
experience, will teach him but too soon the mean realities of life, and
the disillusions, analectic and scientific, of all that so enchanted our
youth.
If some tiresome anatomist told the young lover that the fair maiden of
his heart, in the bloom of her youth and beauty, was but a grim skeleton
when robbed of her outer covering, would he not be justified in shooting
him out of hand?
In connection with those traditions and wonder-tales of Provence,
familiar to my childhood, I cannot do better than quote old Dame
Renaude, a gossip of our village when I was a boy.
Still I can picture her seated on a log and sunning herself at her door.
She is withered, shrivelled and lined, the poor old soul, like a dried
fig. Brushing away the teasing flies, she drinks in the sunshine, dozes
and sleeps the hours away.
“Taking a little nap in the sun, Tante Renaude?”
“Well, see you, I was neither exactly waking nor sleeping--I said my
paternosters and I dreamt a bit--and praying, you know, one is apt to
doze. Aye, but it is a bad thing when one is past work--the time hangs
heavy on hand.”
“Won’t you catch cold sitting out of doors?”
“Me, catch cold? Why I am dry as matchwood. If I was boiled I shouldn’t
furnish a drop of oil.”
“If I were you I would stroll round quietly and have a chat with some
old crony--it would help pass the time.”
“The old gossips of my time are nearly all gone, soon there won’t be one
left. True, there is still the old Geneviève, deaf as a plough, and old
Patantane in her dotage, and Catherine de Four who does nothing but
groan--I’ve enough of my own ailments. Oh no, it is better to be alone.”
“Why not go and have a chat with the washer-women down there at the
wash-house?”
“What, those hussies? who backbite and pull each other to pieces, first
one and then the other, the livelong day. They abuse every one and then
laugh like idiots. The good God will send a judgment on them one of
these days. Aye, but it was not so in our time.”
“What did you talk about in your time?”
“In our time? Why, we told old histories and tales which it was a
pleasure to listen to, such as ‘The Beast with Seven Heads,’ ‘Fearless
John,’ and ‘The Great Body without a Soul.’ Why one of those tales would
last us three or four evenings. At that time we spun our own wool and
hemp. Winter time after supper we used to take our distaffs and meet
together in some big sheep-barn, and while the men fed and folded the
beasts and outside the north wind blew and the dogs howled at the
prowling wolves, we women huddled together with the young lambs and
their mothers, and as our spinning-wheels hummed busily, told each other
tales.
“We believed in those days in things which they laugh at now, but which
all the same were seen by people I myself know, people whose word was
to be trusted. There was my Aunt Mïan, wife of the basket-maker whose
grandsons live at the Clos de Pain-Perdu; one day when she was picking
up sticks, she saw all at once a fine white hen. It seemed quite tame,
but when my Aunt put out her hand gently the hen eluded her, and
commenced pecking in the grass a little way off. Very cautiously again
Aunt Mïan approached the hen, who seemed to desire to be caught. But
directly my aunt thought she had got her, off she was--the aunt
following, more and more determined to catch her. More than an hour she
led her a dance, then as the sun went down Mïan took fright and turned
home. Lucky for her she did, for had she gone after that white hen all
night, the Holy Virgin only knows where the creature would have landed
the poor woman!
“Folks told, too, of a black horse or mule, some said it was a huge sow,
which appeared to the young rakes as they came out of the public-house.
One night at Avignon a lot of good-for-nothings on the spree saw a black
horse suddenly come out of the Camband Sewer.
“‘Oh, look!’ says one of them, ‘here’s a fine horse, blest if I don’t
mount him,’ and the horse let him get on quietly enough.
“‘Why there’s room for me, too,’ says another, and up he got.
“‘And me, too,’ says a third. He jumped up also, and as one by one they
mounted, that horse’s back became longer and longer, till, if you’ll
believe it, there were a dozen of those young fools on this same horse!
Then a thirteenth cries out:
“‘Lord--Holy Virgin and sainted Joseph, I believe there’s room for
another’! But at these words the beast vanished, and our twelve riders
found themselves on their feet looking sheepish enough, I can tell you.
Lucky for them that the last one had pronounced the names of the saints,
for otherwise that evil beast would have carried them straight to the
devil.
“And then, O Lord, there were the witch-cats. Why yes, those black cats
they called the ‘Mascots,’ for they were said to make money come to the
house where they lived. You knew the old Tarlavelle, eh?--she who left
such a pile of crowns when she died--well, she had a black cat, and she
took care to give it the first helping at every meal. And there was my
poor uncle, going to bed one night by the light of the moon, what does
he see but a black cat crossing the road. He, thinking no harm, threw a
stone at the cat--when, lo and behold, the beast turned round, gave him
an evil look, and hissed out, ‘Thou hast hit Robert!’ Strange things!
To-day they seem like dreams, nobody ever mentions them--yet there must
have been something in it all, or why should every one have been so
afraid. Eh, and there were many others,” continued Renaude, “awful
strange creatures like the Night-witch, who seated herself on your chest
and squeezed the breath out of you. And the Wier-wolf, and the Jack o’
Lantern, and the Fantastic Sprite. Why, just fancy, one day--I might
have been eleven years old--I was returning from the catechism class
when, passing near a poplar, I heard a laugh coming from the very top of
the tree. I looked up, and there was the Fantastic Sprite grinning
between the leaves and making me signs to climb up. Why, I wouldn’t have
gone up that tree for a hundred onions--I took to my heels and ran as if
I’d gone crazy. Oh, I can tell you, when we talked of these things round
the hearth at nights not one of us would have gone outside. Poor
children, what a fright we were in. But we soon grew up, and then came
the time for lovers, and the lads would call to us to come out and walk
or dance by the moonlight. At first we refused for fear we might meet
the White Hen or the Fantastic Sprite, but when they called us ‘sillies’
to believe such blind grandmother’s tales, and said they’d scare away
the hobgoblins--boys of that age have got no sense, and make you laugh
with their nonsense even against your will--why, gradually we ceased to
think so much of it. For one thing we soon had too much to do. Why, I
had eleven children, who all turned out well, thank God, besides others
I looked after. When one is not rich and has all those brats to do for,
one’s hands are pretty full, I can tell you.”
“Well, Tante Renaude, may the good God protect you.”
“Oh, now I am well ripened--let Him pluck me as soon as He will.” And
with her big handkerchief the old body flicks at the flies, and nodding
her head, quietly leans back and continues to drink in the sunshine.