CHAPTER XI

SONG, DANCE, AND LEGEND

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:—

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:—

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).

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."

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:—

"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.

"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:—

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]

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."