Chapter 8 No.8

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 vertebr? 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.

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."

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