Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine by Edward Harrison Barker
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Edward Harrison Barker >> Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine
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[Illustration: A BIT OF OLD FIGEAC. _Frontispiece_.]
WANDERINGS
BY
SOUTHERN WATERS
_EASTERN AQUITAINE_
BY
EDWARD HARRISON BARKER
AUTHOR OF 'WAYFARING IN FRANCE'
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1893
CONTENTS
THE VALLEY OF THE OUYSSE AND ROC-AMADOUR
FROM THE ALZOU TO THE DORDOGNE
WAYFARING UNDERGROUND
IN THE VALLEY OF THE CELE
IN THE ALBIGEOIS
ACROSS THE ROUERGUE
THE BLACK CAUSSE
THE CANON OF THE TARN
IN THE VALLEY OF THE LOT
[Illustration:
OAK CHIMNEY-PIECE AT THE SINECHAUSSEE (NOW HOTEL DE VILLE) OF MARTEL.]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A BIT OF OLD FIGEAC--_Frontispiece_
OAK CHIMNEY-PIECE AT THE SINECHAUSSEE (NOW HOTEL DE VILLE) OF MARTEL
THE PONT VALENTRE AT CAHORS
ROC-AMADOUR
PORCH OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ALBI
AMBIALET
CIGALA, THE SHOEBLACK.
[Illustration: THE PONT VALENTRE AT CAHORS.]
WANDERINGS BY SOUTHERN WATERS
THE VALLEY OF THE OUYSSE AND ROC-AMADOUR.
From the Old-English town of Martel, in Guyenne, I turned southward
towards the Dordogne. For a few miles the road lay over a barren
plateau; then it skirted a desolate gorge with barely a trace of
vegetation upon its naked sides, save the desert loving box clinging
to the white stones. A little stream that flowed here led down into
the rich valley of Creysse, blessed with abundance of fruit. Here I
found the nightingales and the spring flowers that avoid the
wind-blown hills. Patches of wayside took a yellow tinge from the
cross-wort galium; others, conquered by ground-ivy or veronica, were
purple or blue. Presently the tiled roofs of the village of Creysse
were seen through the poplars and walnuts. A delightful spot for a
poetical angler is this, for the Dordogne runs close by in the shadow
of prodigious rocks and overhanging trees. What a noble and stately
river I thought it, as the old ferryman, with white cotton nightcap on
his head, punted me across! I took the greater pleasure in its breadth
and grandeur here because I had seen it an infant river in the
Auvergne mountains, and had watched its growth as it rushed between
walls of rock and forest towards the plains.
What witchery of romance and spell-bound fancy is in the song of the
Dordogne as it breaks over its shallows under high rocky cliffs and
ruined castles! Everything that can charm the poet and the artist is
here. The grandeur of rugged nature combines with the most enticing
beauty of water and meadow, and the voices of the past echo with a
sweet sadness from cliff to cliff. It is said that several of these
castles were built to prevent the English from coming up the river,
but this may be treated as one of the many fanciful legends respecting
the British period which are repeated throughout Aquitaine.
By cutting off a curve of the Dordogne I soon came to the river-side
village of Meyronne, and here I stopped for a meal at a very pleasant
little inn, where to my surprise I found that I had been preceded a
few days before by another Englishman, who, accompanied by a
Frenchman, had come up from Bordeaux in a boat. They must have found
it very hard work rowing against the rapids. The hostess here was
evidently a woman who treasured her household gods, but who liked also
to show them. She gave me my coffee in a china cup that looked as if
it had belonged to her great-grandmother; and in the bright little
room where she served my lunch was a large walnut buffet elaborately
and admirably carved, bearing the date 1676.
After Meyronne my road ran for a few miles beside the broad and
curving river. The forms of the great cliffs on each side were ever
changing. Over a sky intensely blue sailed the fleecy April clouds
before the soft west wind, and whenever the sun shone out with
unveiled splendour, the rays fell with summer warmth. While the
tinkling of sheep-bells from the ledges of the rocks came down to me,
the passionate warble of nightingales, that could not wait for the
night, must have risen from the leafy valley to the ears of the
listless shepherd-boy gathering feather-grass where goats would not
dare to venture, or eating his dark bread in the sun on the edge of a
precipice. Time flowed gently like the river, and I was surprised to
find myself at Lacave so soon. This village is near the spot where the
Ouysse falls into the Dordogne. A little beyond the clustering houses,
upon the edge of a high rocky promontory overlooking the Ouysse, is
the castle of Belcastel, still retaining its feudal keep and outer
wall. In this fortress the English are said to have kept many of their
prisoners.
I now left the Dordogne and ascended the valley of the Ouysse. This
stream is one of the most remarkable of the natural phenomena of
France. To judge from its breadth near the mouth, one would suppose
that it had flowed fifty or a hundred miles, but its entire length is
less than ten miles. It is already a river when it rises out of the
depths of the earth. The narrow valley that it waters is a gorge 500
or 600 feet deep through the greater part of its distance. The
traveller at the bottom supposes, or is ready to suppose, that he is
in some ravine of the high mountains; in reality, it is simply a
fissure of the plateau that was once the bed of the sea. There is no
igneous, no metamorphic rock here; nothing but limestone of the
Jurassic formation. The convexities on one side of the fissure
correspond with marked regularity to the concavities on the other.
For awhile I walked on the lush grass by the brimming river, where in
the little creeks and bays the water-ranunculus floated its small
white flowers that were to continue the race. Then I left the water
and the green ribbon that followed its margin, and, taking a
sheep-track, rose upon the arid steeps, where the thinly-scattered
aromatic southern-wood was putting forth its dusty leaves. The bare
rocks, yellow, white, and gray, towered above me; they were beneath
me; they faced me across the valley; wherever I looked they were
shutting me off from the outer world. No nightingales were singing
here, but I heard the melancholy scream of the hawk and the harsh
croak of the raven. And yet, when I looked down into the bottom of
this steep desert of stones, what soft and vernal beauty was there!
Over the grass of living green was spread the gold of cowslips, just
as if that strip of meadow, with its gently-gliding river, had been
lifted out of an English dale and dropped into the midst of the
sternest scenery of Southern France.
As I went on I soon found that the stony wastes had their flowers too.
It would seem as if Nature had wished to console the desert by giving
to it her loveliest and most enticing blossoms. I came upon colonies
of the poet's narcissus, breathing over the rocks so sweet a fragrance
that it was as if a miracle had been wrought to draw it out of the
earth. I walked knee-deep through blooming asphodels, beautiful and
strange, but only noticed here by the wild bee. I gathered sprays of
the graceful alpine-tea, densely crowded with delicate white bloom,
and marvelled at the wanton splendour of the iris colouring the gray
and yellow stones with its gorgeous blue.
Still following the Ouysse, I came to a spot where the valley ended in
an amphitheatre formed by steep hills more than 600 feet high, and
covered for the most part with dwarf oak. In the hollow under the dark
cliffs was a little lake or pool forty or fifty yards from shore to
shore. The water showed no sign of trouble save where it overflowed
its basin on the western side, and formed the river that I had been
keeping in sight for hours. The pool filled the Gouffre de St.
Sauveur. Until the Ouysse finds this opening in the earth it is a
subterranean river, and it must flow at a great depth, probably at the
base of the calcareous formation, inasmuch as it continues to rise
from the gulf the whole year, although from the month of August until
the autumn rains nearly every water-course in the country is marked by
a curving line of dry pebbles. The funnel-shaped hole descends
vertically to the depth of about ninety feet, but there is no means of
knowing how far it descends obliquely. The tourist may occasionally
catch sight of a shepherd boy or girl with goats or sheep upon the
bare or wooded rocks, but his feeling will be one of deep loneliness.
He will see ravens and hawks about the crags, and about the river half
covered in summer with floating pond-weed, watercress, and the broad
leaves of the yellow lily, he will notice many a water-ouzel bobbing
with white breast, water-hens gliding from bank to bank, merry bands
of divers, and the brilliant blue gleam of the passing kingfisher,
which here is allowed to fish in peace, like the otter.
The Gouffre de St. Sauveur has its legend. It is said that when the
church of St. Sauveur, on the neighbouring hill, was in imminent
danger at the time of the Revolution, the bells were thrown into the
pool so that they should not fall into the hands of the enemy.
Imaginative people fancy that they can sometimes hear them ringing at
the bottom of the water.
After leaving the pool--now very sombre in the shadow of the wooded
hill--I crossed a ridge separating me from the Gouffre de Cabouy, out
of which flows a tributary of the Ouysse. Thence I reached the deep
and singularly savage gorge of the Alzou, which brought me to
Roc-Amadour, when the after-light of sunset was lingering rosily upon
the naked crags.
* * * * *
Rocks reach far overhead, dazzlingly white where the sunbeams strike
them, and below is a green line of narrow valley. A tinkling of bells
comes from the stony sides of the gorge, where sheep are browsing the
scant herbage and young shoots of southern-wood; and from the curving
fillet of meadow, where the grass seems to grow while the eye watches
it, rises the shrill little song of the stream hurrying over its
yellow bed, which may be dry again to-morrow. This Alzou is no more to
be depended upon than a coquette. After a period of drought, a storm
that has passed away hours ago will cause it suddenly to come hissing
down over the dry stones; but the next day no trace of the flow may be
found save a few pools. Or it may grow to a torrent, even a river,
that in its wild career scoffs at banks, and spreads devastation
through the valley.
It is April, and the nightingales, the swallows, the flowers, the
bees, and the kids, whose trembling voices are heard all about the
rocks, tell me that the spring has come. I cannot rest in my cottage
on the side of the gorge, not even on the balcony that seems to hang
in the air over the depth; the sounds from the valley, especially
those that the imagination hears, are too enticing.
Upon a high ledge of rock to which I have climbed, not without some
unpleasant qualms, I stretch myself out upon a strip of short turf
sprinkled with the flowers of the white rock-rose and bordered with
candy-tuft, and try to drive out of mind the only disagreeable thought
I have at this moment--that of getting down to the path, where I was
safe. The worst part of climbing precipitous places is not the going
up, but the coming down. Not a human being or dwelling is in sight, so
that I can contemplate the wildness of the scene to my mind's content.
But a very hoarse voice not far above tells me that I am not alone. A
raven perched upon a jutting piece of rock, that curiously resembles
some monstrous animal, is watching me, and he looks a very crafty old
bird who could speak either French or English if he liked. Presently
he flaps heavily off to the opposite side of the gorge, and fetches
his wife. They fly over me almost within gunshot, going round and
round, expressing an opinion or sentiment with an occasional croak,
but apparently quite willing to make their dinner-hour suit my
convenience. Do they suppose that I have really taken the trouble to
climb up here to die out of the world's way and the sight of my
fellow-creatures, like that very unearthly poet whose story Shelley
has written? Do they think that they are going to make a hearty meal
upon me this evening or to-morrow morning? I remain quite still,
pleased at the thought of cheating the greedy, croaking scavengers of
Nature, and hoping that they will grow bold enough to settle at length
somewhere near me. But they are too suspicious; perhaps with their
superior sight they note the blinking of my eyes as I look upwards at
the dazzling sky, or instinct may tell them that I am not lying down
after the manner of a dying animal. Their patience is more than a
match for mine, and so I come down from my ledge and make my way back
to my cottage before the pink blush of evening has faded from the
rocks.
When the angelus has sounded from the ancient sanctuary, and all the
forms of the valley are dim in the dusk, the silence is broken again
by a very quiet little bell, which might be called the fairies'
angelus if it did not keep ringing all through the spring and summer
nights. It is like a treble note of the piano softly touched. It
steals up from amongst the flags, hyacinths, and box-bushes of the
neglected little garden which I call mine, terraced upon the side of
the gorge just beneath the balcony. Now, from all the terraced gardens
planted with fruit-trees, comes the same sound of low, clear notes,
some a little higher than others, but all in the treble, feebly struck
by unseen musicians. How sweetly this tinkling rises from the earth,
that trembles with the bursting of seeds and the shooting of stems in
the first warm nights of spring! And to think that the musicians
should be toads--yes, toads--the most despised and the most unjustly
treated of creatures!
This cottage is at Roc-Amadour, and before writing about the place I
cannot do better than go down to the level of the stream, and look up
at the amazing cluster of buildings clinging to the rocks on one side
of the gorge, while the old walls are whitened by the pale brilliancy
of the moon. Above the roofs of all the houses is a mass of masonry,
vast and heavy, pierced by narrow Romanesque windows--a building
uncouth and monstrous, like the surrounding crags. It stands upon a
ledge of the cliff, partly in the hollow of the rock, which, indeed,
forms its innermost wall. Higher still a great cross shows against the
sky, and near to it, upon the edge of the precipice, are the ramparts
of a mediaeval fortress, now combined with a modern building, which is
the residence of the clergy attached to the sanctuary of Notre Dame de
Roc-Amadour.
[Illustration: ROC-AMADOUR.]
The sanctuary--it is inside the massive pile under the beetling rock,
and over the roofs of the houses--explains why men in far-distant
times had the strange notion of gathering together and constructing
dwellings upon a spot where Nature must have offered the harshest
opposition to such a project. The chosen site was not only
precipitous, but lay in the midst of a calcareous desert, where no
stream nor spring of water could be relied upon for six months in the
year, and where the only soil that was not absolutely unproductive was
covered with dense forest infested by wolves.[*] And yet, in course of
time, there grew up upon these forbidding rocks, in the midst of this
desert, a little town that obtained a wide celebrity, and was even
fortified, as the five ruinous gateways, with towers along the line of
the single street, prove even now, notwithstanding the deplorable
recklessness with which the structures of the ancient burg have been
degraded or demolished during the last half-century. Nothing is more
certain than that the origin of Roc-Amadour, and the cause of its
development, were religious. It was called into existence by pilgrims;
it grew with the growth of pilgrimages, and if it were not for
pilgrims at the present day half the houses now occupied would be
allowed to fall into ruin. It is impossible to look at it without
wonder, either in the daylight or the moonlight. It appears to have
been wrenched out of the known order of human works--the result of
common motives--and however often Roc-Amadour may suddenly meet the
eye upon turning the gorge, the picture never fails to be surprising.
It has really the air of a holy place, which many others famed for
holiness have not.
[*] Robert du Mont, in his supplement to Sigibert's Chronicles,
wrote, more than five hundred years ago, of Roc-Amadour: 'Est
locus in Cadurcensi pago montaneis et horribile solitudine
circumdatus.'
The founder of the sanctuary was a hermit, whose contemplative spirit
led him to this savage and uninhabited valley, whose name, in the
early Christian ages, was _Vallis tenebrosa_, but in which Nature had
fashioned numerous caverns, more or less tempting to an anchorite. He
is called Amator--_Amator rupis_--by the Latin chroniclers--a name
that, with the spread of the Romance language, would easily have
become corrupted to Amadour by the people. According to the legend,
however, which for an uncertain number of centuries has obtained
general credence in the Quercy and the Bas-Limousin, and which in
these days is much upheld by the clergy, although a learned
Jesuit--the Pere Caillau--who sifted all the annals relating to
Roc-Amadour felt compelled to treat it as a pious invention, the
hermit Amator or Amadour was no other than Zaccheus, who climbed into
the sycamore. The legend further says that he was the husband of St.
Veronica, and that, after the crucifixion, they left the Holy Land in
a vessel which eventually landed them on the western coast of Gaul,
not far from the present city of Bordeaux. They became associated with
the mission of St. Martial, the first Bishop of Limoges, and at a
later period Zaccheus, hearing of a rocky solitude in Aquitania, a
little to the south of the Dordogne, abandoned to wild beasts,
proceeded thither, and chose a cavern in the escarped side of a cliff
for his hermitage. Here, meditating upon the merits of the Mother of
Christ, he became one of her most devoted servants in that age, and
during his life he caused a small chapel to be raised to her upon the
rock near his cavern, which was consecrated by St. Martial. All this
is open to controversy, but what is undoubtedly true is that one of
the earliest sanctuaries of Europe associated with the name of Mary
was at Roc-Amadour.
It is recorded that Roland, passing through the Quercy in the year 778
with his uncle, Charlemagne, made a point of stopping at Roc-Amadour
for the purpose of 'offering to the most holy Virgin a gift of silver
of the same weight as his bracmar, or sword.' After his death, if
Duplex and local tradition are to be trusted, this sword was brought
to Roc-Amadour, and the curved rusty blade of crushing weight which is
now to be seen hanging to a wall is said to be a faithful copy of the
famous Durandel, which is supposed to have been stolen by the
Huguenots when they pillaged the church and burnt the remains of St.
Amadour.
That in the twelfth century the fame of Roc-Amadour as a place of
pilgrimage was established we have very good evidence in the fact that
one of the pilgrims to the sanctuary in 1170 was Henry II. of England.
He had fallen seriously ill at Mote-Gercei, and believing that he had
been restored to health through the intercession of the Virgin, he set
out for the 'Dark Valley' in fulfilment of a vow that he had made to
her; but as this journey into the Quercy brought him very near the
territory of his enemies, the annalists tell us that he was
accompanied by a great multitude of infantry and cavalry, as though he
were marching to battle. But he injured no one, and gave abundant alms
to the poor. Thirteen years later, the King's rebellious son, Henry,
Court Mantel, pillaged the sanctuary of its treasure in order to pay
his ruffianly soldiers. This memorable sacrilege had much to do with
the insurmountable antipathy of the Quercynois for the English.
I have before me an old and now exceedingly rare little book on
Roc-Amadour, which was written by the Jesuit Odo de Gissey, and
published at Tulle in 1666. In this, Court Mantel's exploit is spoken
of as follows:
'Les guerres d'entre nos Rois tres Chretiens et les Anglais en ce
Royaume de France guerroyant ruinerent en quelque facon Roc-Amadour;
mais plus que tous Henri III., Roi d'Angleterre, ingrat des graces que
son pere Henri II. y avait recues, en depit de son pere qui
affectionnait cette Eglise, son avarice le poussant, pilla cet
oratoire et enleva les plaques qui couvraient le corps de S. Amadour
et emporta ce qui etait de la Tresorerie; mais Dieu qui ne laisse rien
impuni chatia le sacrilege de cet impie Prince par une mort
malheureuse. De quoi lise qui voudra Roger de Houedan, historien
Anglais en la 2 partie de ses Annales.'
There are early records of miracles wrought at Roc-Amadour. Gauthier
de Coinsy, a monk and poet born at Amiens in 1177, has left a poem
telling how the troubadour, Pierre de Sygelard, singing the praises of
the Virgin in her chapel at Roc-Amadour to the accompaniment of his
_vielle_ (hurdy-gurdy), begged of her as a miraculous sign to let one
of her candles come down from her altar. According to the poem, the
candle came down, and stood upon the musical instrument, to the horror
and disgust of a monk who was looking on, and who saw no miracle in
the matter, but wicked enchantment. He put the candle back
indignantly, but when the minstrel sang and played it came down as
before. The movement was repeated again before the monk would believe
that the miracle was genuine. The poem, which is in the Northern
dialect, and is marked throughout by a charming _naivete_, commences
with a eulogium of the Virgin:
'La douce mere du Createur
A l'eglise a Rochemadour
Fait tants miracles, tants hauts faits,
C'uns moultes biax livres en est faits.'
The huge, inartistic, but imposing block of masonry that appears from
a little distance to be clinging, after the manner of a swallow's
nest, to the precipitous face of the rock, and which is reached from
below by more than 200 steps in venerable dilapidation[*], contains
the church of St. Sauveur, the chapel of the Virgin, called the
Miraculous Chapel, and the chapel of St. Amadour, all distinct. The
last-named is a little crypt, and the Miraculous Chapel conveys the
impression of being likewise one, for it is partly under the
overleaning rock, the rugged surface of which, blackened by the smoke
of the countless tapers which have been burnt there in the course of
ages, is seen without any facing of masonry.
[*] Since the foregoing was written the old slabs have been turned
round, and the steps been made to look quite new.
If by looking at certain details of this composite structure one could
shut off the surroundings from the eye, the mind might feed without
any hindrance upon the ideas of old piety and the fervour of souls
who, when Europe was like a troubled and forlorn sea, sought the
quietude and safety of these rocks, lifted far above the raging surf.
But the hindrance is found on every side. The sense of artistic
fitness is wounded by incongruities of architectural style, of ideas
which meet but do not marry. The brazen altar, in the Miraculous
Chapel was well enough at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, where it could
be admired as a piece of elaborate brass work, but at Roc-Amadour it
is a direct challenge to the spirit of the spot. Then again, late
Gothic architecture has been grafted upon the early Romanesque. Those
who restored the building after it had been reduced to a ruin by the
Huguenots in 1562 set the example of bad taste. The revolutionists of
1793 having in their turn wrought their fury upon it, the work of
restoration was again undertaken during the last half-century, but the
opportunity of correcting the mistake of the previous renovators was
lost. The piece of Romanesque architecture whose character has been
best preserved is the detached chapel of St. Michael, raised like a
pigeon-house against the rock; but even this has been carefully
scraped on the outside to make it correspond as nearly as possible to
some adjacent work of recent construction.
The ancient treasure of Roc-Amadour has been scattered or melted down,
but the image of the Virgin and Child, which according to the local
tradition was carved out of the trunk of a tree by St. Amadour
himself, is still to be seen over the altar in the Miraculous Chapel.
It is probably 800 years old, and it may be older. There is no record
to help hypothesis with regard to its antiquity, for since the
pilgrimage originated it appears to have been an object of veneration,
and the commencement of the pilgrimage is lost in the dimness of the
past. Like the statue of the Virgin at Le Puy, it is as black as
ebony, but this is the effect of age, and the smoke of incense and
candles. The antiquity of the image is, moreover, proved by the
artistic treatment. The Child is crowned and rests upon the Virgin's
knee; she does not touch him with her hands. This is in accordance
with the early Christian sentiment, which dwells upon the kingship of
the Child as distinguished from the later mediaeval feeling, which
rests without fear upon the Virgin's maternal love and makes her clasp
the Infant fondly to her breast.
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