Read Online The Discovery of France by Graham Robb - Free Book Online
Authors: Graham Robb
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As they were in the fourth century, so are they now, and our close marriages have perpetuated in almost all their purity the unhappy remains of the ancient Agesinates Cambolectri.
The loss of land and exile, the radical distinction from the world beyond, pride in unchanged ways and the ancient purity of the race – all this is typical of tribal lore. The origins were invariably dated tothe dawn of time, and sometimes still are. 6 These legends were usually patched together from old tales and scraps of historical information gleaned from almanacs or picked up from travellers. The tale of the Agesinates comes from Pliny the Elder, not from collective memory. In reality, the Colliberts were probably freed serfs who farmed the first drained marshes of the Poitou in the thirteenth century.
The waterlands still exist, but the local people no longer define themselves as Colliberts nor trace their origins to a prehistoric tribe.
*
I F EVERY TRIBAL TALE had survived, a complete history of the French people as they saw themselves would form a vast encyclopedia of micro-civilizations. In most cases, only the bare bones remain. Hundreds of sub-populations were probably never described. Nearly all the places mentioned in this chapter lay close to major trade and tourist routes. Further into France, in parts that were untouched by roads or canals, the spaces are almost .
These groups should not be considered backward simply because their form of civilization was about to change. They were not formless planetoids waiting to be swallowed by a giant state. Like Goust, they were not extreme cases. The real extreme was something almost unrecognizable as a community, though it was common enough to form a significant percentage of the population. The improvised hamlets called lieux-dits (from the phrase ‘the place known as . . .’) are still quite numerous today. Some are entirely rural; others look like isolated sections of a shanty-town. Some seem to wander over small parts of the landscape from one map to the next. Many have names like Californie, Canada, Cayenne or Le Nouveau Monde (‘The New World’) – far-flung outposts of tiny empires, founded by paupers, foreigners, misanthropes or outcasts who tried to scratch a living on the edge of a wood or a swamp.
In many cases, all that remains of their identity is a name, which is often grimly literal or ironic. A place called Loin-du-bruit (‘Far-from-the-noise’) is a tiny zone of immobilized caravans and metal shelters that cringes beside the screaming torrent of trucks heading for La Rochelle on the N137. There are still dozens of Tout-y-faut (‘Everything is lacking’), Pain perdu (‘Lost bread’), Malcontent, Gâtebourse (‘Purse’s ruin’) and Gâtefer (‘Wreck-iron’ – referring to the effect of stony ground on a ploughshare). About thirty places are called Perte-de-temps (‘Waste-of-time’), many of them not surprisingly now deserted. These precarious communities are a reminder that modern France is not just the result of continuous traditions; it was also formed from disappearances and extinctions.
Tribal histories briefly written on the landscape are barely decipherable, but their worlds can still be sensed. Lieux-dits are often encountered in significantly unpleasant circumstances – when the wind suddenly blows cold or the countryside turns ugly. Sometimes, their names appear on small blue signs in the roadside grass or on complicated panels which travellers have to memorize like magic spells before venturing into the maze of lanes. Often, they sound like warnings, laments or weather forecasts: Le Loup-garou (‘Werewolf’), Prends-toi-garde (‘Watch Out’), La Sibérie (‘Siberia’), Pied-Mouillé (‘Wetfoot’), Parapluie (‘Umbrella’), ‘Mauvais-vent’ (‘Badwind’) or La Nuaz (‘Cloud’) – a literally invisible hamlet that sits in the Beaufortain Alps at an altitude to which the cloud-layer usually descends.
*
I T WOULD BE HARD to
The loss of land and exile, the radical distinction from the world beyond, pride in unchanged ways and the ancient purity of the race – all this is typical of tribal lore. The origins were invariably dated tothe dawn of time, and sometimes still are. 6 These legends were usually patched together from old tales and scraps of historical information gleaned from almanacs or picked up from travellers. The tale of the Agesinates comes from Pliny the Elder, not from collective memory. In reality, the Colliberts were probably freed serfs who farmed the first drained marshes of the Poitou in the thirteenth century.
The waterlands still exist, but the local people no longer define themselves as Colliberts nor trace their origins to a prehistoric tribe.
*
I F EVERY TRIBAL TALE had survived, a complete history of the French people as they saw themselves would form a vast encyclopedia of micro-civilizations. In most cases, only the bare bones remain. Hundreds of sub-populations were probably never described. Nearly all the places mentioned in this chapter lay close to major trade and tourist routes. Further into France, in parts that were untouched by roads or canals, the spaces are almost .
These groups should not be considered backward simply because their form of civilization was about to change. They were not formless planetoids waiting to be swallowed by a giant state. Like Goust, they were not extreme cases. The real extreme was something almost unrecognizable as a community, though it was common enough to form a significant percentage of the population. The improvised hamlets called lieux-dits (from the phrase ‘the place known as . . .’) are still quite numerous today. Some are entirely rural; others look like isolated sections of a shanty-town. Some seem to wander over small parts of the landscape from one map to the next. Many have names like Californie, Canada, Cayenne or Le Nouveau Monde (‘The New World’) – far-flung outposts of tiny empires, founded by paupers, foreigners, misanthropes or outcasts who tried to scratch a living on the edge of a wood or a swamp.
In many cases, all that remains of their identity is a name, which is often grimly literal or ironic. A place called Loin-du-bruit (‘Far-from-the-noise’) is a tiny zone of immobilized caravans and metal shelters that cringes beside the screaming torrent of trucks heading for La Rochelle on the N137. There are still dozens of Tout-y-faut (‘Everything is lacking’), Pain perdu (‘Lost bread’), Malcontent, Gâtebourse (‘Purse’s ruin’) and Gâtefer (‘Wreck-iron’ – referring to the effect of stony ground on a ploughshare). About thirty places are called Perte-de-temps (‘Waste-of-time’), many of them not surprisingly now deserted. These precarious communities are a reminder that modern France is not just the result of continuous traditions; it was also formed from disappearances and extinctions.
Tribal histories briefly written on the landscape are barely decipherable, but their worlds can still be sensed. Lieux-dits are often encountered in significantly unpleasant circumstances – when the wind suddenly blows cold or the countryside turns ugly. Sometimes, their names appear on small blue signs in the roadside grass or on complicated panels which travellers have to memorize like magic spells before venturing into the maze of lanes. Often, they sound like warnings, laments or weather forecasts: Le Loup-garou (‘Werewolf’), Prends-toi-garde (‘Watch Out’), La Sibérie (‘Siberia’), Pied-Mouillé (‘Wetfoot’), Parapluie (‘Umbrella’), ‘Mauvais-vent’ (‘Badwind’) or La Nuaz (‘Cloud’) – a literally invisible hamlet that sits in the Beaufortain Alps at an altitude to which the cloud-layer usually descends.
*
I T WOULD BE HARD to
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