The Walls of Navarreux
The route into Navarreux from the south is almost a tree-shaded boulevard, and crosses the Gave on an old five-arched bridge, so narrow that one vehicle can scarcely pass,—to say nothing of two. This picturesque bridge was also the work of Henri d’Albret, the founder of the primitive city. This first foundation was a short distance from the present village. Its founder in a short time came to believe he had made a mistake, and that the bourg as it was placed would be too difficult to defend, so he tore it down in real northwest Dakota fashion, and built the present city. Louis XIV and Vauban had great plans for it, and would have done much, but Oloron in time relieved it of all pretensions to a distinction, as, in turn, Pau robbed Oloron.
Between Navarreux and Sauveterre, along the Gave d’Oloron, is a whole string of little villages and hamlets whose names are scarcely ever mentioned except by the local postman. It is a winsome valley, and the signs of civilization, pale though they be, throw no ugly shadows on the landscape. Midway between these two little centres is Audaux, which possesses a vast seventeenth-century château, flanked with a series of high coiffed pavilions and great domes, like that of Valençay in Touraine.
Its history is unimportant, and is rather vague, but a mere glance at its pompous ornateness is a suggestion of the great contrast between the châteaux of the north and centre of France and those of the Midi. In the north the great residential châteaux, as contrasted with the fortress-châteaux, were the more numerous; here the reverse was the case, and the feudal château, which was more or less of a fortress, predominated. The Château d’Audaux, sitting high on its own little plateau, and surrounded by great chestnut trees, is almost the peer of its class in these parts—from a grandiose architectural view point at any rate.
Sauveterre, twenty kilometres from Navarreux, is one of those old-time bourgs which puts its best side forward when viewed from a distance. Really it is nothing but a grim old ruin, so far as its appeal for the pilgrim goes. Close acquaintance develops a squalor and lackadaisical air which is not in the least in keeping with that of its neighbours. It is the ensemble of its rooftops and its delightful site which gives Sauveterre almost its only charm. In the Middle Ages it was a fortified town which played a considerable part in olden history. To-day the sole evidence that it was a place of any importance is found in a single remaining arch of its old bridge, surmounted by a defending tower similar to those which guard the bridges at Orthez and Cahors, but much smaller.
There is another relic still standing of Sauveterre’s one-time greatness, but it is outside the town itself. The grim, square donjon of the old Château de Montréal rises on a hilltop opposite the town, and strikes the loudest note of all the superb panorama of picturesque surroundings. It was the guardian of the fate of Sauveterre in feudal times, and it is the guardian, or beacon, for travellers by road to-day as they come up or down the valley.
Within the town there is, it should be mentioned, a really curious ecclesiastical monument, the thirteenth-century church, with a combination of Romanesque and Gothic construction which is remarkable; so remarkable is it that in spite of its lack of real beauty the French Government has classed it as a “Monument Historique.” The sublime panorama of the Pyrenees frames the whole with such a gracious splendour that one is well-minded to take the picture for the sake of the frame. This may be said of Tarbes as well, which is a really banal great town, but which has perhaps the most delightful Pyrenean background that exists.
Sauveterre is another centre for the manufacture of rope-soled espadrilles, which in Anglo-Saxon communities are used solely by bathers at the seaside, but which are really the most comfortable and long-enduring footwear ever invented, and are here, and in many other parts of France, worn by a majority of the population.
Up out of the valley of the Oloron and down again into that of the Bidouze, a matter of eighteen or twenty kilometres, and one comes to Saint-Palais which formerly disputed the title of capital of French Navarre with Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. This was because Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre, established his chancellerie here after the loss of Pamplona to Spain.
Saint-Palais is what the French call a “ville mignonne.” Nothing else describes it. It sits jauntily perched on a tongue of mother earth, at the juncture of the Joyeuse and the Bidouze, and its whitewashed houses, its tiled roofs and its washed-down dooryards and pavements suggest that some of its inhabitants must one day have been in Holland, a place where they pay more attention to this sort of house-cleaning than anywhere else.
Saint-Palais has no historical monuments; all is as new and shining as Monte Carlo or the Digue at Ostend, but its history of long ago is important. Before 1620 it was the seat of the sovereign court of French Navarre and possessed a mint where the money of the little state was coined.
The most distinctive architectural monument of Saint-Palais, the modern church and the hybrid Palais de Justice being strictly ineligible, is the fronton for the game of pelote, Saint-Palais being one of the head centres for the sport.
Arthur Young, a great traveller, an agriculturist, and a writer of repute, passed this way in 1787. He made a good many true and just observations, more or less at hazard, of things French, and some others that were not so just. The following can hardly be literally true, and if true by no means proves that Jacques Bonhomme is not as good a man as his cousin John Bull, nor even that he is not as well nourished. “Chacun à son gout!” He said, writing of the operation of getting dinner at his inn: “I saw them preparing the soup, the colour of which was not inviting; ample provision of cabbage, grease and water, and about as much meat, for a score of people, as half a dozen Suffolk farmers would have eaten, and grumbled at their host for short commons.” What a condemnation to be sure, and what an unmerited one! The receipt is all right, as far as it goes, but he should have added a few leeks, a couple of carrots and an onion or two, and then he would have composed a bouilli as fragrant and nourishing as the Englishman’s chunks of blood-red beef he is for ever talking about. Our “agriculturist” only learned half his lesson, and could not recite it very well at that.
In the midst of a great plain lying between Saint-Palais, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and Bayonne, perhaps fifty kilometres south of the left bank of the Adour, are the neighbouring little towns of Iholdy and Armendarits. The former is the market town of a vast, but little populated, canton, and a village as purely rustic and simple as one could possibly imagine. Iholdy and its few unpretentious little shops and its quaint unworldly little hotel caters only to a thin population of sheep and pig growers, and their wants are small, save when they go afield to Peyrehorade, St. Jean or Bayonne. One eats of the products of the country here, and enjoys them, too, even if mutton, lamb and little pig predominate. The latter may or may not be thought a delicacy, but certainly it was better here than was ever met with before by the writer of these lines; and no prejudice prevented a second helping.
Armendarits, Iholdy’s twin community, saw the birth of Renaud d’Elissagory, who built what was practically the first gunboat. The birthplace of “Petit Renaud,” as he was, and is still, affectionately called, the inventor of galiotes à bombes, is still inhabited and reckoned as one of the sights of these parts.
BASSE-NAVARRE or Navarre-Française, together with Béarn, made, under the Emperor Hadrian, a part of Aquitaine.
The Roman conquest of Gaul was the first impetus given towards a coherent massing of the peoples. Formerly there had been many tribes and races, but the three divisions made by the Romans reduced things to a minimum. Cisalpine Gaul was that part where the inhabitants wore a sort of adaptation of the Roman toga. In Trans-Alpine Gaul, situated in the Rhône basin and along the Mediterranean between Italy and Spain, the inhabitants wore braies or bragues—a sort of jacket extending down almost to the knees, a detail of dress which has evolved itself into the blouse, and perhaps even the great cloak of the mountaineers of the Pyrenees. The remainder of ancient Gaul was known as the country where the natives wore their long hair hanging,—literally the Gaule chevelue.
Through the times of Cæsar the divisions became indifferently known by various names, until with Augustus there came to be four great divisions, the Narbonnaise, Aquitaine, Lyonnaise and Belgique.
Towards the fifth century the Vascons, or Gascons, the ancient inhabitants of Spanish Cantabria, established themselves snugly in these well protected valleys of the Pyrenees. They warred with the Saracens, and for five centuries were in a continual uproar of battle and bloodshed.
Among themselves, the dukes and counts of Gascogne quarrelled continuously, and disputed the sovereignty of the country with the Vicomtes de Béarn.
In the ninth century a treaty was consummated which assured to Bernard, Comte d’Armagnac, the Comté de Gascogne, and to Gaston de Centulle the suzerainty of Béarn, while Navarre came by heritage to the Comtes de Champagne, and in the thirteenth century to Philippe-le-Bel as a dot with Jeanne, his wife. In the same manner it came to the house of Evreux through Jeanne II, daughter of Louis-le-Hutin.
With the marriage of Blanche II, the grand-daughter of Jeanne II, Navarre passed to the king of Aragon and to Eléonore, and later with the Comté de Foix et de Bigorre and the Vicomté de Béarn, went to Jean, Sieur d’Albret, with whom the history of the kingdom is so commonly associated.
Jean d’Albret II, by reason of his marriage with Catherine of Béarn, the heiress to the crown of Navarre, became joint ruler of the kingdom. He was a gentle, easy-going prince, liberal, but frivolous, and loved no serious occupation in life. He was popular to excess and dined, say the chronicles, “without ceremony, with any one who asked him,” a custom which still obtains with many who are not descendants of a king of Navarre. He danced frequently in public with the wives and daughters of his subjects, a democratic proceeding which was not liked by his court, who told him that he “danced on a volcano.” This in a measure was true, for he lost that part of the kingdom known as Spanish Navarre to Ferdinand of Aragon.
Up to the commencement of the sixteenth century, the Royaume de Navarre occupied both slopes of the Pyrenees and had Pamplona for its capital, but in 1512, Ferdinand the Catholic, of Aragon, with the approbation of the Pope, usurped most of the territory and left the king of Navarre, the legitimate sovereign, only a small morsel eight leagues long by five in width, with St. Jean-Pied-de-Port as its principal city.
A picturesque figure was Ferdinand, King of Aragon on his own part, King of Castille by his wife Isabella, and King of Grenada by conquest; “a heritor of three bastard crowns,” he was called. At his death he was succeeded by the infamous and cruel Charles V.
That which remained, French Navarre, was the portion of the united kingdom lying on the French slopes of the Pyrenees. The loss of the Spanish province was really due to the excommunication of Jean d’Albret and Catherine by the Pope, thus giving the Catholic Ferdinand power to compel a division.
The then ruling monarchs of Béarn and Navarre came to a sad realization of their position. It was this circumstance which gave birth to one of the famous mots of history. “If we had not been born, we would not have lost Navarre,” said the unhappy Catherine to her spouse.
Previously, though, the region had been known as Basse-Navarre; and in Spanish, Navarra Baja, and had had its États or Parlement, and its own special laws. Its Parlement was composed of three orders, the clergy, the noblesse and the tiers. Two great families stood out in Basse-Navarre in these times above all others, the Seigneurs de Grammont et Bidache and those of Lux and Ostabat. Béarn at the time was composed of twelve ancient baronies, the bishoprics of Lescar and Oloron, and the seigneuries of Navailles, Andoins, Lescun, Correze, Miossens, Arros and Lons.
French Navarre—the Navarre-Française—was by this time a reality and has been variously known since to historians; to the French as Basse-Navarre and Navarre du Nord; to the Spaniards as Navarra Baja; to the Basques as Navarra-deca-ports, and Navarra-françia; and to the kings of France as the Royaume de Navarre.
Henri, son of Jean d’Albret, married the first Marguerite de Valois, sister of François I, the “Marguerite of Marguerites.” The only daughter of this marriage was wed with Antoine Bourbon-Vendome and became the mother of Henri IV.
By an edict of 1620 Louis XIII united the crown of France with that of Navarre, Béarn and the other patrimonial states. Such is the evolution of the little Royaume de Navarre and its incorporation into French domain.
The king of Navarre’s title was a formidable one, and even included the word monsieur. Princes, bishops, popes and saints were at that time known as Monsieur, a title even more dignified than Monseigneur, and the “Messieurs de France” were as much of the noblesse of France as were the “Milords d’Angleterre” of the nobility of England.
The full title of the king of Navarre in the fifteenth century was as follows:—
Monsieur François-Phœbus, par la grace de Dieu, Roi de Navarre, Duc de Nemours, de Guandi, de Montblanc et de Penafiel, et, par la même grace Comte de Foix, Seigneur de Béarn, Comte de Bigorre et de Rivegorce, Vicomte de Castelbon, de Marsau, Gavardan et Nébouzan, Seigneur de la ville de Valaguer et Pair de France.
Chart of Kings of Basse-Navarre and Kings of France and Navarre
The Arms of Navarre
The arms of Navarre have ever been a mystery to antiquarians, but it seems there is some semblance of Basque tradition and folk-lore in it all, in that there is an old Basque game which is played upon a diagram, or scale, traced upon the ground, and following the principal outlines of the blazonings of the ancient kings of Navarre. Which came first, the hen or the egg?
Authorities differ, and so it is with the Basque game of laz Marellas, and the royal arms of the Navarres. Labastide says the game came down from the time when the Basques of to-day were originally Phœnicians. If this be so, the royal arms were but a copy of something that had gone before. Certainly they form as curious and enigmatic an armorial device as is found in heraldry.
The Royaume de Navarre has so completely disappeared and been so absorbed by France that it takes a considerable knowledge of geography and history to be able to place it precisely upon the map of modern Europe, hidden away as it was in what are now the two arrondissements of Bayonne and Saint-Palais.
They were a noble race, the men of Béarn and Navarre, the Basques especially, and the questionable traits of the cagots and gypsies have left but little impress on the masses.
Henri IV, faithful in his sentiment for his first subjects, would have shown them his predilection by allowing them to remain an independent monarchy. He would not that the kingdom of his mother be mingled with that of France, but intriguing counsel prevailed and the alliance was made, though Navarre escaped conquest and was still ruled by the sceptre of its legitimate sovereign.
How near France came to being ruled by Navarre instead of Navarre by France is recalled by the following bit of recorded history. When Philippe V (le Long) came to the throne of France (1316) his right was contested by many princes. Among others the crown was claimed by Jeanne de Navarre, but an assembly of bishops, seigneurs and bourgeois of Paris declared for the Salic law—which proscribed the right to rule the French to one of the female sex, and this against feudal rights as they were known and protected in the satellite kingdoms surrounding the royal domain. It was agreed later (by Philippe-le-Long) that if the widow of Louis X should have another female child, the rights appertaining to Navarre should belong to her and her stepsister Jeanne, making it an independent monarchy again.
When Philippe-le-Bel came to the throne of France it was his wife Jeanne who, by common consent, administered the affairs of Navarre. She chased the Aragonians and Castilians from her fair province, and put her people into a state of security hitherto unknown. “She held,” said Mézeray the historian, “every one enchanted by her eyes, her ears, and her heart, and she was equally eloquent, generous and liberal.” A veritable paragon of a woman evidently.
Henri II, son of Catherine and Jean d’Albret II, succeeded to the throne of French Navarre at the age of thirteen. He followed the French king, François, to Italy, and was made prisoner at the unfortunate battle of Pavia, finally escaping through a ruse.
François Premier, king of France, and Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre, each nourished an equal aversion for the king of Spain, the prime cause of that fateful day at Pavia. The first hated the Spanish monarch as a rival; the second as the usurper of his lands. They united arms, but the battle of Pavia, when “all was lost save honour,” gave matters such a setback that naught but time could overcome them.
It was Henri II’s marriage with Marguerite of Valois, the Duchesse d’Alençon, in 1526, by which he acquired the Armagnac succession as a gift from his brother-in-law, François Premier, that brought to Navarre’s crown nearly all of Guyenne. In 1555 the young king died at Pau, leaving a daughter, Jeanne d’Albret, who with her second husband, Antoine de Bourbon, Duc de Vendome, succeeded to the throne.
The new rulers did not attempt or accomplish much, save to embrace Calvinism with zeal. Suffice to recall the well-known facts that Antoine died in 1562 from a wound received in the siege of Rouen, and that Jeanne herself died from the poison of the wicked Catherine de Medici’s gloves at Paris.
Their son, Henri III of Navarre, was the Henri IV of France. Born at Pau in 1553, he was first only the Comte de Viane. When he came to Paris he would not have allied his Pyrenean possessions with those of France but for the pressure brought to bear upon him. He declared that his ancestral lands should remain entirely separate, but the procureur general, La Guesle, forced his hand, and it was thus that the Royaume de France became augmented by Basse-Navarre, the Comtés d’Armagnac, Foix, d’Albret and Bigorre, the Duché de Vendome, the Comté de Périgord and the Vicomté de Limoges.
The story of Béarn and Navarre, for most folk, begins with those kings of Navarre who were also kings of France. The first of these was the white-plumed knight Henri III, Prince of Béarn, who became Henri IV of France. The France of the Valois, which strain died with Henri III, murdered by the black monk Clement, was much more narrow in its confines than now. In the northeast it lacked Lorraine, Franche Comté, Bresse, Dombes and Bucey; in the south Roussillon, Béarn and Basse-Navarre, and there was a sort of quasi-independence observed by the former great states of Bretagne, Bourgogne and Dauphiné.
With the coming of the king of Navarre to the throne of France, the three great movements which took place in the religious situation, the manners and customs of the court and noblesse, and in the aspirations of the people gave an aspect of unity and solidarity to France.
The religious question was already momentous when Henri IV was crowned, and Protestantism and its followers were gaining ground everywhere, though the real Français—the Guises and the Bourbons, the princes of Lorraine and the “princes of the blood”—were on the side of Catholicism, and had their swords ever unsheathed in its behalf.
The court, in the midst of this great religious quarrel, was also in a state of transition. Catherine and her gay troupe of damsels had passed, as also had Charles IX, who died shortly after the Huguenot massacre of St. Bartholomew’s night. His brother, and successor to the throne, Henri III, Duc d’Anjou, was a weakling, and he too died miserably at the point of the assassin’s knife, and few seemed to regret the passing of him who devoted himself more to monkeys, parrots and little dogs than to statecraft. Henri of Béarn was the strong man in public view, and of him great things were expected by all parties in spite of his professed Calvinism of the time.
It was during the reign of the feeble-witted Henri III that Henri, king of Navarre, became the titular head of the Huguenots; thus abjuring the Catholic religion that he had previously embraced under pressure. The Protestant League became a powerful institution, and the gentilshommes of Béarn, Guienne, Poitou and Dauphiné became captains in the cause, just as the gentilshommes of Picardie and Artois became captains of Catholicism. The whole scheme was working itself out on traditional hereditary lines; it was the Protestantism of the mountains against the Catholicism of the lowlands. As for the people, the masses, they simply stood by and wondered, ready for any innovation which augured for the better.
Arms of Henri IV of France and Navarre
This was the state of France upon the coming of Henri IV to the throne, and the joining of Basse-Navarre and Béarn to the royal domain.
Unquestionably it is a fact that the feudality in France ceased only with the passing of Louis XI, and the change in the Pyrenean states was contemporary. The Renaissance made great headway in France, after its importation from Italy at the hands of Charles VIII and his followers. Constantinople had been taken; art and letters were everywhere in the ascendency; printing had been invented; and America was on the verge of being discovered. The golden days of the new civilization were about dawning.
The Renaissance here in Béarn and Navarre, under the shadow of the Pyrenees, flowered as it did nowhere else out of Italy, so far as its application to life and letters went. Many celebrated litterateurs and poets had been persecuted and chased from France, and here they found a welcome refuge. To remark only two, Desperriers and Marat, it is interesting to note that the sympathetic Marguerite of Navarre took them under her patronage, and even made them valets de chambre.
Marguerite’s passions were, according to the historians, noble, but according to the romancers they were worldly. Said Erasmus: “Elle était chaste et peu sujette aux passions,” and contemporary historians agree with him; while Marat, the poet valet de chambre, wrote the following:—
In 1574 Brantome, the chronicler, had finished his military career and was retained by Henri III of France as a gentleman of the bed-chamber. Here he passed through many affairs of intrigue and the heart. In 1581 he received a mission to go and interview the king of Navarre, for which he received the sum of six hundred écus soleil. What the subject of this mission was no one knows; there is no further mention of it either in the works of Brantôme or the letters of the king of Navarre, but at any rate he became enamoured of Marguerite, and his account of his first meeting with her is one of the classic documents of French history. “I dare to say,” said he, “that she was si belle et si admirable that all the three hundred persons of the assembly were ravished and astounded.”
It is on Marguerite of Navarre, no less than on the plumed Henry, that the popular interest in Navarre and its history has been built.
Spanish Navarre came to be annexed to the Spanish crown in 1512 through the efforts and energies of Ferdinand the Catholic king of Aragon.
French Navarre virtually came to France in 1328, but its independent monarchs since that time have been:
| Jeanne II (et Philippe) | 1328 |
| Charles II (le Mauvais) | 1349 |
| Charles III | 1387 |
| Jean II (et Blanche) | 1425 |
| Eléonore | 1479 |
| Phœbus de Foix | 1479 |
| Catherine (et Jean d’Albret II) | 1484 |
| Henri II | 1517 |
| Jeanne d’Albret (et Antoine de Bourbon) | 1555 |
| Henri III | 1589-1610 |
It was Henri III of Navarre who became Henri IV of France and it was he who first brought the little kingdom to the crown of France, the double title being borne by his successors up to the abdication of Charles X in 1830.
MOST people, or certainly most women, connect the name basque with a certain article of ladies’ wearing apparel. Just what its functions were, when it was in favour a generation ago, a mere man may not be supposed to know. Théophile Gautier has something to say on the subject, so he doubtless knew; and Victor Hugo delivered himself of the following couplet:—
The French Basques are divided into three families, the Souletins, the Bas-Navarrais and the Labourdins. They possess, however, the same language and other proofs of an identical origin in the simplicity and quaintness of their dress and customs.
The Labourdin Basques inhabit the plains and valleys running down to the sea at the western termination of the Pyrenees, and live a more luxurious life than the Navarrais, even emigrating largely, and entering the service of the merchant and naval marine; whereas the Navarrais occupy themselves mostly with agriculture (and incidentally are the largest meat eaters in France) and contribute their services only to the army. The contrast between the sailor and fisher folk of the coast, and the soldiers and farmers of the high valleys is remarkable, as to face and figure, if not readily distinguishable with respect to other details.
The Labourdin Basques have a traditional history which is one of the most interesting and varied records of the races of western Europe. In olden times the Golfe de Gascogne was frequented by great shoals of whales, and the Basques, harpooning them and killing them in the waters of their harbours, came to control the traffic.
When the whale industry fell off, and the whales themselves receded to the south seas, the Basques went after them, and for long they held the supremacy as before, finally chasing them again to the Newfoundland Banks, which indeed it is claimed the Basques discovered. At any rate the whaling industry proved a successful and profitable commerce for the Basques, and perhaps led the way for their migration in large numbers to South America and other parts of the New World.
Among the Basques themselves, and perhaps among others who have given study to the subject, the claim is made that they were the real discoverers of the New World, long before Columbus sighted the western isles. Thus is the Columbus legend, and that of Leif, son of Eric, shattered by the traditions of a people whom most European travellers from overseas hardly know of as existing. It seems that a Spanish Basque, when on a voyage from Bayonne to Madeira, was thrown out of his course and at the mercy of the winds and waves, and finally, after many weeks, landed on the coast of Hayti. Columbus is thus proved a plagiarist.
The Basques as a race, both in France and in Spain, are a proud, jovial people, not in the least sullen, but as exclusive as turtle-doves. Unlike most of the peasants of Europe, whether at work or play, they march with head high, and beyond a grave little bow, scarcely, if ever, accost the stranger with that graciousness of manner which is usually customary with the farmer folk of even the most remote regions in France, those of the Cevennes or the upper valleys of Dauphiné or Savoie.
Upon acquaintance and recognition of equality, the Basques become effusive and are undoubtedly sincere. They don’t adopt the mood for business purposes as does the Norman or the Niçois.
The traditions of the Basques concerning their ancestors comport exactly with their regard for themselves, and their pride of place is noticeable to every stranger who goes among them. They believe that they were always an independent people among surrounding nations of slaves, and, since it is doubtful if the Romans ever conquered them as they did the other races of Gaul, this may be so. The very suggestion of this superior ancestry accounts for many of their manners and customs. Full to overflowing with the realization of their “noblesse collective,” they have an utter contempt for an individual nobility that borders close upon radicalism and republicanism. The greatest peer among them is the oldest of the house (eteheco-sémia) and he, or she, is the only individual to whom is paid a voluntary homage.
Like the children of Abraham, the Basques are, away from the seacoast, for the most part tenders of flocks and herds, and never does one meet a Basque in the mountains or on the highroads but what he finds him carrying a baton or a goad-stick, as if he were a Maréchal de France in embryo. It is their “compagnon de voyage et de fête,” and can on occasion, when wielded with a sort of Jiu-Jitsu proficiency, be a terrible weapon. As many heads must have been cracked by the baton of the Basque, as by the shillelagh of the Irishman, always making allowance for the fact that the Basque is less quarrelsome and peppery than Pat.
There is absolutely no question but that the Basques are hospitable when occasion arises, and this in spite of their aloofness. In this respect they are like the Arabs of the desert. And also like the Hebrews, the Basques are very jealous of their nationality, and have a strong repugnance against alliances and marriages with strangers.
The activity and the agility of the Basques is proverbial, in fact a proverb has grown out of it. “Leger comme un Basque,” is a saying known all over France. The Basque loves games and dances of all sorts, and he “makes the fête” with an agility and a passion not known of any other people to a more noticeable extent. A fête to the Basque, be it local or national, is not a thing to be lightly put aside. He makes a business of it, and expects every one else to do the same. There is no room for onlookers, and if a tourney at pelota—now become the new sport of Paris—is on, it is not the real thing at all unless all have a hand in it in turn. There are other pelota tourneys got up at Biarritz, Bayonne and Feuntarrabia for strangers, but the mountain Basque has contempt for both the players and the audience. What he would think of a sixty or eighty thousand crowd at a football or a cricket game is too horrible for words.
Pelota Basque has its home in the Basque country, both in the French and Spanish provinces, and the finest players of pelota come from here. Pelota Basque is played in various parts of Spain, as well as pelota which is played with the three walls and the open hand, and thus the two games are found in the same country at the same time, though differing to no small extent.
It is to be regretted that there is not more literature connected with the game. The history of ball games is always interesting, and pelota is without doubt worthy of almost as much research as has been expended on the history of tennis.
In Spain pelota is largely played at San Sebastian, Bilbao, Madrid, Barcelona. There are three walls, and the game is played by four players, two on each side. Before the three-wall game was ever thought of, Pelota Basque was played in the principal cities of the Basque country, and it is still played on one wall in such cities as St. Jean-de-Luz, Biarritz, Cambo, Dax, Mauléon, Bordeaux, and even at Paris, and is recognized as the superior variety.
This was explained over the signatures of a group of professional players who introduced the game to Paris as follows:—
The Game of Pelota
“We, the pelotarie playing here, can play either on frontones of the Spanish or Basque form; but there is no doubt that the latter is the better game, and we feel we must state that the measures of the court, and the wall, and its top curves are the same in the Paris fronton as at St. Jean-de-Luz, which is considered by all authorities an ideal court. Here we play three against three, and all the ‘aficionados’ who have witnessed a game of Basque pelota are unanimous in saying it is a sport of a high grade, although different from the three-wall game.
“We, the undersigned, are the recognized champions of pelota Basque.
“Eloy, of the Barcelona’s Fronton.
“Melchior, of San Sebastian’s Fronton.
“Velasco, of Biarritz and Bilbao’s Fronton.
“Leon Diharce, of Paris and Buenos Ayres Fronton.”
It is by the word euskualdunac that the Basques are known among themselves. Their speech has an extraordinary sound, the vowels jumping out from between the consonants as a nut shell crushes in a casse-noisette. No tongue of Europe sounds more strange to foreign ears, not even Hungarian. On the other hand a Basque will speak French perfectly, without the slightest accent, when he feels like it, but his Béarnais neighbour makes a horrible mess of it, mixing Parisian French with his chattering patois. What a language and what a people the Basques are, to be sure! Some day some one will study them profoundly and tell us much about them that at present we only suspect. This much we know, they are allied to no other race in Europe.
Perhaps the Basques were originally Arabs. Who knows? A young Basque woman who carries a water-jug on her head, and marches along with a subtle undulation of the hips that one usually sees only in a desert Arab or a Corsican girl, certainly is the peer of any of the northern Europeans when it comes to a ravishing grace and carriage.
It is the Pays Basque which is the real frontier of France and Spain, and yet it resembles neither the country to the north nor south, but stands apart, an exotic thing quite impossible to place in comparison with anything else; and this is equally true of the men and women and their manners and customs; the country, even, is wild and savage, but gay and lively withal.
One may not speak of two peoples here. It is an error, a heresy. On one side, as on the other, it is the same race, the same tongue, the same peoples—in the Basses-Pyrenees of modern France as in the Provinces of Guipuzcoa, Navarre and Biscaye of modern Spain. The only difference is that in France the peasant’s béret is blue, while in Spain it is red.
The antiquity of la langue escuara or eskual-dunac is beyond question, but it is doubtful if it was the speech of Adam and Eve in their terrestrial paradise, as all genuine and patriotic Basques have no hesitancy in claiming.
At a Geographical Congress held in London in 1895 a M. L. d’Abartiague claimed relationship between the Basques of antiquity and the aborigines of the North American continent. This may be far-fetched or not, but at any rate it’s not so far-flung as the line of reasoning which makes out Adam and Eve as being the exclusive ancestors of the Basques, and the rest of us all descended from them.
Curiously enough the Spanish Basques change their mother-tongue in favour of Castilian more readily than those on the other side of the Bidassoa do for French. The Spanish Basques to-day number perhaps three hundred and fifty thousand, though included in fiscal returns as Castilians, while in France the Basques number not more than one hundred and twenty thousand. There are two hundred thousand Basques in Central and South America, mostly emigrants from France.
The Basque language is reckoned among the tongues apportioned to Gaul by the geographer Balbi; the Greco-Latine, the Germanic, the Celtic, the Semitic, and the Basque; thus beyond question the Basque tongue is a thing apart from any other of the tongues of Europe, as indeed are the people. The speech of the Basque country is first of all a langue, not a corrupted, mixed-up patois. Authorities have ascribed it as coming from the Phœnician, which, since it was the speech of Cadmus, the inventor of the alphabet, was doubtless the parent of many tongues. The educated Basques consider their “tongue” as one much advanced, that is, a veritable tongue, having nothing in common with the other tongues of Europe, ancient or modern, and accordingly to be regarded as one of the mother-tongues from which others have descended.
It bears a curious resemblance to Hebrew, in that nearly all appellatives express the qualities and properties of those things to which they are applied. From the point of grammatical construction, there is but one declension and conjugation, and an abundance of prepositions which makes the spoken speech concise and rapid. Basque verbs, moreover, possess a “familiar” singular and a “respectful” singular—if one may so mark the distinction, and they furthermore have a slight variation according to the age and sex of the person who speaks as well as with regard to the one spoken to.
Really, it beats Esperanto for simplicity, and the Basque tongue allows one to make words of indeterminate length, as does the German. It is all things to all men apparently. Ardanzesaroyareniturricoborua, one single word, means simply: “the source of the fountain on the vineyard-covered mountain.” Its simplicity may be readily understood from the following application. The Basque “of Bayonne” is Bayona; “from Bayonne,” Bayonaco; “that of Bayonne,” Bayonacoa.
The ancient and prolific Basque tongue possesses a literature, but for all that, there has never yet been discovered one sole public contract, charter or law written in the language. It was never the official speech of any portion of the country, nor of the palace, nor was it employed in the courts. The laws or fueros were written arbitrarily in Latin, Spanish, French and Béarnais, but never in Basque.
The costume of the Basque peasant is more coquettish and more elegant than that of any other of the races of the Midi, and in some respects is almost as theatrical as that of the Breton. All over Europe the characteristic costumes are changing, and where they are kept very much to the fore, as in Switzerland, Tyrol and in parts of Brittany, it is often for business purposes, just as the yodlers of the Alps mostly yodel for business purposes.
The Basque sticks to his costume, a blending of Spanish and something unknown. He, or she, in the Basque provinces knows or cares little as to what may be the latest style at Paris, and bowler hats and jupes tailleurs have not yet arrived in the Basque countryside. One has to go into Biarritz or Pau and look for them on strangers.
For the Basque a béret bleu (or red), a short red jacket, white vest, and white or black velvet corduroy breeches are en régle, besides which there are usually white stockings, held at the knees by a more or less fanciful garter. On his feet are a rough hob-nailed shoe, or the very reverse, a sort of a moccasin made of corded flax. A silk handkerchief encircles the neck, as with most southern races, and hangs down over the shoulders in what the wearer thinks is an engaging manner. On the days of the great fêtes there is something more gorgeous still, a sort of a draped cloak, often parti-coloured, primarily the possession of married men, but affected by the young when they try to be “sporty.”
The tambour de Basque, or drum, is a poor one-sided affair, all top and no bottom; virtually it is a tambourine, and not a drum at all. One sees it all over the Basque country, and it is as often played on with the closed fists as with a drumstick.
Like most of the old provincials of France, the Basques have numerous folk-songs and legends in verse. Most frequently they are in praise of women, and the Basque women deserve the best that can be said of them. The following as a sample, done into French, and no one can say the sentiment is not a good deal more healthy than that of Isaac Watts’s “hymns.”
In the Basque country, as in Brittany, the clergy have a great influence over the daily life of the people. The Basques are not as fanatically devout as the Bretons, but nevertheless they look to the curé to explain away many things that they do not understand themselves; and let it be said the Basque curé does his duty as a leader of opinion for the good of one and all, much better than does the country squire in England who occupies a somewhat analogous position.
It is through the church that the Euskarian population of the Basses-Pyrenees have one of their strongest ties with traditional antiquity. The curés and the communicants of his parish are usually of one race. There is a real community of ideas.
As for the education of the new generation of Basques, it is keeping pace with that of the other inhabitants of France, though in times past even rudimentary education was far behind, and from the peasant class of only a generation or so ago, out of four thousand drawn for service in the army, nearly three hundred were destitute of the knowledge of how to read and write. In ten years, however, this percentage has been reduced one half.
The emigration of the Basques has ever been a serious thing for the prosperity of the region. Thirteen hundred emigrated from the “Basque Française” (for South and Central America) and fifteen hundred from the “Basque Espagnole.” In figures this emigration has been considerably reduced of late, but the average per year for the last fifty years has been (from the Basse-Pyrenees Département alone) something like seventeen hundred.
The real, simon-pure Basque is seen at his best at Saint Jean-Pied-de-Port, the ancient capital of French Navarre. “Urtun hiriti urrumoffagariti,” say the inhabitants: “Far from the city, far from health.” This isn’t according to the doctors, but let that pass.
To know the best and most typical parts of the Basque country, one should make the journey from Saint Jean-Pied-de-Port to Mauléon and Tardets. Here things are as little changed from mediævalism as one will find in modern France. One passes from the valley of the Nive into the valley of the Bidouze. There are no railways and one must go by road. The road is excellent moreover, though the distance is not great. Here is where the automobilist scores, but if one wants to take a still further step back into the past he may make the forty kilomètres by diligence. This is a real treat too, not at all to be despised as a means of travel, but one must hurry up or the three franc diligence will be supplanted by a “light railway,” and then where will mediævalism come in. All the same, if you’ve got a feverish automobile panting outside St. Jean’s city gate, jump in.
There are numerous little villages en route which will not detain one except for their quaintness. One passes innumerable oxen, all swathed in swaddling clothes to keep off the flies and plodding slowly but surely along over their work. A train of Spanish mules or smaller donkeys pulling a long wagon of wood or wool is another common sight; or a man or a woman, or both, on the back of a little donkey will be no novelty either. This travel off the beaten track, if there is not much of note to stop one, is delightful, and here one gets it at its best.
Stop anywhere along the road at some inn of little pretence and you will fare well for your déjeuner. It will be very homely, this little Basque inn, but strangers will do very well for their simple wants. All one does is to ask “Avez-vous des œufs? Avez-vous du jambon? Du vin, je vous prie!” and the smiling rosy-cheeked patronne, whose name is Jeanne, Jeannette, Jeanneton, Jeannot or Margot—one or the other it’s bound to be—does the rest with a cackling “Ha! he! Eh ben! eh ben!” And you will think you never ate such excellent ham and eggs in your life as this Bayonne ham and the eggs from Basque chickens—and the wine and the home-made bread. It’s all very simple, but an Escoffier could not do it better.
The peasant’s work in the fields in the Basque country may not be on the most approved lines, and you can’t grow every sort of a crop here in this rusty red soil, but there is a vast activity and an abundance of return for the hard workers, and all the Basques are that. The plough is as primitive as that with which the Egyptian fellah turns up the alluvial soil of the Nile, but the Basque makes good headway nevertheless, and can turn as straight a furrow, up the side of a hill or down, as most of his brothers can on the level.
In the church at Bunus is a special door reserved in times past for the descendants of the Arabs who had adopted Christianity.
Here in the Basque country you may see the peasants on a fête day dance the fandango with all the ardour and the fervour of the Andalusians themselves. Besides the fandango, there is the “saute basque,” a sort of a hop-skip-and-a-jump which they think is dancing, but which isn’t the thing at all, unless a grasshopper can be said to dance.
“Le Chevalet” is another Basque dance whose very name explains itself; and then there is the “Tcherero,” a minuet-sort of a dance, wholly by men, and very graceful and picturesque it is, not at all boisterous.
The peasants play the pastoral here as they do in Languedoc and Provence, with good geniuses and evil geniuses, and all the machinery that Isaac Watts put into his hymns for little children. Here the grown men and women take them quite as seriously as did the children of our nursery days.