It’s that time of the month when I re-visit a blog post written during our years in France.  I’ve chosen this one because of the perspective it offers on rural life there,  a hundred or more years ago.  Because France – certainly where we were in the foothills of the Pyrenees – had no Industrial  Revolution, country life continued more or less unchanged for many until villages devastatingly lost their menfolk during the First World War.

Country life is country life, and some of these occupations would seem familiar to our own grandparents.  Others less so.  Have a look and see.

Today we visited Benac, one of those  small and almost picture-postcard-pretty  villages outside Foix.  I think it’s unlikely that too many horny-handed sons and daughters of toil live there these days.  Too many freshly painted facades and cheery boxes of geraniums at the windows. Too many sleek and highly-polished cars.

But once upon a time it was a busy working community. For the last few years, every summer the villagers here and in nearby hamlets arrange carefully constructed and dressed figures into appropriate corners of both village and countryside.  These figures celebrate the way of life that persisted here – and throughout France – for centuries, and only died out some time after the First World War.  They call the route you follow to hunt out all these scenes Le Cami des Encantats: Occitan for something like ‘the Enchanted Path’.  Come with me and take a look. Click on any image for a closer look and a caption.

The priest arrives at church.

Un poilu – a WW1 soldier, the French answer to a Tommy.

Then as now, it’s good to sit and watch the world go by.

Here’s the Garde Champêtre, paid by local farmers to keep local crops and stock safely in one place.

Pudding basin haircuts weren’t just for English children.

A colporteur: a hawker, purveyor of books and other good things.

The beekeeper.

The mobile distillery or alambic came round every autumn to distill some of the fruit crops into potent alcohol. It still happens.

An important craftsman: the nailmaker.

This man’s work is indoors. He’s at the forge.

The miller.

Log sawing: always important in this wooded region, for building, fuel, joinery ….

Haymaking.

A woman at the village lavoir, or clothes washing place. Sinks are fed from a natural water source and sheltered by a roof. One of the centres of village life.

The French love to hunt. Then it was a necessity rather than a hobby.

The postman.

Le pelharot: the rag and bone man.

As in England, the pig played an important part in keeping the household nourished through the winter months.

L’estamarron: the tinker dips worn cutlery to bring it back to life

The church bellringer.

If you work in the fields all day you need water. This young woman brings it to you.

This shepherd will spend the whole summer at high mountain pasture with his sheep.

Preparing the soil for seed sowing.

She’ll sow the seeds.

Square Perspectives