Wanderings by Southern Waters, Eastern Aquitaine

by Edward Harrison Barker

Madame's local knowledge did not deceive her, but her expression 'a few fleas' did not at all represent the true state of affairs. And I had forgotten the precious powder and the little pair of bellows, without which no one should travel in Southern France.

The morning air was fresh, and the fronds of the bracken were wet with dew, when I left Marsal, and took my course along the margin of the river through meadows that dwindled away into woodlands, where the rocky sides of the gorge rose abruptly from the stream. Haymakers were abroad, and I heard the sound of their scythes cutting through the heavy swathes with all their flowers; but the sunshine had not yet flashed down into the deep valley, and the grasshoppers were waiting to hail it from their watch-towers in the green herbage and on the purple heather. As the breeze stirred the leaves of the wood, it brought with it the perfume of hidden honeysuckle. Golden oriels were busy in the tops of the wild cherry trees, feeding upon the ripe fruit, and calling out their French name, loriot; and when they flew across the river, a gleam of brilliant yellow moved swiftly over the rippled surface. For an hour or so I remained in the shade of trees, and then the sandy path met a road where the gorge widened and cultivation returned. Here I left the stream for awhile.

Now came sunny banks bright with the common flowers that deck most of the waysides of Europe. Bedstraw galium and field scabious, ox-eyes and knapweed, bladder-campions and ragged robins, mallows and crane's-bill—all the flowers of the English banks seemed to be there. Where the bare rock showed itself, yellow sedum spread its gold, and in the little clefts stood stalks of cotyledon, now turning brown. At the base of the rocks, where there was still some moisture, were the blue flowers of the brooklime veronica, and the brighter blue of the forget-me-not. Having passed a village, I met the Tarn again. Here the beauty of the rushing water, and all that was pictured upon it, tempted me to sit down upon a bank; but I had no sooner chosen the spot than I changed my intention. A red viper was curled up there, and sleeping so comfortably that it really seemed unkind to wake it with a blow across all its rings. When I thought, however, of the little consideration it would have shown me had I sat upon it, I added it without compunction to the number of aspics I had already slain.

My mind was taken off the contemplation of this good or evil deed by a scene that seemed to contain as much of the picturesque as the eye could seize and the mind dwell upon, without being bewildered and fatigued. I had turned the bend of the wooded gorge, and, looking up the river, saw what resembled a dyke of basalt stretching sheer across the stream, with a ruined castle on a bare and apparently inaccessible pinnacle, another ruin on the opposite end of the ridge, and, between the two, a little church on the brink of a precipice. Houses were clustered at the foot of the rocks by the blue water.

This was Ambialet, so called from the extraordinary loop which the Tarn forms here in consequence of the mass of schistous rock which obstructs its direct channel. After flowing about two miles round a high promontory, where dark crags jut above the dark woods, the stream returns almost to the spot from which it was compelled to deviate, and the lower water is only separated from the upper by a few yards of rock. There are several similar phenomena in France, but there is none so remarkable as that at Ambialet.

Although nothing is now to be seen of its defensive works, except the ruined castle upon the high rock, Ambialet was one of the strongest places in the Albigeois. Now a small and poor village, it was in the Middle Ages an important burg, with its consuls, its council of prud'hommes, and its court of justice. It became a fief of the viscounts of Beziers, and was thus drawn into the great religious conflict of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Viscount of Beziers having espoused the cause of Count Raymond of Toulouse. An army of Crusaders, which had been raised to crush the Albigenses, having Simon de Montfort at its head, appeared before Ambialet in 1209, and, although the burghers were quite capable of withstanding a long siege, they were so much impressed by the magnitude of the force brought against them, and also by Simon's sinister reputation, that they surrendered the place almost immediately. But when the army was campaigning elsewhere, these burghers, growing bold again, attacked the garrison that had been left in the town and castle, and distinguished themselves by one of those treacherous massacres which were among the small incidents of that ruthless war. When Simon reappeared in the Albigeois, the people of Ambialet, cowards again, laid down their arms. The castle was soon afterwards the meeting-place of De Montfort and Raymond VI.; but the interview, which it was hoped would lead to peace, had no such result, and the war was carried on in Languedoc and Guyenne with renewed fury.

[Illustration: AMBIALET.]

Ambialet was enjoying comparative freedom and self-government in an age when many a town was still in the midnight darkness of feudal servitude. It had its communal liberties and organization before the eleventh century. There is a very interesting charter in existence, dated 1136, by which Roger, Viscount of Beziers and Albi, recognises and confirms these liberties. Although it opens in Latin, the body of the charter is in the Romance language. It shows that the idiom of Southern Gaul in the twelfth century was a little nearer the Latin than that which is spoken now. The document is full of curious information. It tells us that the inhabitants of Ambialet were liable to be fined if they did not keep the street in front of their houses clean. Perhaps the towns in the South of France were less foul in the twelfth century than most of them are now. We learn, too, that the profits in connection with the most necessary trades were fixed in the interest of the greater number. Thus, the butchers were required to take oath that they would reserve for their own profit no more than the head of the animal that they killed. What sort of face would a butcher of to-day make if he were asked to work on such terms? The tavern-keepers had to take oath that they would buy no wine outside of the boundaries of the viscounty of Ambialet, which shows what was thought in the twelfth century of the practice of purchasing in the cheapest market to the neglect of communal interests. The price of wine, like that of bread, was fixed, and five worthies (prohomes) were appointed to examine weights and measures, and to confiscate those which were not just. The concluding part of the charter confirms the right of the youth of Ambialet to their traditional festivals and merry-making: 'E volem e auctreiam que lo Rei del Joven d'Ambilet puesco far sas festas, tener sos senescals e sos jutges, e sos sirvens e sos officials,' etc. The whole passage is worth giving in English, because historians tell us very little about the festive manners of the twelfth century:

'We wish and order that the King of Youth of Ambialet shall keep his festivals, have his seneschals, judges, servants, and officials, and that on the day appointed for the merry-making, the King of Youth shall demand from the most recently married man in the viscounty, and woman who shall have taken a husband, a pail of wine and a quarter of walnuts; and if they refuse, the king can order his officers to break the doors of their house, and neither we nor our bailiffs shall have the right to interfere. And any person who shall have cut ever so little from the leaves of the elm, planted upon the place, shall be sentenced by the King of Youth to pay a pail of wine, and the king can enforce it as above. Moreover, we declare that on the first day of May the youth shall have the right to set up a maypole, and any person who shall cut a portion of it shall owe a pail of wine, and the king can compel him to pay it, for such is our wish. We have granted this favour to the youth because, having been a witness of their merry-making, we have taken great pleasure and satisfaction therefrom.'

This custom has been continued to the present day. The youth of Ambialet have their annual festival, and the most recently married couple of the commune are called upon to 'pay' their pail of wine, although the exact measure is not strictly enforced.