In Bayonne I spent the Mardi Gras and had my ‘carnival.’ The people of the South know how to be merry and enjoy themselves, and they can disguise themselves humorously and in good taste. All night long the quaint streets were crowded with hundreds of masquerading revellers, and the fun was fast and furious. Many of the costumes were Spanish, and really fine pieces of colouring. The ladies were particularly charming, though I fancy some of them must have suffered the next day with rheumatism in the lower limbs, for the roads were damp and muddy, and the wind blew keenly. Wet roads and keen winds are hardly suited to extra short skirts and pink fleshings and dainty little shoes and head-dresses of gauzy lace.
They certainly were not rheumatic on the night of the Mardi Gras, for I procured a box at the theatre and watched the grand carnival ball at its height during the small hours. The masked ball at the Paris Opera House is a grander sight for variety and richness of costume, and the crowd of revellers is greater, but no ball that I have ever witnessed came near to this little Bayonne celebration in mirth and unforced gaiety and rollicking good humour. Heavens, how the natives danced! How they whirled round and round, and capered and kicked their legs up, and laughed and shouted, and threw themselves heart and soul into the maddest of mad quadrilles! I left the theatre at four in the morning, and the Bayonne lads and lasses, masked, disguised, and brilliantly costumed, were hard at it still; and when I got outside into the cool air of the early morning there were still dozens of masqueraders, male and female, promenading the public square arm-in-arm, with never a cloak or a wrap about them, yet not a single cough or sneeze broke in upon the merry laughter that floated on the cool and humid air. I hurried towards my hotel with my overcoat buttoned to my chin, and on my way I passed a little sylph in an airy pink ballet costume, seated on a stone bench, and listening to the old, old story from the lips of a youthful Spanish matador; and the little sylph in pink gauze had taken great care not to sit upon the delicate texture of her skirts. I could understand that the tender passion had warmed her heart, but it must have also spread a glow all over to enable her to listen to the vows of her swain in that costume and on that seat without a single chatter of the teeth.
From Bayonne, before going to Biarritz, I determined to push further into the interior of the Basque country, and see for myself this strange race of people as they are in their mountain homes. Many of the inhabitants of Bayonne are Basque, and all the servants in the hotels. From coachmen, waitresses (there are very few waiters in Basque hotels), peasants, and fishermen, I gleaned a good deal of useful information before starting; but years of study might be devoted to this extraordinary people, the aborigines of Western Europe, who have seen Celts, Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, Vandals, and Saracens pass away like shadows, and still linger on themselves, retaining their old traditions and superstitions and their old language, which is like no other European tongue. Of their habits and customs, and of their homes, I shall have something to say presently; but I cannot resist giving here a specimen of this extraordinary Basque language, which one hears to-day freely talked, not only in the mountains and the valleys, but in the busy streets of the big towns.
The following paragraph I take from a dialogue between two Basque peasants, which is printed in a Basque paper. An election in the department was fixed for February 27, and it is concerning the merits of the Conservative and the Republican candidate that Batichta and Piarres are engaged in animated converse:
‘Batichta eta Piarres.—Canden igande arratsaldean, bezperetaric lekhora, ikhus, en gintuen Batichta eta Piarres, bi etcheco jaun adiskide handiac, bici bicia mintzo pilota plaza hegal batean. Huna, gero entzun dugunaz, car cerasaten.’
The linguist will see how utterly unlike any European tongue these words are. There is a suggestion of Arabic now and then, and a slight resemblance to a few Finnish and Spanish words; but, as a whole, it is absolutely original. Here is the translation: ‘Last Sunday, in the afternoon, on coming from vespers, we noticed two landowners—Batichta and Piarres—two good friends. They spoke very excitedly at the corner of the Jeu de Paume ground, and here is what they said——’ Then follows a long political conversation.
The Basques are strongly anti-Republican. Hundreds of young men are leaving their villages and going to South America to avoid serving in the army of the Republic. Their fathers would rather let their children go from them to the great land beyond the seas than see them fighting for a Government which they detest. The Basque population swarms in such places as Ecuador, Uruguay, the Brazils, Chili, and the Spanish-speaking portions of South America. Many of them return in after-years, rich and prosperous, to their native mountain homes, and build magnificent châteaux on the site of the old paternal cottages. When they return they are called ‘Americans'; and this rather bothered me, as one day, near Cambo, I had grand villa after villa pointed out to me as the residence of an ‘American.’ By cross-questioning my guides I arrived at the truth. The ‘Americans’ were wealthy Basques who had made fortunes ‘across the seas,’ and come home to be great men among their poorer compatriots. There is a good deal of South America dotted about the Basque country. You come upon the ‘Auberge de Monte Video,’ and the ‘Hôtel de Buenos Ayres,’ and the ‘Auberge de Rio Janeiro.’ My coachman’s sister has married and gone to Peru. My chambermaid’s brother is making money in Chili. An old fisherman who told me all the legends of St. Jean de Luz has two sons at Monte Video. Half the cottagers one talks to have friends and relatives in South America. South America is the El Dorado of the young Basque’s dreams. But when he has made his pile, he likes to come back to the old home, and spend it among his people.
With all these travellers among them, you would think the Basque peasantry would cease to be strongly conservative, that their ideas would broaden, and their exclusiveness would be broken down. But it is not so. They hate railways, and they hate the foreigners to come and disturb their peaceful ways. At Cambo the other day I fell in with a group of small landowners who were discussing the new railway schemes, and they were purple with passion that such an idea should have been mooted.
This conservative spirit among the Basque population is tremendously worked upon at election time. It will be interesting to all who study French politics (and who does not nowadays?) to see the sort of language which a local Conservative candidate indulges in at the expense of the Republic. Listen to this:
For God and for France.