CHAPTER XIV
Literature and Commerce
Rouen est ville bien marchande
C'est à cause de la mer grande
Et est ce semble sans doutance
Quasi la meilleure de France.
Ouy fameuse cité c'est toy qui prens la peine
D'aller chercher bien loin l'ambre, la porcelaine,
Le sucre, la muscade, et tant d'excellents vins....
... Soye, oüate, tabac, draps de laine, poisson,
Bois, bleds, sel, bescars, tout luy vient à foison.
SUCH popular festivals as that I have just described upon Ascension Day are of very ancient origin, even if they do not date back to that earliest "Fête aux Normands," whose institution you will remember in 1070. Two years afterwards began the Confrèrie de la Vierge to which Pierre Daré, Lieutenant-General for the King, gave fresh lustre when he was elected its Master in 1486. Though older poems (like that of Robert Wace) are connected with the Confrèrie, to him is due the beginning of those "Palinods" sung in honour of the Virgin in the Church of St. Jean des Prés, which were called the "Puy de Conception," like the Puy d'Amour of the Provençal troubadours. The name probably originated in the refrain which ran through all the various metres allowed in the poems which were sent in for competition, as Pierre Grognet describes in 1533—
"On y presente les rondeaulx
Beaulx pallinotz et chans royaulx
Et sappelle celle journee
La feste du Puy honorée."
In these rhymes are preserved just those details of the people's life for which we have been looking. Great events and mighty personages in the world outside are passed unnoticed. The important trivialities of the householder's existence are the main theme of every verse. The Muse Normande of David Ferrand is a collection of such fragments of many "Concours des Palinods" from its beginning till his death in 1660. They are chiefly written in that "langue purinique ou gros normand" which was the distinctive patois of the working classes, and especially of those "purins" or "ouvriers de la draperie" who dwelt in the parishes of Martainville, of St. Vivien, and St. Nicaise in the city. You may hear it to this day in the villages of Caux. Here the gossip of the populace is reproduced, and you read of the burdens laid upon the people, of the abundance of wine (which did away with any need for beer), of the rivalries of corporations, of the amusements of the town, the mysteries and Miracle Plays, the Basoche, and the rough practical joking of the populace.
One of the most important subjects, for our purpose, in all David Ferrand's verse is that famous "Boise de Saint Nicaise," round which a seventeenth-century war waged, more bitterly and fiercely disputed than half the contests which take up the pages of your sober royal histories. You must know that this "Boise de Saint Nicaise" was an enormous beam of wood, chained by iron bars and links to the church walls, where every evening the gossips used to gather in the cemetery and talk over the scandal of the parish, or regulate the proceedings of the town. Thrice in 220 years had Rouen been besieged, once by the English and twice by its own countrymen, and each time the virtues of the famous "boise" had saved it from pillage and desecration. Upon its black and shining length the disputes of every century had been heard and settled: masters had brought up their quarrels with the workmen, merchants had wrangled over sharp practice in their business, girls had been summoned to receive a lecture from the elders of the parish on the flightiness and immodesty of their behaviour. No parish had ever such a palladium of its dignity. And you can easily conceive the derision and contempt with which the mighty "boise" was treated by the boys of the rival and neighbouring parish of St. Godard, who used to sing—
"Les habitants de Saint Nicaise
Ont le cœur haut et fortune basse."
This was a bad pun on the chœur, or choir, of the church that was too good for its worshippers. For there was a great contrast between the populations on each side of the dividing line. St. Godard was filled with magistrates and mighty men of law, who lived in sumptuous houses and carved their coats of arms upon their massive sideboards, who quoted Malherbe, and approved the early efforts of a young man called Corneille, and prided themselves upon the delicacy and scholarship of their speech. In St. Nicaise, on the contrary, you heard little save the "purinique," or patois of the workmen; in narrow, dark, and twisting streets the drapers and weavers and dyers carried on their trades and earned their bread by the sweat of their brow. Their children had to work early for their living, and helped the business of their parents when still in the first years of their youth. No wonder these who "scorned delights and lived laborious days" laughed at the effeminacy of their neighbours, saying that