The Story of Rouen

by Theodore Andrea Cook

"Aux enfants de Saint Godard
L'esprit ne venait qu' à trente ans."

By 1632 this feeling of rivalry and mutual distrust had been sharpened into positive hatred; for, of course, when the troubles of the Ligue had come, and St. Godard had declared for its old kings and saints, St. Nicaise had openly professed belief in Villars and Mayenne, and almost raised a chapel to the memory of Jacques Clément the assassin; and you may imagine the gibes of Royalist St. Godard when the tide of fortune turned against the rebel parish. Athens and Sparta were not more different, or more hostile. One day the smouldering fires broke into flame. It was the day of a procession when, at the very meeting line of the two parishes, the clergy of St. Godard, splendid in gold and embroidery, with a cross of gold before them, and behind them a line of ladies richly dressed and escorted by red-robed magistrates, were moving in procession, with the banner at their head presented by the Lady President of Grémonville, whereon the figure of the patron saint was embroidered upon crimson velvet hung round with cloth of gold. Consider the disdain of these fine ladies for the modest little gathering that walked, across the way, beneath a little banner of ordinary taffetas bearing a tiny effigy of St. Nicaise, worked in worn colours of old faded pink, and followed by a crowd of workmen clad in blouse and sabot and rough woollen caps. At a certain point the contrast became unbearable. The workmen, with a shout of fury, made a sudden rush upon that hateful new banner of St. Godard, tore it from the standard-bearer's hands, and threw it in the muddy waters of the boundary-stream. How the two processions got home after that you may imagine for yourself. It says much for the control of the respective clergy that there were no open blows at once. But that night St. Nicaise was vulgarly merry, and St. Godard wrapped its wrongs in ominous and aristocratic silence. What the songs were that those workmen sang in the cemetery of St. Nicaise you can read in a queer little book written by one "Abbé Raillard" in 1557, an "Abbé des Conards," who imitates Rabelais when he tries to be original, but is of far more value when he merely reproduces what he heard, to wit, "la fleur des plus ingénieux jeux chansons et menus flaiollements d'icelle jeunesse puérille, receuilly de plusieurs rues lieux et passages où il estoit répandu depuis la primitive récréation, aaze, jeunesse et adolescence Normande rouennoise."

Here is a chorus which no doubt resounded on that night of victory over St. Godard—

"Jay menge un œuf
La lange dun bœuf
Quatre vingt moutons
Autant de chapons
Vingt cougnons de pain
Ancore ayge faim,"

or this, again—

"Gloria patri ma mere a petri
Elle a faict une gallette
Houppegay, Houppegay j'ay bu du cidre Alotel (bis)."

Unfortunately, after having gone shouting to bed, the men of St. Nicaise slept sound without a thought of possible reprisals. But the young bloods "across the way" were all alert. Waiting till the change of guard at St. Hilaire should make that customary noise of clinking arms and tramping feet which every citizen would recognise and forget, sixty of the bravest champions crossed the Rubicon and advanced in the depth of the darkness to the cemetery of St. Nicaise. With heavy labour they broke up the sacred chains, detached the time-worn rivets, and dragged off the famous timber, the "Boise" of St. Nicaise, the palladium of the obnoxious parish. The next morning the gossips discovered to their stupefaction that there was no log to sit upon! Following a few traces that were left here and there, the horrified drapers and tanners found the smoking remnants of their cherished wood scattered in the square of St. Hilaire, surrounded by a laughing crowd of the children and young men of St. Godard. Vengeance was plotted on that very evening, and a smart skirmish took place up and down the streets of the aristocratic quarter, in which the victory of the velvet doublets only roused redoubled ardour in the men of smocks and leather aprons. The Palais de Justice and the majesty of the Law was obliged to intervene. The Duc de Longueville, Governor of the Province, tried to smooth over the crisis with the gift of a new and most enormous log; but nothing could replace the relic that was gone. At last the good priests of each parish set to work to heal the breach, and soundly damned each hardened sinner who attempted to break the good peace of the town with further quarrels. Messire François de Harlai, Archbishop of Rouen, aided their efforts, and at last the feud died down; but the event was never forgotten:

"Donc qu'o mette o calendrier
Qu'o dix huitiesme de Janvier
Fut pris et ravy notte Boise
Boise dont j'etions pu jaloux
Et pu glorieux entre nous
Que Rouen n'est de Georg d'Amboise."

David Ferrand's "patois" has preserved a good deal of the life and humour—racy of the soil—that gave Rouen her character, even after the sixteenth century was over. Something of the old life and its bravery lingered a little longer, and in the more pretentious Latin poems of Hercule Grisel you see how all these fêtes and jollities lasted on till well into the seventeenth century. The Fête St. Anne, when boys dressed as angels and girls as virgins ran about the streets; the St. Vivien, which was a great popular fair in Bois Guillaume and in the city; the Festin du Cochon, when Parliament was dined; the Pentecost, when birds and leaves and flowers were rained upon the congregation from the roof of the Cathedral; the Feast of the Farmers, in November, when the principal dish of roast goose was provided by a crowd of boys who had to kill the wretched bird by throwing sticks at it, as it fluttered helplessly at the end of a high pole; the Papegault, when the Cinquantaine, or Company of Arquebusiers, went a-shooting to settle who should be the Roi d'Oiseau, very much as it is described in Germany in the pages of Jean Paul Richter; the Jeu d'Anguille in May, when there was a jousting match upon the river like the water tournaments of Provence; the jollities of Easter Eve, when bands of children went about the streets shouting derision at the now dishonoured herring, and pitching barrels and fish-barrows into the river; the greatest and most impressive ceremony of all, the Levée de la Fierte, upon Ascension Day—all these festivities made up a large part of the life of the real Rouennais of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which was so narrowed and restricted in itself that it took every opportunity of expanding into a common gaiety shared by all the neighbours and the countryside.

The river was a scene of far greater bustle and activity and picturesqueness than it is now. Like the Thames, the Seine lost half its beauty when the old watermen disappeared. The harbour of the sixteenth century was always full of movement: sailors were always spreading over the riverside streets into the countless inns and drinking-places; the river was full of boats going to and fro; the bank upon the farther side was the fashionable promenade of all the ladies of the town; the bridges were filled with idlers who had no better business than to look on. At the fête called the Gâteau des Rois all the ships were lit up in the port, and every tradesman in the town sent presents to his customers: the druggists gave gifts of liqueurs and condiments; the bakers brought cakes to every door; the chandlers brought the "chandelles des Rois" to every household. At the favourite meeting-places of Ponts de Robec, or the Parvis Notre Dame, or the Église St. Vivien, the housewives gathered to watch their husbands drink and gamble, or bought flowers from the open stalls, or chaffered with the apprentices who stood ready for the bargain. Meanwhile, from all the forests near, the children of the poor were coming in with bundles of the faggots they were allowed to gather free; at every large house parties were gathering, each guest with her special contribution to the common fund of sweetmeats and of fruit, some even had brought bottles of the famous mineral water sold at the Church of St. Paul, and the Confrèrie de St. Cécile was hard-worked distributing its musicians broadcast to the many private gatherings that called for pipe and tabour. Then as the evening lowered, men told stories over the hearth of the girl who had seen three suns at once upon the morn of Holy Trinity from a neighbouring hill-top, or of the luck of their compère Jehan, whose boy, born on the day of the conversion of St. Paul, was safe for all his life from danger of poison or of snake-bite. All these customs and superstitions are reflected in Hercule Grisel's Latin verses, which he begins with a needless apology—