I owe George Sand (1804–1876) an apology. The French Romantic novelist has become such an attraction in the north of the Creuse – which seems to have adopted her from the neighbouring Berry – that a few years ago I thought I really ought to read one of her books. They are famed for their descriptions of 19th century country life, but the one I picked – Le Meunier D'Angibault – was so flowery and took so long to get to the plot that I gave up in disgust.

Then last week I stumbled across a charming short work of hers, translated into English, called The Devil's Pool*, which I read in one sitting, enchanted by all the historical details. It's a simple and predictable love story culminating in a wedding which is described at great length. The customs had their roots in pagan times and seem to have been an excuse for several days of feasting, drinking, practical jokes and mock-fighting. I would gladly share them with you, but I am not sure if all the complicated nuptial rituals were also carried out in the Creuse. They were certainly a very stylised rite of passage in which the whole community participated.

However there is one short section relating to these marriage celebrations that would apply to our department. It caught my fancy as it combines real information about a long-gone rural craft and acute observation of the chasse volante – the annual migration of the cranes – with the peasants' fears of wizards, witches and wolves. Though the language is archaic, the author draws beautiful images with her words.


Sand writes: "The parish hemp-dresser and wool-carder, a garrulous old man and as good a talker as ever there was, is present at all ceremonies, sad or good, for he is very learned and a fluent talker. On these occasions he must always figure as spokesman, in order to fulfil certain formalities used from time immemorial. Travelling occupations, which bring a man into the midst of other families, are well fitted to make him a talker, wit, story-teller, and singer.

"The hemp-dresser and another village functionary, the grave-digger, are always the daring spirits of the neighbourhood. They have talked so much about ghosts, and they know so well all the tricks of which these malicious spirits are capable, that they fear them scarcely at all. It is especially at night that all of them – grave-diggers, hemp-dressers, and ghosts – do their work. It is also at night when the hemp-dresser tells his melancholy stories. Permit me to make a digression.

"When the hemp has reached the right stage, that is to say, when it has been steeped sufficiently in running water, and half dried on the bank, it is brought into the yard and arranged in little upright sheaves, which, with their stalks divided at the base, and their heads bound in balls, bear in the dusk some small resemblance to a long procession of little white phantoms, standing on their slender legs, and moving noiselessly along the wall.

"It is at the end of September, when the nights are still warm, that they begin to beat it by the pale light of the moon. By day the hemp has been heated in the oven; at night they take it out to beat it while it is still hot. For this they use a kind of horse surmounted by a wooden lever which falls into grooves and breaks the plant without cutting it. It is then that you hear in the night that sudden, sharp noise of three blows in quick succession. Then there is silence; it is the movement of the arm drawing out the handful of hemp to break it in a fresh spot. The three blows begin again; the other arm works the lever, and thus it goes on until the moon is hidden by the early streaks of dawn. As the work continues but a few days in the year, the dogs are not accustomed to it, and yelp their plaintive howls toward every point of the horizon.

"It is the time of unwonted and mysterious sounds in the country. The migrating cranes fly so high that by day they are scarcely visible. By night they are only heard, and their hoarse wailing voices, lost in the clouds, sound like the parting cry of souls in torment, striving to find the road to heaven, yet forced by an unconquerable fate to wander near the earth about the haunts of men; for these errant birds have strange uncertainties, and many a mysterious anxiety in the course of their airy flight.

"Sometimes they lose the wind when the capricious gusts battle, or come and go in the upper regions. When this confusion comes by day, you can see the leader of the file fluttering aimlessly in the air, then turn about and take his place at the tail of the triangular phalanx, while a skilful manœuvre of his companions forms them soon in good order behind him. Often, after vain efforts, the exhausted leader relinquishes the guidance of the caravan; another comes forward, tries in his turn, and yields his place to a third, who finds the breeze, and continues the march in triumph. But what cries, what reproaches, what protests, what wild curses or anxious questionings are exchanged in an unknown tongue amongst these winged pilgrims!

"Sometimes, in the resonant night, you can hear these sinister noises whirling for a long time above the housetops, and as you can see nothing, you feel, despite your efforts, a kind of dread and kindred discomfort, until the sobbing multitude is lost in boundless space.

"There are other noises too which belong to this time of year, and which sound usually in the orchards. Gathering the fruit is not yet over, and the thousand unaccustomed cracklings make the tree seem alive. A branch groans as it bends beneath a burden which has reached, of a sudden, the last stage of growth; or perhaps an apple breaks from the twig, and falls on the damp earth at your feet with a dull sound. Then you hear rush by, brushing the branches and the grass, a creature you cannot see; it is the peasant's dog, that prowling and uneasy rover, at once impudent and cowardly, always wandering, never sleeping, ever seeking you know not what, spying upon you, hiding in the brush, and taking flight at the sound of a falling apple, which he thinks a stone that you are throwing at him.

"It is during those nights, nights misty and grey, that the hemp-dresser tells his weird stories of will-o'-the-wisps and milk-white hares, of souls in torment and wizards changed to wolves, of witches' vigils at the cross-roads, and screech-owls, prophetesses of the graveyard. I remember passing the early hours of such a night while the hemp-dressing was going on, and the pitiless strokes, interrupting the dresser's story at its most awful place, sent icy shivers through our veins.

"And often too the good man continued his story as he worked, and four or five words were lost, terrible words, no doubt, which we dared not make him repeat, and whose omission added a mystery yet more fearful to the dark mysteries of the story which had gone before. It was in vain the servants warned us that it was too late to stay without doors, and that bedtime had sounded for us long since; they too were dying to hear more; and then with what terror we crossed the hamlet on our way home! How deep did the church porch appear to us, and how thick and black the shadows of the old trees! The graveyard we dared not see; we shut our eyes tight as we passed it.

"But no more than the sacristan is the hemp-dresser gifted solely with the desire of frightening; for he loves to make people laugh. When love and marriage are to be sung, he is sarcastic and sentimental at need. It is he who collects and keeps stored in his memory the oldest songs, and who transmits them to posterity..."

Annik

*La Mare au Diable, George Sand, first published in 1846 as a novel and over the years also turned into a comic opera, a play, a film, a TV production, a bande dessinée and a talking book. Translation above (with a few edits) from: The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, 1917. For more details visit http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Mare_au_diable