Voyage between OC language and Oïl language in Gironde

In my eyes, the Gironde estuary: 4.5 km wide, powerful brown water, loaded with sediment, clays, silts, brewed by tides and currents. It is there, the sharing line. North of it, from the Middle Ages at the beginning of the 20th century, we spoke the gabaye (also spelled Gabay or Gabai, editor’s note) derived from the Saintongeais, language of Oïl of the region of Saintes (Charente-Maritime). In the south, in the Médoc, the country of OC, we spoke the Gascon.

Where do these differences come from? They are both Gallo-Roman languages, from vulgar Latin. The languages of Oïl, to the north, which gave old French and then modern French, were impregnated, to the fall of the Roman Empire (5th century), by dialects of Germanic peoples coming from the northeast, including the Franks. While the languages of OC (Occitanes) have received the influence of the Iberian Peninsula. So much so that a Spaniard understands Occitan better than French. However, the Saintongeais, the language of Oïl, is very steeped in Occitan … comes the sentence of a friend: “The border, it brings together. The sharing line here is a geographic and linguistic swamp!

A passion for the Gabaye language

North of the Gironde, the sun hits Blaye hard, 5000 inhabitants. Crossing the double ramparts of the imposing Citadel Vauban, Jean-Luc Buetas, former oenologist and winegrower, tells me this land of marshes: “Child, these ramparts formed my playground! The country was not rich. We worked teurjhou dan la fagasasse “Always in the mud”. This Gabaye language enthusiast has published a Dégéounaire Françoes-Gabaye (Net ed.). He continues: “The country was covered with forests and vineyards. He was ravaged by the Hundred Years War and the plague. The lords then gave land to northern people to repopulate the countryside and cultivate it. Hence the installation of residents of Poitou, or Charente and their customs (1). Her maternal grandmother, Marguerite, came from Saintonge. This “proud lady, always well primed for mass” pushed Jean-Luc to save this language. “I have bathed in his language, his culture,” he recalls. She picked up rushes in the marshes, worked the vine, the vegetable garden, took care of the farmyard, fed the pig, known as “the Lord”. Because killing the pig fed a family for the year. »»

This reception land for the people of the north of the estuary is called “La Grande Gavacherie”, a word from “Gavache”, meaning “foreigner” in Gascon and having also given “Gabaye”. Jean-Luc, stubbornly, with seriousness and humor, fights so that this speaking, inherited from his grandmother, just as the farms and Gabayes wells disappear from the territory. These buses in the form of shells were closed to prevent plague from the pestified to pollute water (or that Gascons, jealous, poison it!) Founder of the Crus and Terroirs association, the eenologist collects local testimonies, stories and recipes.

Strategic route

I realize that, from the Tower of the Citadel of Blaye, we understand how this geographic border created the linguistic border. “Built in the 17th century, it is on the site of a strong castle itself built on a Roman oppidum,” he explains. Because we are on a strategic, river and terrestrial route: the Belli via – “Route de la Guerre”, in Latin -, lock between Bordeaux and Saintes. To the west, the Gironde; In the southeast, a steep forest. To the north, the famous marshes …

We soon find his cousin Philippe, a retired wine merchant, who is preparing his field for the water game hunting season. A tradition that goes back far. If the “boss” held the house, the men poache, fished, chased rabbits, hares, ducks, geese, valves, Bécassines. Philippe leads us to his “ton”, a hut camouflaged in the marshes: “It comes from” barrel “: the ancients hid it to pull the game. »»

Then, with Brian, the photographer, we decide to go to the other side. The journey on the bac, from Blaye to Lamarque, lasts less than half an hour. Time to take stock, look at the horizon. We dock in the Gascons, “exuberant energumens compared to the hiding gabayes”, according to Jean-Luc. He is not wrong. There boha (Gascon Cornemuse) and Eric Fifre, like the Nathalie Caisse, resonate in the garden. Brian and I are invited to a lunch in music with the Gric de Prat group, named after a Médoc troubadour. We are in Eysines, near Bordeaux, in a market garden hut where a hundred peasants worked on the land and supplied the Bordeaux Capuchin market. THE Be canta the Hymn Occitan, is taken up in chorus by the joyful assembly. Their fervor gives chills and Éric invites us to a private concert. Then we film in Bordeaux along the Gironde to discover a little more the Gascon culture.

Occitan, language of the arts

Bordeu, “At the water’s edge” in Gascon, was a world -scale port. In the Middle Ages, wines left for England, where boats were exempt from taxes. Anglo-Gasconne friendship, born from the love of wine and trade, was also strengthened in 1152 when Aliénor d’Aquitaine married Henri Plantagenêt, nephew of the King of England, who succeeded him in 1154 … at the court of Aliénor, in Poitiers, like that of England, we spoke Gascon! A friendship that lasts, to see these many English who still settle in New Aquitaine today.

Julien Pearson, guide of the Pey-Berland tower, takes us under fresh Gothic vaults. The first, at the Saint-Michel basilica (13th and 14th centuries) bears an inscription by Gascon pointing that a Jean de la Grave, died in 1384, made an important donation to build the choir. “The jurade books (Municipality of Bordeaux, editor’s note) were also written in Gascon, “says Julien, who shows us the beautiful sculpture of the” recardeyre “, the merchant with the Cadichoune headdress, alongside the basilica, an emblematic character popularized by Meste Verdié, author, at the beginning of the 19th century, many plays in this language (2.)

A few streets further, we contemplate, in a niche on the facade of the Sainte-Eulalie church, a rare sculpted breastfeeding and a marquee representing Jean de l’Ours, hero half-man half-on from a Gascon popular tale. “The toponymy also testifies to the past and geographic realities,” continues Julien. And we would do well to remember it. When we see names of places related to “Augar”, it has Aïga, Water in Gascon is that it is marshy terrain! In Bordeaux, however, we quickly adopted the French after the Hundred Years War. More distinguished than the dialect. Montaigne, mayor of Bordeaux, however bathed in Occitan culture, did he not write in French? Admittedly, retorting the enthusiasts of Occitan in chorus to whom I infiduate the question treacherously. But he also said: “Where French does not go, Occitan will go”, insisting on its richness. In reality, the elite was polyglot and the Occitan remained the language of the arts and politics!

Symbol of Gascon town planning, the superb bastides, these fortified cities that the English have built. “The climate being favorable, the abundant harvests, the population multiplied in the countryside. The English, very pragmatic, told themselves that we had to organize these flows, explains Emmanuel Gaye, who guides us in the Bastide de Creon, 20 km south-east of Bordeaux. Hence the idea of bringing together housing in new cities, around a market square, accessible by large streets. The arcades sheltered from the sun or the rain, and the ramparts protected the city, he explains. In the in-between seas, a land of brewing and reception between Garonne and Dordogne, we have eight country houses, including seven built by the English. In addition to Creon, the impressive remains of the Bénédictine Sauve-Majeure abbey also recall how the monks contributed to the richness of the region, making land cleared and cultivating the vine.

A pride high

Our journey continues with Dominique Bernède, a guide to the country, first of the rope to go up to the Bastide de Monségur, perched on a promontory overlooking the Dropt valley: a medieval jewel with its streets, small streets at the back of the superb bourgeois houses, with wooden sides. “We are in the“ little Gavacherie ”, this“ pocket ”populated by people from the north of the estuary. The lords told the first arrivals to bring their cousins, their neighbors …! she says. In the Middle Ages, but also during the wars of religion, during the sling …

So we find a superb Gabaye well! Despite the heat, we also climb, not far from there, at the top of a medieval village of fairy tale, with its narrow and flowery streets, Castelmoron-d’Albret, placed on a rocky spur, 40,000 souls at the time. There too, a house has a “Gavache” engraved stone on its facade as well as the Vendée heart specifying the origin of the family … when you were talking about mixing!

Toast for our ending report, Brian and I share our impressions. Whether guides, teachers, artists … All have told us about their deep feeling of injustice: that of having been deprived, violently, of their language by “black hussars”, these teachers who imposed modern French under the Third Republic: “It is forbidden to spit and speak Gascon”, could we read in the public square of these villages not so long ago.

Let’s be honest: the inhabitants are more affected by the wine crisis, leading to massive vineyard tears, than by the fate of Gabaye or Gascon culture. But it still resonates, especially in the south. Young people learn the Gascon in calandretas (Occitan bilingual schools), participate in the Pellegrue carnival, at the atypical nights of Bordeaux, at the Nadau concerts, star singer. Occitan enthusiasts insist: learning two languages from the cradle opens up all others. Like Isabelle Hoarau, from the Aquitaine museum, who scored her daughter in a calendreta . Now in the second, Emma has chosen a double French-German course: “I already know Latin languages and I wanted to discover another universe. Like what, regional crops are connected to the world!

(1) History of the city of Blaye, Abbé E. Bellemer (19th century).

(2) Writings of Meste Verdié (1779-1820) are visible at the Aquitaine museum, in Bordeaux.