Culture, dahlink, culture!

I finished Graham Robb's book last night and have now become enthused with a desire to find out as much as possible about our immediate area (the Massatois valley) and, further afield, the Ariege region generally. It is an area rich in culture, history, heritage and tradition which also has a fascinating linguistic background which (as a linguist!) I am keen to explore. All of these factors obviously go towards making the people who they are so by understanding their past, I hope to understand them more fully in turn. So my quest started this afternoon when I popped into the little 'papeterie' in the village where I picked up a copy of 'l'Histoire de Massat' by J-M Servat which covers the history of the valley from the 18th century through to the early 20th century. The book refers to the 'Editions Lacour' website on which I have found many more interesting books on the region which I may well acquire in due course! I also picked up 'le dialecte de la vallée de Massat - grammaire, dictionnaire et méthode d'apprentissage' which looks like heavy but fascinating reading! I spoke briefly with the bloke in the shop who said that the dialect is dying out as it is no longer taught in the local school and families are using it less and less at home. It is a real shame.

On my way back up to Pissou, I popped into Espies for some bread and took the opportunity to tackle Françoise about her quite thick accent which I had rather romantically assumed to be 'from the area' only to be told ''ben non, je suis de Montpellier d'origine!' Montpellier is along the Med coast so Françoise is obviously an 'import' to the area. I was however heartened to know that even Gil the boulanger has difficulty understanding her sometimes!

The other thing that has resulted from my reading of 'The discovery of France' was a rekindling of my A level passion for 'le Grand Meaulnes' by Alain Fournier written in 1913 (I have ordered it today from Amazon!), a book referred to by Graham Robb..... "His tale of boyhood longings set in the rural Bourbonnais, gave a tantalising sense of 'la France profonde' as a distant but familiar place, a little world full of simple things that spoke of another age: the stove in the freezing classroom, the clog-wearing pupils who smelled of hay, the gendarme and the poachers, the beaten-earth floor of the general store, the silence in the countryside". This work was one that I adored as an A level student. I somehow imagine our little part of the world to have once been not dissimilar to the summary so concisely outlined by Robb and I am impatient to read more!