Cevennes Way of Life

I have to mention the wild flowers who lived alongside us.  The unprecedented rain brought forth some Spring flowers, much to my delight, but apprently it is usally jolly hot and the grasslands turn brown and barren.

Long ago the people of Cevennes lived by the sweet chestnut, they gathered them and heated them and trampled them with metal spiked shoes to separate them from their husks.  They made jams and soups and flour from them.   Animals rooted at the feet of the chestnut trees its leaves served as straw, its sticks for fire, its wood for their houses.    Then industrialisation came, the mines were built and people moved away, and the chestnut trees became sad and sick and a way of life died.  However, now people are returning to revive the traditions, chestnut flour is on the market, excellent in pancakes and pastry.  We are eating 'crême de marron' on our toast for breakfast.

In which R discovers he has Hugenot sympathies
We decided to take R&B to a museum to learn about the fate of the Hugonots (Huguenots).    We heard that many of the local houses had Hugenot graves in their gardens, often marked by Cypress trees, as they were forbidden from burying their dead in a churchyard.   R's usual reaction to the word 'museum' is to wilt until his forehead cracks on the ground, and he has many times installed himself at the foot of the pillared entrances of such establishments refusing categorically to go a step further.  However, something about this proposition made him weaken and he announced that he was not a Catholic, he has a Hugenot. 

We learned that the Hugenots were driven from their wealthy smallholdings into the 'desert' of the Cevennes by the wickedly intolerant Louis XIV where they were further persecuted.  Protestants suffered much the same thing as the Catholics in England under Henry VIII,  and came up with similar ways of continuing their religious practice:  pulpits hidden in barrels, priestholes, hidden Bibles and protestant services in the mountain caves by moonlight.  Their watchword was RESISTANCE, which is R's middle name, his first name is shared by the great leader of the Camisards and R was entranced throughout the guided tour by period characters in low budget costume. 

Many Hugenot descendents were in the crowd, the same faces as in the paintings, and any one of the small faced, small featured children with corn coloured hair could have been R's brother or sister.  We treated him to a Hugenot Cross which he wears with pride.  I chatted with one of the staff afterwards and he told me that the percentage of protestants in France is about 4, whereas in the Cevennes it is over 50 percent, and religious fervour is still in evidence, even the 7th Day Adventists have an outpost in Anduze.  So, three centuries later, after seemingly hopeless persecution and anahilation,  the protestants won.  That's resistance.

We volunteered to work an hour a day on the farm, as they are sometimes short handed.  We hoed, one hoe serves for two waterings.  They have to water every day from an underground spring, using an automatic watering system of surface pipes.