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- The Quiz!
- We talk a little, a lot, passionately...
The Esterelle fairy... Roseline de Villeneuve... The semaphore of Dramont... The Palavas carriage train...
The Pignes train and the pig... - We sing too!
- Some images from here, from there, a little further...
- Photos from yesterday
- The Library of Passadoc
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Philippe Natalini
The Esterelle fairy
... that of the fairy who gave her name to this extraordinary mountain massif emblematic of the Var which is the Esterel!
In exchange for prayers and offerings of young Varoese, the invisible magician offered them some drinks to make them fruitful. Sterile, childish women would therefore visit this fairy.
It lived between the shredded rock of red porphyry, in the middle of impenetrable forests. It ran the ridges, visited the coves and calanques inaccessible from the earth, climbed the rocks, explored the caves. This small mountain massif was her estate, she gave her name.
Why invoke Estérelle whose name derives from Provençal Estello, "the star"? Simple souls drew his name closer to esterlo, sterility. But the fairy accepted many wishes. So, the babies who were born under the sign of Esterelle, they were said to have been born under a good star!
Esterel who has a fairy for godmother sheltered many brigands, bandits of great roads or forçats. The inextricable tillages, the forests that covered the massif offered them an almost inviolable refuge, no clear path ran through it in these remote times.
So, on the occasion of a ballad in this wonderful massif of the Esterel, if you cross the fairy, ask her permission to make a selfie avec She!
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Roseline de Villeneuve...
Here's her story, Roseline's and the Roses miracle...
Born in January 1263, daughter of the Marquis de Villeneuve, seigneur des Arcs (83), Roseline is a generous man.
During a famine caused by a severe winter, and to help the unfortunate, Roseline hides the family reserves to distribute them. Surprised by his father, and not to let him see this flight, the food is immediately transformed by miracle, into an incredible bouquet of roses!
First abbess, she became Mother Prioress of the Abbey of Celle Roubaud aux Arcs from 1300 to 1328, she died on 17 Jan. 1329 at the age of 66. Exhumed five years after her death, her body was found intact and her eyes as bright and bright as if she were alive. The miracle of the preservation of the eyes of Sainte-Roseline was observed by the king in 1660 by Louis XIV's personal doctor. Placed in a crystal frame, the body will not be embalmed until 1894, almost six centuries after its death.
Very pious, she was canonized and her body – still under a crystal frame – is still exposed to the public in the communal chapel that has become today a renowned place of worship. Ex-voto, flowers and photos always abound at the foot of the saint's relics.
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The semaphore of Dramont...
The history of the semaphore dates back to the Middle Ages, the Agatonnian territory (Agay) depends on the bishopric of Fréjus, which ordered the construction in 1562 of a watchtower on the hill of "Darmont" (small Coline in Provençal) as well as at the Baumette.
Later, Richelieu decided to carry out a more systematic fortification of the Provencal coasts and appointed governor of Agay in 1635, Jean Vincent de Roux who laid the foundations of a castle and a star fort, on a point in the middle of the harbour. The castle of Agay was destroyed by the Germans in May 1944.
The present semaphore was opened in 1806, because the development of the semaphore dates from Napoleon I.and. In 1806 Admiral Decrès, Minister of the Navy, adopted a visual communication system, inspired by Chappe's telegraph. Closed eight years later during Napoleon's abdication, it was reopened during the "Cent days" in 1815 and closed again.
Occupied by German troops (5 soldiers of the Kriegsmarine) the semaphore was hard hit during the Disembarkation of Provence on August 15, 1944. He's inoperative, unarmed. After renovation it is reactivated on August 1, 1964. It was only in 1966 that the semaphore was rearmed by the Navy.
Some missions dedicated to the semaphore of the Dramont:
– counter terrorist action.
– ensuring the safety of maritime approaches.
– monitor underwater archaeological sites and fisheries areas.
– report accidents at sea and fires on land.
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Alain Cathala
The Petit Train-Charrette de Palavas...
A new anecdote.
Ah! this famous little Little Train of Palavas! What stories could we tell about him. It must be said that he seemed very capricious and that he wanted to make lie all the mathematical laws of railway travel so well studied in French primary schools. He did not deprive himself of a new whim on 13 June 1897 after having slendered from the Palavas pier at 21:43 with the hope of crossing the 11 kilometers that separated him from the Esplanade de Montpellier about thirty minutes later, at most...
But this was without counting on his scientific intolerance and his willingness to ignore the time-speed-distance equations proven. The Petit Train did not reach its final destination until the following day, on 14 June 1897, with a considerable delay in its timetable. Here's the story.
Near the Pont du Lez, after the Lattes station which he had painfully reached in an hour, the Petit Train had decided that it would not go further. The machine was exhausted and refused to make another wheel towards Montpellier. But the driver didn't hear it from that ear. He had to drive his recalcitrant train to a good port.
With his wild hopes, at Lattes station, he did not consider it advisable to warn by telegraph of his difficulties. It can be understood that the station leaders of Montpellier and Palavas were beginning to simmer. There was already more than an hour late. The first station chief, that of Montpellier, was to respond to the anxieties of the families who came to get their drunken travellers from the palavasian sweets and the second to the worry of the last Montpellierans who wanted to go home and waited, while cursed, on the pier of the seaside resort.
The driver would also have been able to use this telegram, if he had not assumed the capabilities of his locomotive, to request that a rescue machine leave Montpellier to recover the passengers he was carrying. No! He was a master of the rail... They would do well in Montpellier, he and his mount... even if it would take two hours or three.
Obliged to go to the obvious a few hundred meters from Lattes station, he had to go back on foot and finally telegraph to get this rescue machine that the passengers were waiting for in the half-dark, attacked by mosquitoes. It goes without saying that when the emergency machine arrived, the passengers made sure that the cabochard driver did not take the direction of the new load. He received pretty imprecations that even the journalist of the Petit Méridional did not want to list in his columns. I'm sorry, I'd have liked to transcribe them...
When you are told that trips with the Little Train were worthy of the great epics of Greek mythology. And yet I didn't tell you that a few days before, we really lost the Little Train... But it will be for a future story!
Text Fabrice Bertrand.
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André Abbe
The Pignes train... and the pig !
Émile Michel and one of his friends greet the passengers of the Train des Pignes of the Nice-Digne line.
After killing the pig, they prepare the cold meat.
That was about 40 years ago. We no longer kill the pig in the farm of Michel de Mézel
But cats are welcome, fed and housed! precise André
And RPorre adds:
Homemade charcuterie, all memories!
My parents bought half a pig and what a day!... The boudins, the quailettes, the rolls, the ham raw, small salty, pâté, the tripes, roasts... I still have those meat spices coming back to me! The chopper hung at the table...
My mom was a specialist in snails and snails; My dad, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he...
Among the stepparents, the pig was raised at home at the farm and killed on the spot... A hell of a job and then all the cold meat !
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Patricia Jouve
Some additional details on "The Song of the Bovierpublished last week.
"La Gazette de Passadoc" – No. 51
"We sing too!
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Alain Cathala
The gulf of Fontaine-de-Vaucluse...
Click! Look!
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The Redout of Palavas...
A Redout, this small fortified tower, was located on the beach edge at Palavas-les-Flots (34250), it was in fact a guard watch. Subsequently, in the 1930s, the town had to have its water castle: it was built around this Redoute, which was located Rue du Fort in Palavas. In the 1990s it was dismantled stone by stone, and rebuilt near the Golden Pond in Palavas.
The white building is the Mediterranean Tower, the ancient castle where the Redout was located.
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Philippe Levieux
Loubressac - Lot
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Patricia Jouve
Fontaine-lavoir Saint-Vincent in Toulon.
A corner of the old town remained in his juice. The importance of keeping this built heritage
and to renovate with this style and spirit.
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Maryse Laugier
Groolers – The ruins of the castle... Beautiful wash...
and butterflies everywhere that are part of the heritage!
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André Abbe
Marseille... On the old port...
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Guy Bouyer
Saint-Aygulf. Villepey ponds, circa 1880.
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Alain Cathala
Montpellier – Operating room around 1900...
And in the operating room, we find... Doctors!
"Surgery school doctors" by Adrien Barrère (1877-1931).
A little tribute to the Montpellieran doctors yesterday! [Ref. Fabrice Bertrand]
The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine – Montpellier.
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André Abbe
From left to right: François Abbe (father of André), seated, Aimé Coquillat, Léon Brunel, a pugetois friend, Henri Chavannas.
“Men's meals were a tradition. Many were fine cooks among them able to prepare daubes, civets, exquisite aioli... but who let the women of his family cook every day", says André Abbe.
So I never tasted a single dish of my grandfathers! regrets François Abbe.
And everyone remembers...
Claude Boyer
If my mother was a fine blue cordon, my father was unable to cook water. What my brother and I didn't look like to him because we like to go to the stoves... How heredity sometimes knows coracs... That said the photo seems to me to stick to the opening of the hunt... Where the plugs jump higher than the chevrotines!
Bernadette Maggini
Dad a specialist in couscous and fish and mother Italian recipes such as ravioli, gnocchi, veal sauté, rabbit civet, etc. As for my great*Mother, it was polenta, pot chicken, Milanese escalope, spinach with calf egg, ...
Jean Yves Dumay
My father – from the Landes – obliges – ceps, carcases of fatty ducks in the crease, grills, ventrèche, garlic tureen,... And for my mother in good Varoise, the pistou soup, the poison soup, the Roman gnocchi... Anyway, we ate well!
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Patricia Jouve
The port of Toulon before the war 39-45.
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