The Hebdo 140
The bugadière...
[Photo – Sheets dry on hot sun stones.]
The bugadier... Lavender, laundry... In other words, the woman who does laundry.
Small stop in the pages of the Historical Dictionary of the French Language (A. Rey):
– drunk : from Gallo-Roman « bucata » → laundry
[here appears the tenant…]
to which also goes « bugada » → Old Provencal
[entering the stage of the bugadière !]
For « lavender », the dictionaries are all agreed for: woman washing laundry.
However, on another site that values heritage « Dordogne-Périgord », we read that « bugado » is from the Celt « bugat » → laundry.
For peace to continue to prevail over Passadoc, let's say words are like tourists: they travel!
But how long have we been doing laundry? Since humans abandoned the hides of animals – which they threw away when they began to rot – to clothe themselves.
Wash clothes with clear water because there is no detergent! We hunt the dirt by trampling them by hand, by foot, by typing them against big stones.
In the 12th century, large linen was washed only once a year after Easter; It's a day of heavy drinking that can count dozens of sheets... at least in wealthy families – hence the importance of the young girls to marry. We add towels, large aprons and work shirts worn for weeks and cut into thick cotton.
In the 13th, two large shovels: spring and autumn.
Every week – often on Mondays – the little laundry, the « small drunks », for more delicate linen parts.
You wash at home or at the river... Harassing task... Knives stuck in the box to wash or the cabasson (small comfort to protect themselves from the moisture of the earth), broken kidneys on the river, arms plunged into the water which even in summer iced hands and fried fingers, lavender brush each piece of linen, flushed water with big blows before a final rinse in the river.
Let's let the time pass and find the women near the wash. It's not really a party day because the work is almost the same and just as tiring, but it's an opportunity to exchange news, to go a bit, to pot a bit!
It's here, from morning to evening,
Only by tongue and battler
We're washing the whole city.
We talk loud, we hit hard,
The drummer beats, the tongue bites!
To be a skillful washer,
We must prove before witnesses
That the battery is very agile,
That the language is no less.
Achille Millien (1838-1927) – Poet and folklorist, born in Beaumont-la-Ferrière (Nièvre)
Soap has long been used; However, ash is still used: rich in potash salts, it is an excellent detaching agent provided it is made up of ferns and fruit trees, especially no chestnut wood or oak too rich in tannin.
In Journal downpublished in 1941, Colette tells the story :
– . . . you have thrown a chestnut peel into the chimney again.
- No, Mom.
– Yes, my daughter.
And Sido, my mother, waved at the tip of the tweezers, under my nose... the body of the crime.
- My ashes! Soak my precious apple ashes, poplar and sleep! What about laundry?
Ashes that would be used by laundry woman : « At regular intervals [she] poured on the ash bed a boiling broccode of water.«
– When does our bugadière arrive?
Patience... here she is!
Jeanne Monin
Research on many sites.
- The Echoes of the Week
Two stories:
Tomorrow I'll clear
I have memories
The pottery of the Moustiers
Provence
On the port
Sitting
Autumn - Passadoc
Jean-Pierre Violino
Write to us!
Two beautiful stories as we would like to read more often here...
Thanks to the authors!
Tomorrow I'll clear - Claude Boyer
I was happy when Grandma said « Tomorrow I'll clear« .
First, I had the gift. Bonux and second I could play with matches because it was mine that was given the heavy responsibility to light the fire. I put an apple of pine under the washing machine, taking care of it, letting a little bit of it sand to pass through the flame, then I covered it with small wood and finally lit it. When the fire got on, I was putting on bigger logs than peped had split. Then I helped her to stir the linen in boiling water with a long stick while she sang in Provençal:
Aunt Trebaudo, what is fas damoun dau? The bugado and the pea...
(Tante Thérèse, what are you doing up there? I run the laundry and get a little warm...
old rhyme of his childhood, which I don't remember very well. It was about a rat who bit his finger and then she turned around and sent him a blow to chase him; a story with no tail or head like all the rhymes of the day... (I apologize to the purists for spelling my Provençal)
Then she beat the linen with the help of a large wooden drummer, rinsed it thoroughly with the water that I pumped into the well thanks to the Japy pump and then spread it on the nearby meadow to dry it under the beautiful sun of Provence...
My other mother, who lived in the village and had no washing machine, did her « small laundry » heat water on the wood stove. However, when she had to boil the sheets or the pea's overalls that were a painter in the building, she took advantage of the laundry day to come to the country with her wheelbarrow loaded with linen.
There I was even happier, I had two packages of Bonux to open because of course my grandmothers only bought this brand for me to have the gifts. I saw her coming trot-menue with her mound of linen behind which she disappeared so small. Small but vigorous, dry and nude as a vine stock, it was of those old raised with goat's milk, who from ten years old frequented the work of the farm more than the benches of the communal.
I went to meet him, took the wheelbarrow of his hands and finished the way, proud as a cock to help him. She always said to me:
– Sies ben bravet pitchoun de veni mi adjuda.
(You're a nice kid to come help)
...and in addition to the gift Bonux, she pulled out of her apron a toffee lollipop Pierrot Gourmand or some other treat she had bought at the bakery in the village by taking her bread.
All to their laundry, they were discussing in Provençal, meme of the village telling the last gossip of the countryside which did not « went up into town », however distant from only one small kilometer, than once or twice a year to go to the fair of Place Armand Fallières or to the feast of Saint James where she offered a chichi frigi, her only annual luxury.
I listened to their discussions but never mingled; On the one hand, at the time, it was not appropriate for a child to get involved in an adult conversation and on the other hand I did not understand who or what they were talking about. Except for a discussion that remains in my memory, which has long been in my mind and ended up with an unjustified maternal admonishment.
One day in the village said:
– Oh, you don't know, Mrs. Unitelle is pregnant!
- Moun Diou, not possible... At his age?
"Well, yes, when she learned it she was devastated the poor. I heard the doctor offered to send him away, but she didn't want to. She said so much, it would be a crime so I keep it.
(Of course, Mrs Veil had not yet come to the gallery.)
– But then that makes him four. And how much will it make difference to the elder?
– Well at least twenty years, he just left soldier.
"Well, that's it already, they will always be that three at home and the two girls are grandettes, they can help him take care of the pitchoun.
– Oh, that's not the problem, but it's mostly one more mouth.
– Yes, but since the elder is a soldier...
– You're right.
All this in Provençal that I would be well worth writing to you but that I understand very well.
I was all ears in my corner playing with my presents Bonux, not losing a crumb of the discussion and I wondered how Mrs. Unitelle I knew could be in Holy. I saw a strong woman, the waist surrounded by the traditional apron, the damned on the head, the big, sloppy hands, a fine mustache barring her upper lip.
I am from a family of unbelievers, I did not attend baptismal backgrounds or catechism but I had the opportunity to return sometimes to the church and I had seen the statue of the Blessed Virgin, beautiful, slender, with a white veil that fell on a pretty blue dress but that did not resemble Mrs.
I was left with my thoughts, but the mystery was troubling me. One day no longer holding on to it I asked my mother all about it:
– Mom, what does a woman mean?
What didn't I ask for?
– Where did you hear that? It's stupid, you have to talk about it more!
I curled up in my chair and kept wondering what rudeness I might have said in order to win me maternal lightnings.
I had the best parents we could dream of. My father was authoritarian, severe but fair, there was never any violence at home, my mother was of those women of the 1960s, mother hen holding her home beautifully. I wish all the children in the world to have the same parents but with hindsight I have to admit that they were somewhat stuck on some subjects.
It took another two or three years to distinguish between a pregnant woman and the Church saint. In retrospect I had an emotional thought for my mother that I had shocked that day. Certainly this story would make a eight-year-old laugh today but at the time we didn't have social networks, Internet and other Tik-Tok to wake us up. That said, at the risk of becoming a pastor, I wonder if it was any better because at least we had a childhood before. « swallow the first ridge » life.
It is on this sentence of my dear Georges Brassens that I conclude this account which I hope will have amused you.
The parents and grandparents left, the wash was destroyed, the well blocked and a hideous building replaced the sheets on the meadow. Now I am the grandfather, but these anecdotes that go back almost sixty years are still very clear in my memory. They were happy days...
Madame Augusta Escoffier née Brunel and her mother Claire Brunel returned
in spring wash their laundry in the water of the Maurette.
I have memories...
I have memories of these days dedicated to the « bugade ». A real expedition.
My maternal grandmother would regularly wash at La Maurette – Roquebrune-sur-Argens. The baskets were loaded, full to crack on the wheelbarrow, or in the super trailer, which was fixed on the bike, threatening every moment to tip. My grandfather often loaded it all on his van with the local bugadières. The essential accessories: washing boards, battlers, dog brushes, large pieces of soap from Marseille. And it was gone for a full day, rich in papotes.
The linen was, yes, extended « serene », an expression I have often heard in my childhood.
My grandmother was also familiar with the municipal wash in Roquebrune.
– Wash the laundry and make people dirty.
Fun way to illustrate the social function of washing as a place of chatter and laughter.
I remembered sometimes having accompanied, during my early childhood, mother who was not going to wash at the Maurette but at the stream near what was the stadium of Roquebrune, on the « puppy » of the Chaillan family.
Most often she washed at home. There was a large laundry room in the basement, with basins, a corner with a fireplace, in which the famous washing machine with mushroom was placed on a tripod to boil the linen.
My grandfather planned everything when he had the family house built in the 1930s. I think that he had to install this very practical laundry at the time on the advice and orders of my grandmother but especially on the informed opinion of the professional lavender cousins, who moreover opened the first laundry room in Cannes, late XIXe early 20th, active until the late 90s, a whole line of bugadières ...
For extension, steel wires installed firmly in the garden and ropes also in an airy dependence but sheltered from the weather.
We always reserved a grass corner to spread the laundry. « serene » and this also on the nights of full moon, with some bad surprises during unexpected releases of bombs by some passing birds or even, nicer, fingerprints and traces of the pads of our munous and everything was to be done again ... the practice was soon abandoned ...
I remembered the smells of Marseille soap, ash too, since wood ashes were still often used for laundry. The linen on the wires that slammed in the wind... clothes that smelled clean, where my « Tocs » to prepare often still my own soap laundry from Marseille and my homemade softener, that already long before breath « the green wind »...
The pottery of Moustiers
Every visitor is impressed by the site of the village of Movements dominated by a long chain that connects two rocky blocks, with a star in its middle. The first earthenware dates back to the 17th century, their production grew rapidly but in the 19th century everything stopped. It took one enthusiast – Marcel Provence – to revive it in 1925. Today this industry has become an art craftsman. I don't like that name very much, but I can't find another one.
Provence!...
A little occitan soul... A drummer... The sound of the galloubet...
And it's all Provence! Listen!
On the port...
And as it says Claude Boyer :
– With all these scents, how not to evoke Gilbert Bécaud's song!
♫♪♪♫♪ This is a hundred francs of the garrigue thyme,A little saffron and a kilo of figs,Don't you want a nice peaches tray?Or apricots?
Sitting
« In Provence, the sun rises twice, in the morning and after the nap » Hey!
– When I was a kid, at the height of the summer, when the sun was at the zenith after lunch the nap was mandatory and no need to deviate from it. I felt like my vacation was being amputated for part of my childhood playtime.
Autumn...
Every year in autumn, I present a photo marking the start of the season.
It is obvious that knowing Latin is more beneficial than practicing any other language to write a correct French. But who cares about writing French today?
Here's my favorite picture of the arrival of autumn.
Jean-Pierre Violino
– Modernisation in the Maritime Alps in the 19th century.
Write to us!
Share your childhood memories, tell the life of your village in the time of your grandparents... Tell me about a trip, a landscape...
And whether they're yesterday or today, bring your photos!
- Writing Passadoc – Participants included:
André Abbe
François Abbe
Claude Boyer
Maryse Laugier
Jeanne Monin
Giselle Penat-Lorde - Layout
Jeanne Monin