Passadoc Gazette - No 142

The weekly 142

Honey...

Honey... it's been known since the dawn of time... since the bees appeared on Earth, some 80 million years ago and perhaps before since researchers see the bee born in the Cretaceous, so over a hundred million years ago.

When they discover it, humans consume it by licking the trunks; Too often, out of ignorance of course, they destroy the colony.

We'll have to wait for Maurice Maeterlinck* – enlightened beekeeper and poet – to know almost everything about « this strange little republic, so logical and so serious, so positive, so careful, so economical, and yet victim of such a vast and so precarious dream »…

Let us not go so fast because, let us repeat, honey has been present everywhere for a long time.

Egyptians use it to embalm their dead. Hieroglyphics attest to this use and knowledge. According to them, honey is nothing but the tears of the sun god.
In the Muslim tradition, rivers of honey flow into paradise. Among Christians, the Promised Land « is a country where milk and honey flow ».
And it is known that our ancestors the Gauls are drunk with hydromel, fermented drink of water and honey that can titrate up to 18°.

Long before the Middle Ages, honey is known for its medicinal properties: healing, antifungal, antitussive, antiinflammatory. Nowadays, it is widely used in the pharmacopoeia.

– Well... all this is nice... but where is our honey?

Patience... The hives are here!

Jeanne Monin

Research on several sites.
* Maurice Maeterlinck. Born in Ghent (Belgium) in 1862, he died in Nice in 1949.

1986... over thirty years ago already! André devoted a week of programming to beekeeping in East Provence, on France 3 and for the show « South Mediterranean ».

Among the 50 weeks of program for which he was responsible between 1991 and 2000, it was one of his favourite weeks.

During the filming, he had met the beekeeper Jean-Louis Lautard, president of the Association of Provencal Beekeepers; he accompanied him during the transport of the hives on the plateau of Riez (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence).

Honey‘is slipped in some expressions:

Make your honey of something → take advantage of it
Be all honey → be kind, charmer... sometimes with a bit of hypocrisy
The honeymoon → the sweetness of the first months of marriage... as if it were not to exist later!

… and in some songs : Auvergnat – Brasses.

It's your song.You're a stranger who doesn't want toUnfortunately smilingWhen the gendarmes took me
…….
It was just a little honey.But he had heated the bodyAnd in my soul it still burnsLike a big sun

The Echoes of the Week
The Flag of Provence
The traveling merchant
Roads
Water from the well
Passadoc
Search alert!

The Flag of Provence

The flag of Provence is colorful « blood » (red) and « gold » (yellow), with four red stripes and not five as on the left photo! The necessary correction was made... Over time, the flag has been erased, losing its vibrant colours.

But why four blood strips? It is said that at the end of a fierce battle, Charlemagne* would have entered Wilfried's tent – said « Velu » – Count of Barcelona. Discovering his dying vassal, the emperor would have plunged his hand into Wilfrid's wound and traced four lines of blood on the golden shield placed at the bedside of the dying man, declaring: « Currency obtained by blood must be written by blood! »

*Unless we read that it's Charles II, one of his grandsons, nicknamed « the Chauve ». One bald, the other hairy... smile at history!

Jeanne Monin – Research on « Espaci Occitan dels Aups ».

This flag « four mouth pals on a gold background », although unofficial, is now used on many public buildings and in many cultural events in the Provencal space since its symbolic resumption by the felibre movement.

It is the Occitan flag which is the historical flag of Provence, the cross of Venasque having been the symbol of the Marquisate of Provence before and during the domination of the Counts of Toulouse as well as that of the Viscounts of Marseille.
Claude Boyer

The traveling merchant

1984... somewhere in the Var...

It may be a Sunday, market day; The fishman arrives in the village.

Jean-Jacques Murat
Even as an aqueu de la Font Ronda d

As with the Font Ronde d'Orpierre (05097), we can see, around the stone basin of the fontary, an iron ringing ...

Jeanne Monin
Ah! Traveling merchants...
They said, loudly, loudly.
I remember the one who brought the housewives out on the sidewalk more – or less! – 50 years: the butcher-carcutier.
And the other one who went after the nap and made the eyes of the grandchildren shine: the ice cream merchant!

Rugiers...

1984. Rougiers – Var (Photo A. Abbe).

The village (1,700 inhabitants) has a history that goes back more than a thousand years. Its narrow and paved streets are lined with centuries-old buildings, including the medieval castle that once served as a fortress; Today, symbol of the rich heritage of the place.

It was in Rougiers that my father made one of his first reports on France TV.
It was so funny to see behind the scenes of the shooting! (I was 10 years old!)

François Abbe

Water from the well

François Abbe
My grandfather's bastide François didn't have running water, no toilets... but there were two wells!

Each of us was going to get buckets of water for cooking, etc. In the picture, my grandfather was on duty (he was 70 years old at that time).

Then, 35 years ago, we decided to introduce the farm into the 20th century. We turned it into a real house with running water. No need to hide between two rows of vines to use the bathroom. Luxury!

Claude Boyer
My grandparents had running water, but that's all. No bathroom, we washed in the pile where – supreme luxury – a small gas water heater provided hot water but only in summer. In winter the snoring wood stove warmed water from the kettle, gas was not used while the wood did it as well.

It's not that my grandparents weren't able to afford it, or they weren't far from it, but it was like that; We only spent money when it was essential.

The cagadou was the cabin at the bottom of the garden and for the night under the bed there was the pissadou. My grandfather died in 1982, my grandmother in 1992 at the time of the twenty-first century, but never, ever before, did they want to have at least one bathroom and this discomfort lasted for more than half a century.

I sometimes slept at home, if winter I was entitled to pissadou, in the beautiful season if I was caught with a pressing night craving under pretext « that I was young » I had to go to the cagadou nightly following the halo blabar of my flashlight; Also I avoided drinking so as not to have to face the monsters of the night that my childish imagination saw carpeted behind each vine.

The worst was Mistral's nights when the branches of the old mulberry mulberry were waving like so many arms trying to bite. Fortunately there was Stop (he was a stopping dog, that's why he was called Stop "Pépé had a lot of humor!") who heard me and came all happy to accompany me in my night epic, which reassured me somewhat.

However, my calvary was not finished, but the cagadou was home to a whole real fauna that, spiders, lizards and tarentes populated the place. If usually these bugs didn't impress at night it was different and more vulnerable; It is difficult to escape danger with pants on ankles. The return was just as perilous and it was with delight that I slipped under my sheet.

Jeanne Monin
Ah! the cabin at the bottom of the garden...
I also knew her at my provincial aunts when, little girl, I was going to spend a few weeks in their house.

One – a little revealed in character – lived in the North (Hauts-de-France today)... I'm not going to say that the place was welcoming but it was clean: walls regularly bleached, chair brushed with bleach every week, wooden lid to stop smelly uphills.

The other – so loving, so fun – lived in the great south of Paris. At her house, the cabin was more... folkloric! The flies were buzzing joyfully and the spiders stood there peacefully, sure of never being disturbed by an aggressive broom.

As for the walls, they were of undetermined colour!

ClaudeYour pissadou is also called a room pot, or a night vase! For a long time, he'll be named « thomas » to be replaced by « Jules ».

To designate the place, there is no shortage of words; In more or less chastised language we have: water, toilet, toilet, toilet, small corner, pissotières, leafy, amenities, latrines, toilets, urinals, gougs, gougnots, fisherman... and in metros, restaurants, are the Toilets or the Lavatory.

Translation of a graffiti on a Pompeii wall: « We peed in bed, we were wrong, dear innkeeper, I recognize it. If you want to know the reason, it's that there was no room pot!«

We also have the boudalou, which is not really a vase at night but a pea-top, often of oval shape, reserved for women who, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, do not wear panties. Origin: Louis Bourdaloue, a priest with endless sermons but of great interest that the ladies did not want to miss! So they discreetly slipped this urinal under their clothes. This is at least what Alexandre Dumas tells us in « My memories » (1851).

Philippe Ferréol Rebuffel
I knew that, very young, in Lot and Garonne and barely older, in Fauchier.
Thanks, it's putting us back in place!

Claude Boyer
We could add the Vespasians so called in reference to the Roman emperor Vespasian who was criticized for the taxation of the urine that tanners recovered to work their skins. To his detractors he tended a handful of sesterces by telling them « No olet! » (it doesn't smell) that gave us the expression « Money does not smell »...

Search alert!

Do you know this oratory in the gorges of Cians (Alpes Maritimes) ?

Which is ceMiss with her Converses?
We're looking for more information. It was photographed by André Abbe in 1995.

Thanks in advance!

Sunday, 14 October

Do you know Robert Lafont?

He is the author of many works and texts in Provençal. We just celebrated the 100th anniversary of his birth in Nîmes (Gard).

It was in Nîmes in 1996 that André Abbe realized this portrait which, in 2023, had a second life in the hands of a graphic designer!

For amateurs, visit Aix-en-Provence (Bouches du Rhône).

PASSADOC
was created to safeguard and publicize the old photos of Provence and more widely the 5 southern regions. We're waiting for your photos, your texts, etc.

Are cited in the Gazette
André Abbe
François Abbe
Claude Boyer
Philippe Ferréol Rebuffel
Jeanne Monin
Jean-Jacques Murat
Editor in Chief
Jeanne Monin