Usages, Customs, and Superstitions of the Inhabitants of the Black Mountain [pp. 726-731]

726 Usages, Customs and Superstitions of the Inhabitants of the Black Mlountain. [NOVEMBER,
Occupied successively by the tribes of Africa or'of
Greece, by the Iberians or the Celts, the Pyreneean inoun tains have preserved numerous traditions of their ancient
owners. The pagan theology is there united, even in our
days, with the Catholic worship; and the fables of the Phoe nicians and the Gauls, have not ceased obtaining from the
mountaineers as firm a credence as the religion of Christ.
Thus, the deep caverns are places revered as they were in
the times of the temples of the Troglodytes; thus, the idea
of a tomb still attaches to the lofty peaks, as in the time
when Alcides interred the daughter of Betrix beneath a gigantic mass of granite; thus, the shepherd still respects the
rough isolated stones of singular shape, as the goatherd of
Atlas venerated a Bathel, as the Druid who slew a victim
and deposited an offering at the foot of a Menhir, a Dolmen,
a Router, a Lichaven, or on a Lawlmen; thus, the forests, the
old trees, the lakes and the fountains, preserve their guar dian or malignant genii-the same as when the Celt adored
his Esus under the form of an oak or a beech, and when the
Ahriman of the Gauls exercised so great an influence upon
the mind.
Nevertheless, this superstition is evidently tending to
extinction in the Pyrenees, where the concourse of strangers, who flock to their warm springs, who spread themselves in all their vallies, who penetrate even to the most
remote hamlets, produces daily a rectification in their ideas,
and a new point of view in their manner of considering
things.
It is not thus in the Black Mountain, a kind of link in
the Pyrenees which connects them with the Cevennes and
the Gevaudan, and which separates the department of Ande
from that of Tarn. This district, so interesting, so pictluresque, and so little known, is impressed above all others,
by reason even of its neglected state, with the stamp of its
ancient inhabitants. There the mountaineer of the forests
of Lacaune, or of the vicinity of Angles, clad in his Brisaout,
a kind of deacon's dress, or in Lacerna, and gravely relating
the great doings of the Fassilieres or of the Areracies, calls
to mind as well the Gaul, who placed upon his breast some
leaves of mistletoe to preserve him from witchcraft, as the
Tascon deducing presages from the flight of a crow, or the
cry of an owl.
It is known that the Celts, who occupy the country situate between the Cevennes arid the Pyrenees, migrated at
different epochs-and particularly under the command of
Brennus, with whom they went to form a settlement in
Asia. After having overrun and ravaged Greece, they stopped uponi the borders of the Hellespont, in _Eolia and Ionia;
and in Asia Minor they founded Angora, now Ancyre. The
descendants ofthese Celts had occasion to become acquainted
with their mother country: they gradually returned to the
countries which had been the cradle of their ancestors, and
carried thither the customs of the people whom they left.
Thus the religion of the Gauls presented a medley of the
primitive worship of the Celts, and of the paganism of the
Greeks-a mixture which farther mingled itself, in the end,
with the polytheism of the Romans and the mysteries of
the Grecian faith. In the Black Mountain, this whimsical
assemblage of thoughts and deeds presents one of the most
striking pictures.
The evil genii perform, without question, the principal
part in the superstitions of this pastoral people. The Dusiens of the Gauls, the Palarnrieus of the Romans, or the
Prostropierzs of the Greeks, are found continued amongst
them by the Fassilieres-a phalanx of genii which exercises
its power, friendly or destructive, in every situation of the
mountaineer's life.
These Fassilieres have for commander a renowned being
called Tambourinet; after him comnes the Dr-ac, who is exactly the Kelpie of the Scotch; then the Saurimonde, known
in Scotland under the names of Senshie and Brownie. They
Valley green and rising hill.
And the gentle night-winds sigh
O'er the forms long buried there,
Round the tombstones, as they lie
Bathed in the spectral glare.
List! the owl, with distant note,
Seems to murmur to the dead,
Where yon towering yew-trees spread
In the gloomy wood remote.
There lies one, I once called friend, Friendship true he proved to me And together did we blend
Spirits twain in amity.
Friendship! magic word of power!
Buckler in misfortune's hour!
Soothing rapture! kindly thought!
Not with gold or jewels bought.
And he lies buried! Shadows we pursue!
Vain dreams as fleeting as the morning dew!
Brief though our space of life, our earthly span
Is long enough to crush the hopes of man.
Ay! bitter world! We toil, and groan, and strive,
In hopes a worldly welfare to derive
From our exertions, and, our manhood past,
We reap but disappointment at the last.
But why despair?
Earth is not made the lasting place of rest;
Where ever dwells the sou l, with doubts oppressed,
There pain and sickness share
Dominion over man, and cramp the mind,
In chains of ignorance and clay confined,
Ever to inhabit here.
We shall not live alway! There is a home
Beyond the skies! Though now we blindly roam
A dreary-desert road,
Another and a better world, shall be
Provided there, from sin and sorrow free Our Father's bright abode!
There shall we meet the loved! the lost! and there,
In endless union, safe from every care,
Freed from each heavy load,
Our everlasting notes of praise shall rise,
And endless anthems peal throughout the skies,
In presence of our God!
Frostsburg, Md. 1840. M. T. E.
One of the portions of France most interesting to the
traveller, the naturalist, the poet and the historian, is, without dispute, that chain of mountains which stretches from
the mouth of the Adour to the Mediterranean. There are
heaped up with real magnificence, those immense ruins
which a tt est the convulsions and d eluges which our g lob e
has undergone; there is seen, one while the gloomy face of
nature, cold and silent as that of the countries round the
north pole, or else that pomp of vegetation, that warm and
bamly atmosphere, that purple or azure sky, which gives
such a charm to the regions of the equator. If we pass
from the view of the Pyrenees to the examination of their
inhabitants, we are no less struck with that mixture, that
variety of physiognomies, of costumes, of language and of
manners, which appear like so many distinct creations in
the same country.
USAGES, CUSTOMS, AND SUPERSTITIONS
OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE BLACK MOUNTAIN.
Translatedf-rom the Frenchfor the ilfessenger.