“A precious reminder of a heroic past”

A prehistoric tradition of transhumance is being continued when sixty thousand horses, cows and sheep still migrate to and from high pastures in the Pyrenees each year. But whereas formerly migrations lasted for several weeks, most animals nowadays, apart from the Mérens horses, walk only a few miles, completing their journeys in trucks.

The main watershed of transhumance used to be Provence, fanning out from the Crau desert (around Arles) to the Alps, the Languedoc and beyond. There was also, however, much activity in what is now the Languedoc-Roussillon.

One early chronicler of transhumance in our region was Pliny the Elder. He was the Roman Governor from AD 70 to 72 of Gallia Narbonensis, the French province whose capital was Narbonne. Pliny noted in his 37-volume encyclopaedia Natural History (c. AD 77) that “sheep in their thousands come from remote regions to feed on the thyme that covers the stony plains of Gallia Narbonensis”.

The most thrilling record of transhumance for me personally comes from Montaillou, Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324. Based on the Inquisition Register of heretic Cathars in the Ariège drawn up by the Bishop of Pamiers (near Foix) between 1318 and 1325, it is a unique record of everyday peasant life extending beyond the Ariège. It includes a reference to transhumance from the village of Rasiguères, about 25 kilometres or so west of Perpignan and barely five kilometres downstream from where I live.

The freelance shepherd Pierre Maury is quoted thus in Montaillou: “I hired myself out … to Pierre Constant of Rasiguères in the Fenouillèdes. I stayed with him from Easter until Michaelmas in September of the same year, and I spent the summer on the passes of Mérens and the Lauze [having shepherded Constant’s sheep from Rasiguères]. I had with me … five shepherds.” These passes, some 80 kilometres from Rasiguères, are on the Andorran border in the upper Ariège valley, the Mérens being the original habitat of the wild Mérens horses whose lineage dates from prehistory. There are other reports in Montaillou of sheep-shearing in May, and shepherds and shearers happily socialising together, eating “mutton and pork”.

The migratory processions – “land-going ocean liners of livestock” - were wonderful to behold. “A strict order was observed. In front went the menoun (castrated male goats), then came all the other long-haired goats, the countless troops of sheep or cows and the magnificent white sheepdogs whom, it was said ‘it is an honour to know’. Bringing up the rear were donkeys, carrying the shepherds’ belongings and the lambs that were too small to keep up with their mothers.” At the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in Paris you can see a handsome exhibition of bells and embroidered collars worn by the leading sheep.

For much of the foregoing, epigram included, I am indebted to Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France. I have never before recommended a book in this space, but I do so now. Robb’s overview of French social history, particularly in the remote rural areas, is compulsively readable. Wearing its scholarship with a light touch the book is, for me, one of the most enjoyable ever about France.

Transhumance in the Languedoc-Roussillon today is very much alive, albeit on a much smaller scale. A friend who lived in Vernet-les-Bains writes that cows “used to go up and down the Route de Sahorre past my place, en route for somewhere between Py and the Col de Mantet (south west of Vernet). Some of the cows (with calves and sometimes a very docile bull) came from the Fillols direction and so had to go through the centre of Vernet which always caused much hilarity and a major traffic jam of course.” La Fête de la Transhumance still continues at Mantet and is held each year in late June.

In the most northerly département of the Languedoc-Roussillon, the Lozère, there is a colourful Fête de la Transhumance at the Col de Bonnecombe on the plains of Aubrac on the Sunday closest to 25 May (La Saint-Urbain). Descent from the alpages (mountain pastures) is on 13 October (La Saint-Géraud).

In neighbouring Ariège there is a Fête de la Transhumance from end May through early June at Les Couserans, south west of Foix. This year, the eighth event will be reportedly reduced to 10,000 sheep, 1,000 cattle and hundreds of horses in several valleys.

Now for the Mérens horses. In their original wild state they go back very probably to at least the Magdalenian/upper Palaeolithic period approximately 13,000-15,000 years ago (sources varying on the dates). The Niaux caves of this era in the valley of Vicdessos (leading south west from Tarascon—sur-Ariège) include horses painted with a mixture of bison fat and manganese oxide. They have all the basic traits of the Mérens race: the same pony-size build, skull profile, kind of beard etc. They were domesticated probably in the neolithic or bronze ages. Gentle, hardy, sure-footed, supple and inexpensive to keep, they were used by mountain farmers and armies, notably by those of the Count of Foix, Gaston Phoebus, in the Middle Ages, and later by Napoleon in his Russian campaign. Nearly always black, they are nowadays a great favourite with children, though can also carry adults easily on trekking holidays. While he was on one of his regular holidays in the Ariège, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was given a Mérens in 1997 by the SHERPA organisation, founded in 1933 to promote the role of these horses in tourism. There is a Mérens information centre at La Bastide-de-Sérou (west of Foix).

“Epoustouflant!” (mind-blowing)
Finally, to this year’s annual transhumance of 40 Mérens horses from Montesquieu-des-Albères (a few miles inland from Argelès sur Mer) to Porté-Puymorens – a distance not far short of 100 kilometres and a climb of some 1,600 metres.

Raring to go, the horses, 20 of them mounted, set out from the equestrian centre of Jean-Michel Justafré at Le Can de Loste on 19th April. Their destination at Porté-Puymorens was the equestrian centre of Nathalie Testas Komaroff at La Ferme d'en Garcie. The horses were mainly males between one and four years old, a mix of geldings and stallions, so for some this was their first trip. Travelling for 7 to 8 hours a day, and staying each night at gîtes or equestrian centres, the troop was followed by two vehicles carrying hay and corn seed for the horses and, naturally, the wherewithal to prepare “un bon repas” for the riders.

Ballet Dancers
The troop proceeded in three groups. Leading were the mounted experienced horses led by the breeding stallion with the magnificent name of Fanon de l'Abatch. His role was to set the pace, and to block and re-open the roads en route. The middle group were the unmounted horses accompanied by their minders. At the rear were the mounted rabatteurs (rounders-up) ever on the alert to ensure the troop held together. Acrobatic as ballet dancers, with their dance figures, pirouettes and swift half turns, they constantly drove in any wilful animals tempted to wander off on their own.

In the words of l’Indépendant’s anonymous reporter, whom I have very freely paraphrased here, this was a “un spectacle rare, époustouflant!”
***
References:
•    Montaillou, Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324 – Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurerie, translated by Barbara Bray (Penguin Books 1980)
•    The Discovery of France – Graham Robb (Picador 2007)
•    http://www.can-de-loste.com/
•    http://www.equipyrene.com/en_garcie/index1.html
•    http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/horses/merens/
•    http://www.merens-ariege.com/histoire/info.html
•    L’Indépendant broadsheet and internet editions, 22nd April

© 2008 Basil Howitt

(Expatica May 2008)