The Christmas Kalends of Provence | Page 4

over
in Languedoc too, on Saint Barbara's day the women fill two,
sometimes three, plates with wheat or lentils which they set afloat in
water and then stand in the warm ashes of the fire-place or on a sunny
window ledge to germinate. This is done in order to foretell the harvest
of the coming year, for as Saint Barbara's grain grows well or ill so will
the harvest of the coming year be good or bad; and also that there may
be on the table when the Great Supper is served on Christmas Eve--that

is to say, on the feast of the Winter Solstice--green growing grain in
symbol or in earnest of the harvest of the new year that then begins.
[Illustration: PLANTING SAINT BARBARA'S GRAIN]
"The association of the Trinitarian Saint Barbara with this custom," the
Vidame continued, "I fear is a bit of a makeshift. Were three plates of
grain the rule, something of a case would be made out in her favour.
But the rule, so far as one can be found, is for only two. The custom
must be of Pagan origin, and therefore dates from far back of the time
when Saint Barbara lived in her three-windowed tower at Heliopolis.
Probably her name was tagged to it because of old these votive and
prophetic grain-fields were sown on what in Christian times became
her dedicated day. But whatever light-mannered goddess may have
been their patroness then, she is their patroness now; and from their
sowing we date the beginning of our Christmas feast."
It was obvious that this explanation of the custom went much too far
for Misè Fougueiroun. At the mention of its foundation in Paganism
she sniffed audibly, and upon the Vidame's reference to the
light-mannered goddess she drew her ample skirts primly about her and
left the room.
The Vidame smiled. "I have scandalized Misè, and to-morrow I shall
have to listen to a lecture," he said; and in a moment continued: "It is
not easy to make our Provençaux realize how closely we are linked to
older peoples and to older times. The very name for Christmas in
Provençal, Calèndo, tells how this Christian festival lives on from the
Roman festival of the Winter Solstice, the January Kalends; and the
beliefs and customs which go with its celebration still more plainly
mark its origin. Our farmers believe, for instance, that these days which
now are passing--the twelve days, called coumtié, immediately
preceding Christmas--are foretellers of the weather for the new twelve
months to come; each in its turn, by rain or sunshine or by heat or cold,
showing the character of the correspondingly numbered month of the
new year. That the twelve prophetic days are those which immediately
precede the solstice puts their endowment with prophetic power very
far back into antiquity. Our farmers, too, have the saying, 'When

Christmas falls on a Friday you may sow in ashes'--meaning that the
harvest of the ensuing year surely will be so bountiful that seed sown
anywhere will grow; and in this saying there is a strong trace of Venus
worship, for Friday--Divèndre in Provençal--is the day sacred to the
goddess of fertility and bears her name. That belief comes to us from
the time when the statue of Aphrodite, dug up not long since at
Marseille, was worshipped here. Our Pater de Calèndo--our curious
Christmas prayer for abundance during the coming year--clearly is a
Pagan supplication that in part has been diverted into Christian ways;
and in like manner comes to us from Paganism the whole of our
yule-log ceremonial."
The Vidame rose from the table. "Our coffee will be served in the
library," he said. He spoke with a perceptible hesitation, and there was
anxiety in his tone as he added: "Misè makes superb coffee; but
sometimes, when I have offended her, it is not good at all." And he
visibly fidgeted until the coffee arrived, and proved by its excellence
that the housekeeper had been too noble to take revenge.
III
In the early morning a lively clatter rising from the farm-yard came
through my open window, along with the sunshine and the crisp
freshness of the morning air. My apartment was in the southeast angle
of the Château, and my bedroom windows--overlooking the inner
court--commanded the view along the range of the Alpilles to the
Luberoun and Mont-Ventour, a pale great opal afloat in waves of
clouds; while from the windows of my sitting-room I saw over
Mont-Majour and Arles far across the level Camargue to the hazy
horizon below which lay the Mediterrænean.
In the court-yard there was more than the ordinary morning commotion
of farm life, and the buzz of talk going on at the well and the racing and
shouting of a parcel of children all had