Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/161

 living. Just behind them, doubtless, was the young couple, bashfully following. The parents were going about, buying the presents; here a silk dress, there a fine lace coif, yonder some article of menage, or jewellery, or farmers' tools or stock. 'Tis a holiday for all the young people of the village. Some of them have been having a dance, with music, on the lawn; others, the more well-to-do, have been escorting Jacques and Nannine to the pâtissière and cabaret, where the happy couple have been treated to wines, fruits, and cakes; others have been following the parents from shop to shop, and bearing home the presents as they were purchased."

Mine host and I, our repast over, repaired to the little bench under the gable of the inn, and lighted our pipes. We had not sat there long, when the peasant whom I had noticed leading the procession—the father of Jacques—came up, followed by a merry troop of young villagers.

"He's coming to invite me to the wedding," whispered the landlord. Which he did. Then, turning to me with a profound salutation, Jacques's father remarked that he perceived I was a stranger, and hoped I would likewise honour him with my presence, not only to the ceremony, but to the succeeding festivities. I at once accepted the invitation.

"I beg Monsieur's pardon," said mine host, as I was about to ascend, candle in hand, to my chamber, "but if Monsieur would wish to see the marriage, he must rise very early. The curé will be at the altar by seven. I pray Monsieur to forgive my not giving him the best room. But it is a custom that the bridegroom should hire the best room of the inn the night before the wedding, for the musicians, who come from the city, twenty leagues away."

At six on the fresh October morning, I was dressed and at my simple breakfast of bread, fruit, and wine; and at ten minutes before seven I repaired with mine host and hostess to the village church. The slate-coloured dawn was just mellowing into day as we issued into the zig-zag street, and the little population were already astir, hastening in chattering groups towards the scene of the ceremony. They were crowding in at the door of the oddest little, one-sided, worn, and musty church you ever looked on: with ancient frescoes half obliterated, faded altar cloths, and feeble-looking candlesticks; at the upper end were two dim flickering tapers, their rays intercepted by the squat thick-set form (clothed in sacred attire) of the village curé; just below him was the village beadle, with enormous gaudy chapeau, shivering with cold; the curé holding in his sleek fat hands a well-worn book; the beadle, clutching his staff of authority.

Jacques and Nannine, clad in the newest and best apparel the village could afford, reverently approach the altar and kneel; their parents come after, and stand demurely behind. The rustic population is very quiet and attentive, and evidently impressed by the holy place. Then follows the stately Romish marriage ceremony, needless to describe. No sooner have the last intonation and the blessing passed the priest's lips than the auditory begin to chatter and laugh, to hurry up to bride and bridegroom and to shower honest and hearty kisses on them—in which the curé, by the by, is not slow to join. This over, the married pair and their especial friends follow the good pastor into the sacristy behind the altar. As a stranger, I am politely bidden to come too. Here, are spread some cold meat, bread, and wine, of which all, Nannine included, partake with lusty zest, and there is many a joke and there is much rallying, in which the priest is merriest of all.

The village folk have meanwhile been busy on the lawn outside. The grass has been rolled flat, and tables have been placed, and tents erected; the musicians have arrived, well mellowed with wine, and scratching on their fiddles in their impatience to begin. The wedding party, on emerging from the church, is greeted by a queer shrill yell, not unlike an Indian whoop—the Breton cheer; forthwith the musicians mount the table, take their places on round stools, and strike up. The bride and bridegroom proceed to mount a horse: she seated behind him, and clinging to his waist as prettily as possible: and they gallop around the green, to the great amusement and applause of the spectators, some half-a-dozen times. This traditional custom complied with, the marriage dances begin. Jacques and Nannine are at the head of the first set, opposite the parents; at the sides are the best friends. It is by no means easy to describe this rustic wedding dance. They leap and bound, entering into the sport as vigorously as they do into their daily work. They swing their arms about in ecstatic fury; the hair escapes from beneath hats and coifs, perspiration covers their foreheads, and their heavy wooden shoes thump and thump on the flattened grass. It was a very ancient dance, mine host told me, handed down from none knew how remote. 'Tis said that this, as well as the other rustic Breton dances, had a religious origin, far back in Druidic ages. The wedding dance is called the "gavotte"; its noticeable feature is, that the most expert dancer leads the rest off into numberless turnings and counterturnings, then abruptly stops and sets them all a-jigging, then rushes off with a sort of "walk round," then resumes his spiral course with a hop and a skip, the rest imitating his every movement with surprising quickness; the whole apparently, not really, performed at the leader's caprice. The dance is made yet more striking by a continual shouting and laughing, an enraptured throwing up of hands, and individual eccentricities and diversions. It is so exhausting that after a little, even the sturdy sons and daughters of the soil are fain to give up; and for awhile they leave the dancing ring to refresh themselves and rest.

Long rude tables have been set along the boundaries of the green, and now fairly groan with a bounteous provision of good things