Bayonne, France, Sunday July 20th

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What a fantastic day – we spent most of it in the Museum of Basque Culture and the History of Bayonne. It is across the Nive River in Petit Bayonne, so we walked there, anticipating a short visit, a picnic lunch and a walk. We were at the museum for about five hours and even Keith was not overwhelmed by museum fatigue until the folk dancing section where I wanted to watch all the dancing videos.

There are twenty-four rooms, each with a different theme, and before the first, there was an interesting article to read about the use of photographs. It talked about the way that photos give a very select version of reality, being in the first place someone’s choice of subject, and in the second, the way that the subject agrees to be presented. There is also the question of the different emphasis in different eras, with static portraits giving way to ethnographic generalities and later to the aberrant. Finally, what is not presented is often just as important in understanding a culture as is what appears in the pictures. This warning was followed up at the end, reminding us that it is easy to have the impression that the past was a time of sunny days and an ideal rural paradise.

Basque people have discs on their tombs and our visit started with an exhibition of them, in a darkened room echoing with religious music.

The next room showed traditional farm implements and they were mostly new to us. They were well labelled in French, Basque and Spanish, and since we had our new dictionary with us, we were able to learn lots. I had to look up specialist words, but it was not too bad, and certainly well worth the effort. In the photo I appear to have gone mad since I seem to be looking up an umbrella, but in fact I was looking up words that told us that it belonged to the customs officer and that he would carry it, along with his folding bed, in his raids on contraband alcohol sales in the countryside.

Another contraband item was chocolate, and we saw the curved rolling boards for crushing the cocoa beans.

Many of the items were made from wood, even buckets and cups.

Some earlier cart wheels were solid and great attention was paid to the decorative headwear and collars for cattle, prized creatures that supported the rural lifestyle. We could understand the working of a wooden seed planting machine, which was cleverly but simply made, but were at a loss with some other mechanical gadgets, even though we could check the words. Some of our farmer friends would have loved this section, and would have been able to compare items from early days in Australian farming with those on display here.

Next we watched a 1930 documentary film called ‘Le Pays des Basques’ (The Country of the Basques) which started with the singing of a male Basque choir and included many other songs and virtually no speaking. Little placards told the main messages, with the story line being really an opportunity to record the Basque way of life. A young man goes through various activities, such as the annual moving of sheep to the mountains, festivals, a death in the family, and he finally migrates to America, leaving his sweetheart behind. Most of the items we had seen in the pastoral section were being used and it was the perfect accompaniment to the static displays. A ‘pastoral’ (a play performed on a makeshift stage) was acted only by men and featured Napoleon I and Josephine, with an assassination attempt on their lives. The culprits were caught and killed, with the stage hands being two ladies dressed as maids who thoughtfully moved some cushions into position for the bodies to fall onto.

Each section was prefaced with general information in the three languages, and from those we gained more understanding of the special features of traditional Basque culture. The Basque house had a complex and prominent role in that it was not just a place of residence. It was also an economic unit, a social venue and the origin of an individual. The family, and an individual took, its name from the house, which was passed down to a single inheritor who could be male or female. Others joined the family through birth or marriage and then belonged to that house, where ‘young masters’ and ‘old masters’ had the same rights and responsibilities. Each house was represented at the church with a reserved section for the mistress and other women of the house and at the cemetery with a stone tomb for burials. The house and sepulchre were connected by a road, which symbolised the connection between the physical and spiritual worlds. In general, houses were maintained over centuries, with most having a single roofline for people, animals, tools and storage. Houses faced east, with their backs to the bad weather, with a large, ornamental portal. Sometimes two buildings were placed at right angles and linked with a slate covering. Inside, there was a large central room which was the hub of all activities, where people worked and socialised. There would be a large fireplace and the museum had tried to create the atmosphere of firelight and candles where the family and neighbours would gather to tell stories and sing old songs. There we listened to an audio tape of stories in Basque, French and Gascoyne, with French being the only one we could follow or recognise for sure.

In some areas the kitchen fireplace was in the centre of the large room, with a metal rack inserted in the chimney, where pots could hang down and where neighbours would hang their contributions to shared meals. The next few rooms were set up in Basque country style, with carefully carved furniture, and hand made lace and embroidered items for decoration. Crafts all related to practical purposes, but developed the items beyond the basic with artistic flair. Artisans were vital to supplying village needs prior to the Industrial Revolution, with weavers, braid makers, walking stick makers, clog makers, seamstresses and espadrille makers all working for a small but loyal clientele. Espadrilles (Basque shoes) were, and still are, regularly worn here, being part of the tradition of this area. You could buy a handcrafted pair for 79 euros at the museum or a pair of doubtful origin for 19 euros in the streets.

A clothing display showed that married women wore black with long mantillas and unmarried women wore more colourful clothing and jewellery. The clothes on display had a distinctly Spanish look.

Religion played a very big part in everyone’s lives, with the church and clergy being an integral part of all activities (except, of course, the contraband activities, which the film had depicted as involving much hiding, sly sales, hunting down by the police and running away). One room was devoted to religious statues in wood, many of which were very old and carved very simply. The next display was about the dance heritage which is connected to festivals and involves a range of characters and fabulous costumes, quite apart from the dances such as the national dance, the Fandango, that everyone can join in. Many of the dances tell stories, but others are for the demonstration of skills. One in particular would have had the appeal that car racing sometimes does, where the crowd is as much interested to see if disaster will happen as to watch the skills. The dancer does fancy footwork around a glass of wine sitting on the ground and some steps involve jumping onto, and balancing on, the rim of the glass. In the video of dancing, four people perform and one does knock the glass over, spilling the wine, although not breaking the glass on this occasion. Vibrant paintings around the walls illustrated the life and vitality of festivals and social life.

A comprehensive display on pelota – a sport involving a long curved basket-like catcher worn on one hand – explained that there are many different forms of this sport. Every village has a ‘fronton’ (blank shaped wall) in the square, with an open space facing it, for pelota to be played. I was fascinated to watch a video on ball making, a tedious but important task in the old days when, as now, pelota was played competitively against other villages and where the best players are heroes.

Bull fighting was also a pastime, along with running of the bulls. In one of our tourist brochures it announces the ‘running of the cows’ so perhaps that is the local variation.

Paintings and information about famous people and the history of Bayonne included Napoleon of course, and also Basques who had contributed to the development of the New World. Simon Bolivar, of Basque origins, led various independence struggles against Spain in South America. At one stage he was president of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, which is named after him.

A display recognised the Jewish community, established here after the Spanish Inquisition and also by Jews fleeing from Portugal, and the significant part it has played in the cultural and commercial development of Bayonne. Religious wars led to an increase in access to Basque in written form, with the printing of the Bible and other texts in Basque by the Protestants. Even the Catholics were not all of one mind, with the Jesuits being opposed by those in Bayonne, who favoured Jansenism with its emphasis on original sin, human depravity and the need for divine grace. After the revolution of 1789 France was organised in departments on secular grounds and many from this region were deported to neighbouring areas, on suspicion that they had consorted with Spain, the enemy. During the 19^th century the contentious areas between France and Spain disappear with the borders being agreed to in the Treaty of Bayonne in 1856. When Ferdinand VII came to the Spanish throne, Spanish Basque Carlistes (who did not favour Ferdinand’s wish to pass the throne to his eldest daughter, Isabelle, instead of to his brother’s son, Charles, the legitimate heir), engaged in a war against their king. French Basques supported them, against the wishes of the French government. At the end of the 19^th century, the Basque National Party was formed. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Spanish Basque republicans sought refuge in Basque regions of France, with many returning after Franco’s death in 1975.

A relief map of Bayonne’s maritime history, so big that you walked through it along a river, was intriguing and confusing for us, as we tried to find our bearings and finally we reached the room about the rituals associated with death. When the master of the house died, the mistress must tell the bees and the other animals, so that they would be careful, knowing that death was abroad. On a more practical level, she must also tell the first neighbour, who would then have responsibility for every other aspect of spreading the word, preparing the body, cooking for and greeting visitors, making funeral arrangements and organising the tombstone.

I asked Keith if he would like to look through the museum’s 3000 photos not on display but available for perusal and he very nobly said “Yes, but not today.” Even I didn’t think that I could manage it at 4 pm, having had no lunch. We both agreed that this was one of the most interesting and beautifully set out museums that we have been in.

We had lunch in front of the very formal town hall theatre, where there are beautiful patterns set into the paving.

Our final visit for the day was to the Cathedral, set on a hill in the heart of the city, which is nearly smothered by its neighbouring buildings but whose spires rise above everything and can be seen from just about everywhere. Inside the cathedral is long, and very high with vaulted ceilings. Started in the 13^th century, it was still being added to and modified in the 19^th century. It is very beautiful and has chapels devoted to saints and the Virgin Mary and large paintings of the Stations of the Cross around its walls. One chapel commemorates Joan of Arc, with a statue of her and with a large inscription in stone recalling the victory of the French over the English in 1451. A statue of the Virgin was given by a Protestant sculptor as an act of ecumenism, with one by a Catholic sculptor being given to a Protestant church in Paris. Unfortunately we were too late to see the cloisters, so they will have to wait for another day. Outside, many of the statues are missing, destroyed in the 1789 revolution, so for a cathedral, it is not very ornate. The spires are tall and impressive and really make it distinctive.

We wandered back though some small streets and past the remains of the Roman fortifications. The old castle is not open and is solid, but not exciting. Bayonne is not an area of ostentatious decoration, but rather of detail and of each building contributing to the look as a whole. As we crossed a major road, we noted with amusement the sign that summarised travel needs for motorists with a big arrow being for ‘Other directions’.

In the streets of Bayonne