First translation of this page was made using the Alvistata free translation service.
This page reproduces a article published in the illustrated supplement of the " Le Petit Journal", Sunday July 10, 1910, which proposed in last cover an engraving representing some of the most beautiful giants of North.
Last sunday, in one of our septentrional cities, Valenciennes, took place a very colorful traditional festival: the walk of all the giants of French Flanders and Belgium.
Everyone knows that the French Flanders and Belgium, its neighbor, are regions where the giants are held in special regard. Over there not of happy festivity spend wit hout some exhibition or walk of giants. But these giants there are not terrible: they are only in wicker. At most have they their head and the hands out of pasteboard.
Each one of these old cities of the country of Flanders has its giant; some have even a whole family of it; and the people like them and acclaims them, because they see them by the streets only at the feastdays.
In general, thes e giants were born from some remote and picturesque legend from the Middle Ages. Lille, for example, exhibe two characters of the foundation of the city: Lydéric, first count of Flanders, and his mortal enemy Phynaërt, king of Cambrai at the time of Clotaire II.
This cambrésien monarch was to tell the truth only a brigand who attacked the travellers. Thus it killed Salvaërt, prince de Dijon, while this too trustful bourguigon cross ed the Cambric forest in company of his Emelgaïde wife.
The latter was on the point to be mother. Collected by a hermit, it put at the world a son who accepted the name of Lydéric.
But people of Phynaërt were with his continuation. During an absence of the hermit, they discovered his retirement, and the unhappy princess had only time to put her child at the shelter behind a bush. Delivered to Phynaërt, it was locked up in a tower of its manor house.
Twenty years afterwards, Lydéric, raised by the coenobite and put at the current of the secrecy of its birth, went to Soissons to the court of Clotaire and asked for to the king the permission of call Phynaërt with the closed field.
The combat take place in Lille in presence in the presence of Clotaire and of all its lords.
Phynaërt was overcome, Emelgaïde delivered, and Lyderic obtained from the king all the goods of the murderer with the title of Large Forester of Flanders.
Thus, the legend of heroic times of the country
of Flanders lives again in the popular spirit when at the days of
festivities Lyderic and Phynaërt saunter seriously
in the streets o
f the Flemish metropolis. And, to see them going
coast to coast, like accomplice and companion, it would seem that
time, this large peacemaker, finally reconciled these enemy
relentless of formerly.
In Douai, we find Gayant and his family.
Douaisiens do not agree absolutely on the origin of their giant. The legend makes a terrible Buckwheat destroyer and perhaps is it it personification of some valiant knight who would have saved the town of an invasion Norman.
At all events, the inhabitants of Douai have for this legendary character a subsidiary attachment; they call it their " grandfather " and say " Children of Gayant ".
Each year, first Sunday of the local fair, one walks Gayant in company of Mrs. Gayant, his wife, whom one calls also Marie Cagenon< /i>, and their children: Jacquot, Miss Fillion and Binbin, that the people also name "Tiot Tourni", which wants to say "Small Louchon", because of an eye it looks out of Champagne and other in Picardy.
The " day of Gayant", any Douai is in the street; and, de.toutes.parts, the originating ones in the city do not fail to return there.
O ne tells that in 1745 an artillery company, major part made up of Douaisiens, and whose M of Bréande was a captain, attended the seat of Turned. This city had been just taken, when the following day M of Bréande is informed by a warrant officer that all the soldiers of its company deserted. The captain is initially moved by a similar news. But soon it bursts of laughing: it had just remembered, him which knows Douai, that it is the feastday of Gayant: " Be quiet, known as it with its war rant officer, the children of Gayant are faithful owe them; and our people will return as soon as they see dancing their grandfather ".
Because Gayant and its family dance by the streets, or rather they are dandled on a very particular air and not without charm which recalls a little that of the song " Go of people of the wedding ". This air is for Douaisiens what is for Swiss Ranz of the Cows. It moves them de eply or their cause, especially when they are distant from their birthplace, an indescribable joy.
Mr. Theophilus Denis, the well-known writer, who is originating in Douai, told me one day on this subject this anecdote:
- It was, said to me it, in 1854. The music of the 3è regiment of line had just attacked the air of Gayant on a walk of Rennes, called the Mound. I formed part of the au dience. While I listened, gently moved, these notes whose particular charm returned the vision of my country to me, I suddenly noticed with some steps in front of me two men of the people in working clotheses, the smiling features and the wet eyes, to press the hands and to exchange a glance of tenderized surprise. Soon, I live them, obeying at an irresistible rate, to dandle itself initially slightly, then to intertwine, split the circle of curious and finally, to start to dance as two insane in th e medium of the place - It was the madness of two children of Gayant.
The major general Herillier, which was also
originating in Douai, reported readily a memory of the same kind
that it had kept of his stay in Mexico. He was then a colonel and
controlled the 99è line. One morning that it camped with the
foot of the Borrego mount, the music of the regiment made to its
colonel the surprise wake up it with the air of Gayant. The brave
soldier said that never it had not
felt more soft emotion you
more major at the same time. On which date does go up the
tradition of the walk of Gayant?... One does not know it with the
Juste. But the accounts of the city testify that it existed
already there is more than four hundred years. Then, the giant
and his family followed the fashion in their getups. For soon a
century, their setting has been immutable: Gayant is vêtu as a
warrior of the sixteenth century, the arm-band, the gantelets,
the helmet with the mentonnière, the ecu
and the lance. His wife
and her children carry costumes of the same time.
Valencians, who,ne did not have a legendary giant in borrowed in Douai, its neighbor. Since 1825, it adopted Binbin, youngest wire of Gayant, that which Douaisiens call " Tiot Tourni ". Binbin valenciennois, which, each year, in carnival, traverses the streets of the city, capped of a pad, vêtu of a dress of cotton flannel decorated with wheels, and holdin g with the arm its small basket, its " quertin of schoolboy ", does not have a cast like its fellow-member Douaisien. He is, moreover, infinitely larger than him, and if he were to grow because of his size present and his age, he would early have made leave behind him all the other giants of Belgium and Flanders and exceed them some bent. But Binbin has inappreciable happiness not to age. As the good people which acclaim it and delight at his sight, there remains eternally child, happy Bin bin. Dunkirk, the old Flemish city, has also its giant: it is Reuze, which one familiarly calls Reuze-Dad. He is higher four feet than Gayant and raises the costume and the armour of a Spanish halberdier. Whereas the other giants are carried by men dissimulated in their carapace of wicker, Reuze-Dad, it, advance in a harnessed roman chariot of two horses which it leads itself to large guides. Cassel, the city of the windmills, is also the fatherland of warlike Reuze, armed with an armour to the anti que and capped with a helmet with high caterpillar, which one walks the popular feastdays in the medium of a procession of Gilles and grotesque masks.
The town of Calais wanted, it also, to have its giants: it excavated in its origins and found two characters legendary who could fulfill this role with wish: one is Jean-Louis of Courgain, sailor of formerly, if large that it could go to foot to fish shrimp to places where there were ten meters of water; the other, Jean of Calais, are the hero of one of the most curious septentrional legends of the Middle Ages
According to the tradition, Jean of Calais was a famous sailor who removed the coasts from Calaisis of the hackers who infested them. During one of its cruisings, it sometimes happened to him to deliver two beautiful girls that forbans retained captive. He brought back them to Calais, where soon he éprit of the one of them and married it. Obliged to take again the sea afterward s a few times, it made paint the portrait of his wife to the prow of her corvette, so that this palladium accompanied it everywhere. However, as the ship was one day in the wearing of Lisbon, the image was recognized by the king of Portugal as being that of his/her daughter, removed formerly by the hackers that Jean of Calais had overcome.
In French Flanders, we still have the town of Bourbourg, which has a giant of the name of Reuze-Gédéon. But the true fatherland of the giants it is Belgium. There, all the cities exhibent several of them.
In Brussels, they have six of them: Large-dad, Large-Mom, the Sultan, the Sultana, Jenneke (Jean) and Miecke (Marie). Antwerp shows Druon-Anticon, a famous gangster who, embusqué formerly at the entry of the port, stopped the navigators, cut the right hand to them which it threw in the Scheldt and confiscated the cargoes. It is from there, moreover, that Antwerp took its name, which is in Flemi sh Antwerpen, of hand (hand) and werpen (to throw). Bubbles, like Douai, has a whole family: Argayon, Argayonne, and their small Argayonnet which one familiarly calls Lolo. Ypres, this old city which was the queen commercial of Europe to the Middle Ages, has a superb giant of the name of Goliath: it is the same for the small town of Ath in Hainaut. Malignant, Vilvorde have also their Reuzes.
Lastly, the town of Mons, in the absenc e of giant, has just like Tarascon, tarasque, a monstrous dragon, with the long tail, the covered back of scales that, every year, a beautiful rider vêtu as Saint-Georges, combat publicly on the place of the city, and who is called Doudou.
All these gigantic characters of the old Flemish traditions symbolize so to speak, the popular element of the cities to which they belong. For this reason, they were of all the rejoicings, merry inputs of princes and sovereigns; and their presence caused sometimes mistakes and astonishments singular goods with those which did not know these curious habits of the country of Flanders.
Here a very curious anecdote which refers to the stay of Napoleon and Marie-Louise in Belgium, just a century ago. It is thus told by M.L. Maeterlinck, conservative of the museum of Beautiful Arts of the town of Ghent, in its book: The satirical, fantastic and licencieux kind in the Flemish and Walloon sculpture:
" When Napoleon Ier, accompanied by
Marie-Louise visited in 1810 the Netherlands, that it traversed,
as usual, with cut down support, accompanied by a detachment of
his faithful 22è half-brigade of light cavalry, it had on the
road from Brussels in Ghent, a meeting really surprising. In
Oordegem, where its car had stopped to change the exhausted
horses, one lives to suddenly advance with the sound of a
barbarian music a troop of giants who trémoussaient themselves
slowly in rate. They was the giants of Wetteren, accompanied by
the authorities of this city, which came in procession to the
front from the emperor, to make him honor. This abrupt appearance
threw terror in the heart of the winner of Europe, not for him,
but for its partner, who was then pregnant future king de Rome.
The first moment of surprised spent, outraged Napoleon of anger,
exclaimed of a terrible voice: " Back, churls, not of
monsters in front of the impératrice ". And, advancing
the
officer of its escort, it gave him the command to drive back of
force the malencontreux ones and gigantic representatives of a
disappeared race. The riding brave men left without hesitating,
au.galop. A few seconds were enough for them: the delegation, the
notable ones and the witnesses nimbly escaped, while the giant
poor, less skilful, which only accepted the shock, were reversed,
broken and pressed with the feet of the horses. Some hussards was
misled so well in their bellies of wickers that
they were taken
there and could not draw some without scratches. The emperor,
meanwhile, was ridden by car and, reassuring the impératrice on
the nature of the incident which failed to compromise the
dynasty, it set out again au.galop ."
Perhaps now, you will say to me that all these representatives of the powerful family of the giants of Flanders and Hainaut, expensive family to all the friends of the flok-lore, and whose triumphal wal ks keep us the picturesque memory of these religious and semi-burlesques processions of the Middle Ages, cannot be any more in our century of science and scepticism but matter to exhibitions childish and carnavalesques .
It is possible. People who look at them passing do not know even any more, in general, the tales of the last time whose these characters are the heroes and those who still know them do not have there any mor e faith. However all these giants of paperboard and wicker are sizeable, because they are the last survivors of the great feudal legends, the obscure heroes of the traditions of all these old cities whose history is lost in the night of times. And then, they amuse the people, they charm it like could make some naive tale of chivalry; and while it celebrates them and that it proclaims them, the people do not make a policy
It that of is always gained .
Ernest Laut in "Le Petit Journal", 10
juillet 1910
It goes without saying that the remarks of the author, and of course his conclusion, engage only him and its newspaper... Both having disappeared for a long time, peace with their hearts. The " folklore " is of origin, the other bizareries typographical are more recent...
 |
To return in the welcome page (Home Page Patrick Castéra) |