Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist. Samuel SmilesЧитать онлайн книгу.
survived. Was it possible for Jasmin to revive the dialect, and embody it in a written language? He knew much of the patois, from hearing it spoken at home. But now, desiring to know it more thoroughly, he set to work and studied it. He was almost as assiduous as Sir Walter Scott in learning obscure Lowland words, while writing the Waverley Novels. Jasmin went into the market-places, where the peasants from the country sold their produce; and there he picked up many new words and expressions. He made excursions into the country round Agen, where many of the old farmers and labourers spoke nothing but Gascon. He conversed with illiterate people, and especially with old women at their spinning-wheels, and eagerly listened to their ancient tales and legends.
He thus gathered together many a golden relic, which he afterwards made use of in his poetical works. He studied Gascon like a pioneer. He made his own lexicon, and eventually formed a written dialect, which he wove into poems, to the delight of the people in the South of France. For the Gascon dialect—such is its richness and beauty—expresses many shades of meaning which are entirely lost in the modern French.
When Jasmin first read his poems in Gascon to his townspeople at Agen, he usually introduced his readings by describing the difficulties he had encountered in prosecuting his enquiries. His hearers, who knew more French than Gascon, detected in his poems many comparatively unknown words—not indeed of his own creation, but merely the result of his patient and long-continued investigation of the Gascon dialect. Yet they found the language, as written and spoken by him, full of harmony—rich, mellifluous, and sonorous. Gascon resembles the Spanish, to which it is strongly allied, more than the Provencal, the language of the Troubadours, which is more allied to the Latin or Italian.
Hallam, in his 'History of the Middle Ages,' regards the sudden outburst of Troubadour poetry as one symptom of the rapid impulse which the human mind received in the twelfth century, contemporaneous with the improved studies that began at the Universities. It was also encouraged by the prosperity of Southern France, which was comparatively undisturbed by internal warfare, and it continued until the tremendous storm that fell upon Languedoc during the crusade against the Albigenses, which shook off the flowers of Provencal literature.{1}
The language of the South-West of France, including the Gascon, was then called Langue d'Oc; while that of the south-east of France, including the Provencal, was called Langue d'Oil. M. Littre, in the Preface to his Dictionary of the French language, says that he was induced to begin the study of the subject by his desire to know something more of the Langue d'Oil—the old French language.{2}
In speaking of the languages of Western Europe, M. Littre says that the German is the oldest, beginning in the fourth century; that the French is the next, beginning in the ninth century; and that the English is the last, beginning in the fourteenth century. It must be remembered, however, that Plat Deutsch preceded the German, and was spoken by the Frisians, Angles, and Saxons, who lived by the shores of the North Sea.
The Gaelic or Celtic, and Kymriac languages, were spoken in the middle and north-west of France; but these, except in Brittany, have been superseded by the modern French language, which is founded mainly on Latin, German, and Celtic, but mostly on Latin. The English language consists mostly of Saxon, Norse, and Norman-French with a mixture of Welsh or Ancient British. That language is, however, no test of the genealogy of a people, is illustrated by the history of France itself. In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Franks, a powerful German race, from the banks of the Rhine, invaded and conquered the people north of the Somme, and eventually gave the name of France to the entire country. The Burgundians and Visigoths, also a German race, invaded France, and settled themselves in the south-east. In the year 464, Childeric the Frank took Paris.
The whole history of the occupation of France is told by Augustin Thierry, in his 'Narratives of the Merovingian Times.' "There are Franks," he says in his Preface, "who remained pure Germans in Gaul; Gallo-Romans, irritated and disgusted by the barbarian rule; Franks more or less influenced by the manners and customs of civilised life; and 'Romans more or less barbarian in mind and manners.' The contrast may be followed in all its shades through the sixth century, and into the middle of the seventh; later, the Germanic and Gallo-Roman stamp seemed effaced and lost in a semi-barbarism clothed in theocratic forms."
The Franks, when they had completed the conquest of the entire country, gave it the name of Franken-ric—the Franks' kingdom. Eventually, Charles the Great, or Charlemagne, descended from Childeric the Frank, was in 800 crowned Emperor of the West. Towards the end of his reign, the Norsemen began to devastate the northern coast of Franken-ric. Aix-la-Chapelle was Charlemagne's capital, and there he died and was buried. At his death, the Empire was divided among his sons. The Norse Vikingers continued their invasions; and to purchase repose, Charles the Simple ceded to Duke Rollo a large territory in the northwest of France, which in deference to their origin, was known by the name of Normandy.
There Norman-French was for a long time spoken. Though the Franks had supplanted the Romans, the Roman language continued to be spoken. In 996 Paris was made the capital of France; and from that time, the language of Paris became, with various modifications, the language of France; and not only of France, but the Roman or Latin tongue became the foundation of the languages of Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
Thus, Gaulish, Frankish, and Norman disappeared to give place to the Latin-French. The Kymriac language was preserved only in Brittany, where it still lingers. And in the south-west of France, where the population was furthest removed from the invasions of the Gauls, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths, the Basques continued to preserve their language—the Basques, who are supposed by Canon Isaac Taylor to be the direct descendants of the Etruscans.
The descendants of the Gauls, however, constitute the mass of the people in Central France. The Gauls, or Galatians, are supposed to have come from the central district of Asia Minor. They were always a warlike people. In their wanderings westward, they passed through the north of Italy and entered France, where they settled in large numbers. Dr. Smith, in his Dictionary of the Bible, says that "Galatai is the same word as Keltici," which indicates that the Gauls were Kelts. It is supposed that St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians soon after his visit to the country of their origin. "Its abruptness and severity, and the sadness of its tone, are caused by their sudden perversion from the doctrine which the Apostle had taught them, and which at first they had received so willingly. It is no fancy, if we see in this fickleness a specimen of that 'esprit impretueux, ouvert a toutes les impressions,' and that 'mobilite extreme,' which Thierry marks as characteristic of the Gaulish race." At all events, the language of the Gauls disappeared in Central France to make way for the language or the Capital—the modern French, founded on the Latin. The Gaulish race, nevertheless, preserved their characteristics—quickness, lightness, mobility, and elasticity—qualities which enabled them quickly to conceive new ideas, and at the same time to quickly abandon them. The Franks had given the country the name it now bears—that of France. But they were long regarded as enemies by the Central and Southern Gauls. In Gascony, the foreigner was called Low Franciman, and was regarded with suspicion and dislike.
"This term of Franciman," says Miss Costello, who travelled through the country and studied the subject, "evidently belongs to a period of the English occupation of Aquitaine, when a Frenchman was another word for an enemy."{3} But the word has probably a more remote origin. When the Franks, of German origin, burst into Gaul, and settled in the country north of the Loire, and afterwards carried their conquests to the Pyrenees, the Franks were regarded as enemies in the south of France.
"Then all the countries," says Thierry, "united by force to the empire of the Franks, and over which in consequence of this union, the name of France had extended itself, made unheard-of efforts to reconquer their ancient names and places. Of all the Gallic provinces, none but the southern ones succeeded in this great enterprise; and after the wars of insurrection, which, under the sons of Charlemagne, succeeded the wars of conquest, Aquitaine and Provence became distinct states. Among the South Eastern provinces reappeared even the ancient name of Gaul, which had for ever perished north of the Loire. The chiefs of the new Kingdom of Aries, which extended from the Jura to the Alps, took the title of Gaul in opposition to the Kings of France."{4}
It is probable that this was the cause of the name of "Franciman" being regarded as an hereditary term of reproach in the Gaulish country