Bears On The Roof
la Fête de l'Ours in the Haut Vallespir
“It’s not the same here in the Pyrénées, my friend. French but Catalan French. The border changed in 1659. Half a million Spaniards walked across it after the Republic collapsed in ’37, so we’re more than a little Spanish, too, the whole South as far as Monaco. You may remember my mother was –”
I was on the line with my friend Hug. He was telling me, in a roundabout way, about the Fête or Chasse des Ours. The people in his region, he would have me believe, are a breed apart and maybe a bit bear as well.
Every February, three villages in the French Pyrénées are hostage to an all-day ritual that dates to the Stone Age. It’s terrifying, a million miles away from Paris and the Enlightenment. No fancy dress, let it all hang out carnival you may have witnessed or heard about. Something entirely more wicked, an irruption of the natural world impinging on man, a revolt against mediocrity, life-as-business. A rite of passage between savage and civilised, although as we can see from reading the old texts, the road leads both ways, with plenty of room for manimals both devious and kind. Special attention is given to young men at this carnival, suggesting that this old tradition, indelibly linked to the end of winter, also has something to say to those on the threshhold of adult life.
Arles sur Tech, Prats de Mollo and Saint Laurent de Cerdans kiss the modern world goodbye for about ten hours, while men dressed as bears invade the towns that sit under the watchful gaze of Canigou, the region’s sacred mountain, its Mount Fuji. The event is called the Chasse d’Ours – The Bear Hunt – although it might more properly be called a hunt for humans, nature’s invasion of picturesque hill towns.
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The old legend follows the animal’s natural habits: at winter’s end, the brown mountain bears, however many of them are left now, come out of their caves and grottoes. Although the bear is far from extinct, their numbers are down and the situation serious enough that a male brown was imported from Bulgaria to help with repopulation a decade ago.
Catalan storytellers say that in the old times, a particularly ferocious bear, searching for a companion, carried a beautiful young damsel back to his cave at the end of summer. Hunters got together a search party and set out to bring her back. They caught up with the bear before he went into winter hiding and rescued the girl. The beast they dragged back to town in chains, putting him on display in the town square. That wasn’t enough. As further punishment, they decided to shave the bear with an axe... but as soon as they got the old blades out and set to work, he turned into a man. That’s the short form of the story, packed with archetypes enough to make Jung proud.
Arles, Prats and St. Laurent reënact the story with men in animal fleeces, with faces, hands, arms and any exposed skin covered with black soot mixed in oil. To the rhythms of drummers and fife players, these bears, old and young, carouse the towns bellowing, striking poses and most importantly, barging up to anyone they encounter to smear their faces with the sticky black soot. Hapless tourists beware! At the same time, there is a crew all in white, faces plastered with flour, making them look like absentminded bakers who forgot to wash up before going home. They chase the bears around and wrestle them to the ground before washing off the oily face paint. These men are playing the original barbers who tried to shave the bear.
As you can see from the films below there’s a lot of wrestling going on as the bears approach. Some men like to fight them off. Scores are settled. While rough and tumble, many of the photographs bear witness to the gentilesse of the touch – a sense of playfulness to the event. This part of the festival lasts a day, and belongs to the old mountain culture, a mix of Stone Age memory and medieval pageant. The next day is more traditionally Catalan, with fancy dress and costumes, dancing the sardane in large circles in the town squares. Order has been restored.
Is it possible that bears followed us on our grand human migrations ? Or could it be the other way around ? “Bears are the largest living terrestial carnivores, with extremely conflicting gene trees... Introgressive gene flow resulting from inter-species mating is rare among mammals but not with bears... Bears are iconic animals with a complex evolutionary history. Natural bear hybrids and studies of a few nuclear genes indicate that gene flow among bears may be more common than expected and not limited to polar and brown bears... Strong ancestral gene flow exists between Asiatic black bear and American brown bears even though their terrain is widely separated by distance and bodies of water... American grizzlies and Alaskan polar bears mate and produce the hybrid grolar.” (Source: various science sites.) All of which makes the bear a perfect candidate – or culprit – for this long tale of abducted humans, or rather our two-way connection in the natural world. Like humans, bears hit the road and like us, they’re happy to enlarge the gene pool.
And so every year I call my friend Hug who lives in a little town near Perpignan to ask when it’s happening, and every year it’s already over. I’ll make it someday; someday my friend will warn me before. In the meantime, Hug (Ug, short for Hugues) has kindly supplied a few videos from this year’s maraude in Prats de Mollo. ’24 had a first to its credit, with a woman joining the rampage around the village, suggesting a new twist on the old story, an aggressive female bear. The full version of the legend follows after the videos. It’s long and charming and classic, straight out of Grimm or Perrault, and although neither included it in their anthologies, many versions are still told across southern France, from the Pyrenees to Provence.
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The Old Legend of John the Bear
A modern translation by Riffs
A half-starved girl from a poor family was carried off by a bear who made her prisoner in his cave, with a boulder blocking the entrance so she couldn’t escape. The bear nourished the girl back to health on a steady diet of wild food and never did her the slightest harm. Better off in the bear’s grotto than she was at home, but being held captive in a cave wasn’t to her liking.
The bear had abducted her at the end of summer and by the next year, on the eve of Saint Jean, June 21, the young girl gave birth to a hairy little beast she named Jean de l’Ours.
After one month he was as big as a two-year old, after a year he looked like he was ten. On his eleventh birthday, he leaned into the boulder and rolled it down the hill.
Mother and son walked into the sunlight together for the first time. Birdsong serenaded them while they had their first taste of fresh water from the streams. They lay down on the grass to rest.
They made their way to the girl’s village, the bear charging after them, growling for all he was worth. The house which belonged to his mother’s family lay in ruins. Jean rebuilt it right there and then. All night long the old bear paced around outside, trying to break in. The house held firm.
The villagers feared Jean because of his size and odd appearance, he was fatherless yet stronger than all the men of the village put together. What’s more he was awkward and broke everything he touched. They laughed at him and were deathly afraid of him, too.
He had to leave, he decided, without knowing where he was going. Cutting wood and gathering provisions late into the night so his mother wouldn’t lack for anything, the next morning he set out.
Making his way across the mountainous countryside, he heard a hammer striking an anvil. Something in the sound intrigued him, as he stared at the man working in the forge in a kind of rapture. He asked the blacksmith to take him on as an apprentice.
The smithy looked him over and quickly agreed. ‘You’ll need three years to learn how to forge correctly. I’ll feed you and at the end of that time, I’ll buy your tools.’
Jean de l’ours accepted. He learned quickly and worked so intelligently the smithy couldn’t believe it. He did the work of ten men in a single day, striking the iron on the anvil with such spirit the walls of the forge shook. The smithy had a good deal, except that he was afraid the building would collapse on his head. He begged Jean de l’ours to leave.
Jean made one request before going: not money but a walking stick big enough for him, made of three thick iron rods. The smithy grabbed every piece of metal he had in the forge.
On the road again, Jean encountered a giant named Vire-Palet, who tossed the grindstones of windmills in the air to pass the time.
Setting out together, they met another giant named Tord-Chêne, who pulled trees out of the ground and tossed them around, and soon they were three together on the open road.
Along the way, they met yet another giant named Pousse-Montagne, who knocked over mountains, and the four travelled together.
They had many astonishing adventures. Here’s one:
They came to a strange countryside where everyone wore black, in mourning for the king’s youngest daughter, given as ransom to a horrible dragon living in a castle many days away.
The four were sure this monster was no match for them and set out, only to find a dwarf blocking their way, warning them off. Jean de l’ours knocked him down with his iron walking stick and the dwarf quickly vamoosed, scampering down a deep, foul-smelling well. Only Jean had the courage to follow. His friends lowered him with ropes and after eight days he reached the bottom.
There he found a castle that looked just like the one he had left behind but with a river of boiling iron surrounding it. There wasn’t a sound to be heard anywhere in this subterranean world. Jean lay his walking stick over the river and crossed it like a bridge. Who should he find on the other side but the smiling dwarf ! Just as he was about to toss the little villain into the molten river, Jean was distracted by a wolf guarding the castle’s front door. The wolf leapt at him but was no match: Jean twisted the animal’s neck and prying open its jaws pulled out an iron key which opened the door. No sooner was he inside the courtyard when a lion attacked him, its sharp claws aimed at Jean’s face. The lion met the same fate as the wolf. Inside its head Jean found a silver key that opened the entrance to the private chambers, and here he confronted the worst of all, a dragon with six feet and seven heads, the very beast who had taken the princesses hostage.
After a furious battle Jean pulled a golden key out of the dragon’s seventh head. He carefully cut all their tongues out and slipped them in his bag. Opening the door to the first chamber he walked cautiously into the bedroom, wondering what came next. He was face to face with a cat, an emerald locket dangling around its neck. Behind the cat, a young girl lay in bed in an enchanted sleep, undisturbed by all the battles that had taken place outside her door. Smashing the emerald with a single blow from his cane, life returned, birds began singing, the wind rushed through the trees and the young girl awoke, telling Jean where her six sisters were imprisoned and leading him there.
One by one the sisters climbed into a basket to return to the surface, Jean sending the princesses first and then the seven heads of the dragon, waiting while everyone else went to the surface. He waited at the bottom for what seemed forever, realizing at last his friends had abandonned him at the bottom of the well.
An old woman approached, laughing. ‘You spared my son the dwarf so I’ll help you escape. Bring me all the meat you can, I’ll need it for the voyage.’ Jean did as asked without understanding, and then watched as the old woman turned into a gigantic eagle before his very eyes. Grabbing the remains of the wolf, the lion and the dragon, he climbed on the bird’s back before it soared into the air.
The well was terrifically deep and soon the eagle was crying out in hunger, ‘Meat! Meat!’ but Jean had already given her all he had. The eagle again cried, ‘Meat! Meat !’ and began to falter just as they were drawing near the mouth of the well and the end of their journey. Desperate, Jean tore off one of his arms and pushed it inside the eagle’s beak. Daylight was visible now, the journey over. His two feet in the sunlit world, Jean watched as the eagle turned back into a woman. She spit out his arm and, casting a spell, reattached it.
Entering the town, they found preparations underway for the royal marriages. Each of three giants claimed possession of a dragon’s head and took full credit for saving the princesses.
Jean walked up to his old friends as if he’d never seen them before, demanding to know who had possession of the dragon’s tongues. The giants stared at the ground and said nothing. Jean opened his bag and flourished the seven tongues before astonished onlookers. Now they knew the giants weren’t telling the truth about their adventure saving the princesses.
Jean spared the lives of the usurpers and married the princess he loved dearly, the first one he had set eyes on. The grand preparations for three marriages were more than enough for one, and as you might already suspect, Jean de l’Ours, the man-bear, powerful and clever, and the princess lived happily ever after.
They must have had, as the compiler of the version I’ve translated here adds, many large and very hairy children.
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A charming if frightful tale and a far cry, I’m sure you’ll agree, from the Chasse de les Ours in three Catalan villages. It raises the question of which came first, the courtly tale or the wild anarchic rumble in otherwise sedate hill towns ? It seems natural to say the hunt, with its Dark Age atmosphere, came first and the fairy tale later, but if so, why is it the first that is celebrated today ?
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Riff says: make a pitch, a criticism, a contribution, a coin, a comment or a share. Thanks for your time (since you’ve gotten this far) and forgive the irregular publication schedule. I plod on, even though most posts get one or two likes tops. So it goes.
It is bearly passable.
The fairy tale version in the article's second half is pretty long. I liked it enough to translate it but appreciate readers hanging on all the way.