





Transcribed from the 1896 Smith, Elder and Co. "From Lizzie Leigh and
Other Tales" edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk.  Proofed
by Jennifer Lee, Alev Akman and Andy Wallace.





AN ACCURSED RACE
Elizabeth Gaskell


We have our prejudices in England.  Or, if that assertion offends any of
my readers, I will modify it: we have had our prejudices in England.  We
have tortured Jews; we have burnt Catholics and Protestants, to say
nothing of a few witches and wizards.  We have satirized Puritans, and we
have dressed-up Guys.  But, after all, I do not think we have been so bad
as our Continental friends.  To be sure, our insular position has kept us
free, to a certain degree, from the inroads of alien races; who, driven
from one land of refuge, steal into another equally unwilling to receive
them; and where, for long centuries, their presence is barely endured,
and no pains is taken to conceal the repugnance which the natives of
"pure blood" experience towards them.

There yet remains a remnant of the miserable people called Cagots in the
valleys of the Pyrenees; in the Landes near Bourdeaux; and, stretching up
on the west side of France, their numbers become larger in Lower
Brittany.  Even now, the origin of these families is a word of shame to
them among their neighbours; although they are protected by the law,
which confirmed them in the equal rights of citizens about the end of the
last century.  Before then they had lived, for hundreds of years,
isolated from all those who boasted of pure blood, and they had been, all
this time, oppressed by cruel local edicts.  They were truly what they
were popularly called, The Accursed Race.

All distinct traces of their origin are lost.  Even at the close of that
period which we call the Middle Ages, this was a problem which no one
could solve; and as the traces, which even then were faint and uncertain,
have vanished away one by one, it is a complete mystery at the present
day.  Why they were accursed in the first instance, why isolated from
their kind, no one knows.  From the earliest accounts of their state that
are yet remaining to us, it seems that the names which they gave each
other were ignored by the population they lived amongst, who spoke of
them as Crestiaa, or Cagots, just as we speak of animals by their generic
names.  Their houses or huts were always placed at some distance out of
the villages of the country-folk, who unwillingly called in the services
of the Cagots as carpenters, or tilers, or slaters--trades which seemed
appropriated by this unfortunate race--who were forbidden to occupy land,
or to bear arms, the usual occupations of those times.  They had some
small right of pasturage on the common lands, and in the forests: but the
number of their cattle and live-stock was strictly limited by the
earliest laws relating to the Cagots.  They were forbidden by one act to
have more than twenty sheep, a pig, a ram, and six geese.  The pig was to
be fattened and killed for winter food; the fleece of the sheep was to
clothe them; but if the said sheep had lambs, they were forbidden to eat
them.  Their only privilege arising from this increase was, that they
might choose out the strongest and finest in preference to keeping the
old sheep.  At Martinmas the authorities of the commune came round, and
counted over the stock of each Cagot.  If he had more than his appointed
number, they were forfeited; half went to the commune, half to the
baillie, or chief magistrate of the commune.  The poor beasts were
limited as to the amount of common which they might stray over in search
of grass.  While the cattle of the inhabitants of the commune might
wander hither and thither in search of the sweetest herbage, the deepest
shade, or the coolest pool in which to stand on the hot days, and lazily
switch their dappled sides, the Cagot sheep and pig had to learn
imaginary bounds, beyond which if they strayed, any one might snap them
up, and kill them, reserving a part of the flesh for his own use, but
graciously restoring the inferior parts to their original owner.  Any
damage done by the sheep was, however, fairly appraised, and the Cagot
paid no more for it than any other man would have done.

Did a Cagot leave his poor cabin, and venture into the towns, even to
render services required of him in the way of his he was bidden, by all
the municipal laws, to stand by and remember his rude old state.  In all
the towns and villages the large districts extending on both sides of the
Pyrenees--in all that part of Spain--they were forbidden to buy or sell
anything eatable, to walk in the middle (esteemed the better) part of the
streets, to come within the gates before sunrise, or to be found after
sunset within the walls of the town.  But still, as the Cagots were good-
looking men, and (although they bore certain natural marks of their
caste, of which I shall speak by-and-by) were not easily distinguished by
casual passers-by from other men, they were compelled to wear some
distinctive peculiarity which should arrest the eye; and, in the greater
number of towns, it was decreed that the outward sign of a Cagot should
be a piece of red cloth sewed conspicuously on the front of his dress.  In
other towns, the mark of Cagoterie was the foot of a duck or a goose hung
over their left shoulder, so as to be seen by any one meeting them.  After
a time, the more convenient badge of a piece of yellow cloth cut out in
the shape of a duck's foot, was adopted.  If any Cagot was found in any
town or village without his badge, he had to pay a fine of five sous, and
to lose his dress.  He was expected to shrink away from any passer-by,
for fear that their clothes should touch each other; or else to stand
still in some corner or by-place.  If the Cagots were thirsty during the
days which they passed in those towns where their presence was barely
suffered, they had no means of quenching their thirst, for they were
forbidden to enter into the little cabarets or taverns.  Even the water
gushing out of the common fountain was prohibited to them.  Far away, in
their own squalid village, there was the Cagot fountain, and they were
not allowed to drink of any other water.  A Cagot woman having to make
purchases in the town, was liable to be flogged out of it if she went to
buy anything except on a Monday--a day on which all other people who
could, kept their houses for fear of coming in contact with the accursed
race.

In the Pays Basque, the prejudices--and for some time the laws--ran
stronger against them than any which I have hitherto mentioned.  The
Basque Cagot was not allowed to possess sheep.  He might keep a pig for
provision, but his pig had no right of pasturage.  He might cut and carry
grass for the ass, which was the only other animal he was permitted to
own; and this ass was permitted, because its existence was rather an
advantage to the oppressor, who constantly availed himself of the Cagot's
mechanical skill, and was glad to have him and his tools easily conveyed
from one place to another.

The race was repulsed by the State.  Under the small local governments
they could hold no post whatsoever.  And they were barely tolerated by
the Church, although they were good Catholics, and zealous frequenters of
the mass.  They might only enter the churches by a small door set apart
for them, through which no one of the pure race ever passed.  This door
was low, so as to compel them to make an obeisance.  It was occasionally
surrounded by sculpture, which invariably represented an oak-branch with
a dove above it.  When they were once in, they might not go to the holy
water used by others.  They had a benitier of their own; nor were they
allowed to share in the consecrated bread when that was handed round to
the believers of the pure race.  The Cagots stood afar off, near the
door.  There were certain boundaries--imaginary lines on the nave and in
the isles which they might not pass.  In one or two of the more tolerant
of the Pyrenean villages, the blessed bread was offered to the Cagots,
the priest standing on one side of the boundary, and giving the pieces of
bread on a long wooden fork to each person successively.

When the Cagot died, he was interred apart, in a plot burying-ground on
the north side of the cemetery.  Under such laws and prescriptions as I
have described, it is no wonder that he was generally too poor to have
much property for his children to inherit; but certain descriptions of it
were forfeited to the commune.  The only possession which all who were
not of his own race refused to touch, was his furniture.  That was
tainted, infectious, unclean--fit for none but Cagots.

When such were, for at least three centuries, the prevalent usages and
opinions with regard to this oppressed race, it is not surprising that we
read of occasional outbursts of ferocious violence on their part.  In the
Basses-Pyrenees, for instance it is only about a hundred years since,
that the Cagots of Rehouilhes rose up against the inhabitants of the
neighbouring town of Lourdes, and got the better of them, by their
magical powers as it is said.  The people of Lourdes were conquered and
slain, and their ghastly, bloody heads served the triumphant Cagots for
balls to play at ninepins with!  The local parliaments had begun, by this
time, to perceive how oppressive was the ban of public opinion under
which the Cagots lay, and were not inclined to enforce too severe a
punishment.  Accordingly, the decree of the parliament of Toulouse
condemned only the leading Cagots concerned in this affray to be put to
death, and that henceforward and for ever no Cagot was to be permitted to
enter the town of Lourdes by any gate but that called Capdet-pourtet:
they were only to be allowed to walk under the rain-gutters, and neither
to sit, eat, nor drink in the town.  If they failed in observing any of
these rules, the parliament decreed, in the spirit of Shylock, that the
disobedient Cagots should have two strips of flesh, weighing never more
than two ounces a-piece, cut out from each side of their spines.

In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries it was considered
no more a crime to kill a Cagot than to destroy obnoxious vermin.  A
"nest of Cagots," as the old accounts phrase it, had assembled in a
deserted castle of Mauvezin, about the year sixteen hundred; and,
certainly, they made themselves not very agreeable neighbours, as they
seemed to enjoy their reputation of magicians; and, by some acoustic
secrets which were known to them, all sorts of moanings and groanings
were heard in the neighbouring forests, very much to the alarm of the
good people of the pure race; who could not cut off a withered branch for
firewood, but some unearthly sound seemed to fill the air, nor drink
water which was not poisoned, because the Cagots would persist in filling
their pitchers at the same running stream.  Added to these grievances,
the various pilferings perpetually going on in the neighbourhood made the
inhabitants of the adjacent towns and hamlets believe that they had a
very sufficient cause for wishing to murder all the