Mistral wrote in Provençal, not Occitan. The formal general language pretty much disappeared, what remained were local patois. Provençal was revived (perhaps a better term than re-creation) by Mistral and others. Occitan was revived by others in southwestern France.

Eons ago I took a French linguistics course from Professor Juan Corominas who knew <b>all</b> the Romance language dialects and admitted to having some difficulties with obscure Romanch (sp?) and Auvergnat versions. He never mentioned Occitan as a continuing language (that was before the 70s burst of Occitan nationalism) but did teach us how to read medieval <i>langue d'oc</i> and the Chanson de Roland which precedes the written distinction between <i>langue d'oc</i> and <i>langue d'o&iuml;l</i>.

Well, not that a website is to be substituted for actual facts, but what this one describes meshes with what I have learned over quite a few years about the Occitan language. Note it talks about proven&ccedil;al as well.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/occitan.htm

Your writing is magical and transports me to all that you are describing. I can't even wait to continue reading more and more, thank you.

Except for the role of Mistral in reviving Occitan (and I still think that Proven&ccedil;al was his real interest), nothing contradicts what I said. On the contrary, the article states that the langue d'o&iuml;l became the written language and that it is only in the late 19th century that individuals started standardizing Occitan. As to its existence in Spain, I doubt it, although I am not familiar with those local dialects. The easily accessible areas of Spain from France would have been Catalan and Basque (Roussillon is Catalan in local speech, as is Andorra) and Corominas, he who would get very angry if one stated that Catalan was a dialect of Spanish, would be spinning in his grave at the idea that it could be considered part of the Occitan languages. I'll let others decide if Spanish Navarre spoke Occitan.

Michael: Linguistics has long been a fascination of mine, as well. I'm finding my interest and curiosity piqued by this &quot;old language&quot; vs. &quot;revived patois&quot; analysis of Occitan, Provencal, etc.

But may I suggest a separate thread for this discussion? It seems to be stepping in the way of the narrative of this thread, I think.

Just a thought.

Moonless midnight, fresh-scented breeze wafting through the shutters, star formations high above casting wavy gossamer shadows, cuckoos calling, the tttsssssssssiiiiinnnngg of cicadas in the trees, a lone dog howling….and my inner clock awakens me as engines hum and die in the driveway. I’ve always had an “inner clock,” as well as an “inner compass.” I guess because my woodsman headmaster father used to drop me in the woods as a child and make me find my way out. “Here you are,” he’d say, handing me water and a compass and a bar of chocolate. “I’ll see you back at camp at 4 pm.” And he’d take off down some leafy path and disappear. When I was maybe 8 years old. I wasn’t afraid at all. I knew what to look for: mica formations, slippery rocks, sassafrass plants, laurel bushes with leaves chewed off at the level of the head of this animal or that, footprints of deer and smaller animals, one hoped not bigger ones like bear, though they were in the woods, too. I knew what to listen for, too: the burble of water, the wind going this way or that, the rattle of a snake’s tail….although a city kid, I grew up in the wild every summer, with a mountain-climbing, nature-loving dad who taught me all about trees and bushes and animals and weather and rocks and how to be safe and protect myself and how to hide and be silent and how to get from here to there and how to read the sky and the stars as well as Chaucer and Shakespeare. And I ate it up. No wonder I feel at home in this blackness that is the middle of the night in the P&eacute;rigord. No wonder I laugh at GPS systems. No wonder I think alarm clocks are superfluous.

I told myself when I lay down to nap around 10 pm to wake around midnight, and so I did. And not long after, the muffled motors of my in-laws toddled up the hill of St-Cirq and landed in my driveway. M and T, of course, are long solidly asleep, not having been blessed with the Indian-like upbringing of their mother. When they go to sleep, they sleep. They don’t wake up without electronics or a good kicking. No matter, the cousins and collateral are soon on our doorstep and at least Aunti M is there for hugs and welcomes and thanks for a safe arrival at the dark doorway with the single lightbulb illuminating the doorstep. I’m amazed that the solar torches got them here from the end of the driveway, but they did.

Cousins and collateral are noisy, though. It’s been 13 years since they were here, those cousins, and they are an emotional lot to begin with, and much has happened that is too sad to recall, so there are lots of instant moments of remembrance that bring forth tears and hugs. M and T appear zombie-like as I am pouring the ice into gin and tonics, and another round of hugs and tears ensues. It’s almost too cinematic, this moment – middle of the night, 13 years hence, the same faces…and really scarily, as M points out, the very exact same hairdos on both nieces, rendering them exact replicas in the middle of this black night in front our cavernous fireplace, of themselves when they were 8 and 5 years old….only their mother is gone now, their father here with his new love, soon to be wife….and I’m here still the same St-Cirq lady who fell in love with this place 17 years ago and shared it with the entire dysfunctional family, only now I’m here alone for this part of the trip, as Old Auntie M, still the crazy lady, still the wild card, still the adventuress, still the person you come to when you’re lost in the woods or don’t know what time it is. Still crazy after all these years……

We settle down a bit after a drink and a shared moment “on the wall” and agree that tomorrow we’ll regroup and have a lazy day getting grounded here and getting our bearings. It’s a given that we’ll all go to Fauqu&eacute;’s for a chocolat li&egrave;gois and that we’ll make a massive trip to the Intermarch&eacute; to provision ourselves and that we’ll take stock of what needs to be done to make the property look decent again – particularly to get back our view of the valley.We might even venture forth and see if we can see something like a tourist venue - but we all agree that’s not tops on the list. We have our own tourist unit right here.

I can’t even find a word to describe the softness of this wee early-morning gathering…how a half-dozen disparate “family” members arrive in a hamlet deep in the Dordogne in the middle of the night and find each other again. I mean, various members of this crowd have seen each other from time to time over the years and we’re all in touch sporadically, but for us all to collide together on this cool starlit evening, even though we planned it, seemed shockingly wonderful. How do you describe a family reconnected in a remote village in the middle of the night after a decade of heartbreak and disconnection and death and destruction? We did the best we could. We had a drink and put our feet up on the wall and then called it a night. And thanks to T, who knows instinctively that this is a two-pillow family, everyone had clean sheets and two pillows, and every bed in my big old house in St-Cirq was filled, and everyone exhausted and happy-sad and, I guess, slept, as the French say, like bones.

I was up at about 8 am and showered and roamed around a bit. And here comes M, my amazing daughter, ready to make breakfast for the whole crew. She’s been at Berkeley for 3 years, on the lacrosse team, and living in a group home and making momma’s recipes for all her teammates for all that time. She loves to cook and she’s ready to go. I give her eggs and potatoes and onions and she’s off…….I make coffee. We wait for the rest of the household to waken. The sun gets off hot at first, but there are clouds in the sky and it looks like maybe a sultry, rainy day. T comes downstairs and wants a big cup of coffee. He likes his in a bowl the way the French do. It’s funny to have a 18-year-old kid who likes coffee in a bowl, I guess, but I dunno, I think my life is stranger than most people’s so I don’t get hung up on stuff like that. Bit by bit the relatives straggle down, until we have a full complement, sitting on chairs by the wall’s edge, M in the kitchen whipping up a bunch of scrambled eggs and potatoes fried in goose fat. Before you know it we have a complement of 11 folks, most related in one way or another, sitting on the terrace in front of the house “wallin’ it.” I am tired. I am happy. I am sittin’ happy in my old stone house in France with my kids with me and my nieces and nephews and looking forward to a great day in the P&eacute;rigord.

St Cirq

What a fabulous trip report. I feel like I'm there. We went 8 yrs ago and I would love to go back.

I met you and your lovely family 7 yrs ago at a small restaurant in Normandy. I'd lost my credit card, probably dropped in a little military museum. We were trying to buy a phone card but the restaurant proprietor told us that we would have to wait until tomorrow, the shops that sold them were closed. You overheard us and offered a phone card to use. So sweet. As we started talking, I put the connection together and realized that you were St. Cirq!! I'd used your directions to Mont St. Michele on that trip. Small world! So it makes this lovely travelogue even more sweet. Can't wait to read your book!

When you posted earlier this year that you would be in the Dordogne and would like to arrange a get-together, I remember wishing I could be there. Now I feel like I was.

Hi, ellenbw.

Gosh, that seems like a lifetime ago, but I remember it well. It was at Le Petit Normand in Bayeux. Small world, indeed! Nice to hear from you....

StCirq, what a gift you have!

The reunion of family in a special place - I have also felt that and therefore identify with your description so well. Different place (not quite so amazing) but still special.

St.Cirq,

Please continue your report! Can't wait to hear more.

Coming later today...I've been busy getting ready to leave for India! Can't even imagine what that trip report will entail!

Mieux vaut tard que jamais, non?

You just don’t know how strong the bonds of family are until they’ve been wrestled to the ground, torn apart, ripped asunder, and tentatively reassembled. And here we are, reassembled, on this soft, gray, spitting-rain late morning in St-Cirq - a gaggle of bleary, jet-lagged, beautiful young folks straggling down the stairs, and myself, “the matriarch – OMG!” - and my BIL and his fianc&eacute;e hovering around the kitchen catching up on, well, years of gossip and history and remembrances – good, funny, sad, tragic, inspiring – all over big bowls of coffee with sweet cream for those who like it.

It’s an undertaking, getting 9 people up and running in a foreign country, with all of them having converged from different parts of the world. We greet the day late – around 11 am – at The Wall, that focal point of our property. We can hear the zzzzzmmmmm of tractors and an outburst of motorcycle now and then, and from down the lane the occasional slamming of a car door and the muted buzz of conversation as visitors arrive at the Grotte de St-Cirq. But we can't see anything because we are encased in trees and hedges. My kids, who have been here countless times, are just lolling on The Wall. The cousins, who haven’t been here since 1995, are tapping into distant memories of the place, tinged with both beautiful and exceptionally sad memories. They are checking out drawers and chests and remembering how we actually built together the enormous armoire in the living room – from a huge old door we found in the garage. Someone remembers how my nephew spent hours playing with the enormous beetles with pincers – coaxing them to walk up and down sticks. And then he’d dump them in the pool. We all remember the hedgehog that was swimming frantically around the perimeter of the pool one morning – we rescued it and took it to the top of the hill where we thought it would be safe. In between these sudden recalls of moments from long ago everyone wanders around a bit in the dewy morning a bit dazed, finding a space to call his own in this place.

We don’t have much planned today, as the guests are all exhausted. We’ll go to Limeuil for lunch, poke around, check out Le Bugue, make another trip to the Intermarch&eacute;, and then my BIL and I will hit the Bricomarch&eacute; for a big run – he is intent on clearing the “lower forty” so we can regain our view of the valley. We have three cars, and that alone is a bit of a chore, as it’s August in the Dordogne and roads and sites and parking lots are crowded. But everyone in this family has a stellar sense of direction, so once we have downed the coffee and some have had some cereal, we load up the three cars, and head to Limeuil.

It’s an interesting town. It was truly awful when we first bought the house, with ancient sewage troughs that still emptied right into the river Dordogne. It smelled. It was clearly a medieval gem, but apart from a couple of shops and a glassblower – who is still there – it was not a good showing for a tourist town. All that has changed, and it’s now, as are so many towns, overrun because of its gorgeous hilltop position, its beach at the confluence of the Dordogne and V&eacute;z&egrave;re rivers, its “elbow bridge” that spans the two of them, with a sharp turn halfway over, its lovely views. We actually all end up there at about the same time and sit ourselves down at Le Chai, which is one of my kids’ favorite places to eat in the region. It’s a simple place, serving salads and carpaccios and really good half-burnt, thin-crust pizza, but the kicker is they have something like 125 kinds of ice creams and sorbets, including flavors like saffron and cardamom and rose and violet and ginger and nettle…you get the idea. You can have these as a sort of “trou Normand” in the middle of your meal, or as dessert. We order pizzas and salads of mozzarella and tomato and basil, with everything as fresh as can be at the height of the summer, and before you know it we are passing plates around like insane people – here, try a bit of this; here, you have to taste this; please please have some of my fries….the sun has come out, and there are canoers arriving in droves to take off from the port here, and there are kittens lounging on the restaurant chairs, and the wait staff is slow, but we are all easing so fluidly into this group that we are…

We walk up the steep cobblestone alley that leads to the top of the town, now lined with expensive jewelry shops and renovated homes owned by Brits with a lot of money to spare for second homes. We stop in one shop and the owner is suddenly overwhelmed by my daughter and her two cousins all wanting to try on rings and hats and purses and skirts all at once. She is sharp, worried about attending to us while other customers might be stealing things from her. But when she finds out we are family and several of us speak French, she relaxes….take your time, Madame…I’ll let you look at this box of extras while I deal with the next customer. M buys a gold ring. She usually likes silver, but the owner convinces her that blondes look better in gold (I was happier when she liked silver). Then my niece spots a gold ring she wants, too, and also being blonde, is convinced by the owner it’s perfect for her. She has no money with her. I buy it for her, along with the one for M, because she is lovely and my niece and I want her to have something to remember this day by. It’s not expensive. They’re pretty rings, by a local artisan, but not going to break the bank.

So we haul ourselves to the top of the hill in Limeuil, and at the summit everyone says “Why?” And I’m not sure. There’s a lovely panorama of the Dordogne valley below, with walnut groves and strawberries maturing inside white net covers, but they’re right – it’s not that inspiring, and so we descend. This, by the way, is one amazingly steep climb. And it’s all cobblestones. Going down, as always, is much worse than going up. You really feel as though you are going to fall flat on your face…you know that feeling of almost falling on your face, even if you have good walking shoes on? This is worse than that. You are just propelled downward and have to use your hips to stop your downward movement. All the way down the girls are talking about getting married, and I’m all ears, thinking what can young women be thinking about this? And it’s a shocker…one of them says “ Can you just imagine that you’ve already met the guy you’re going to marry?” And the others say “ No way, you’d know by now…” And then M says “ But my mom’s living with a guy she was in love with in high school, and they’re like this amazing couple,” and the others say “ Well, that’s not normal…” And M says “Well, nothing’s normal in my family, but he’s really cool guy and my mom’s really happy,” and one niece says “But isn’t it funny the way you go out with a guy and the minute you do, if it’s a good date, you’re thinking about how you’d look on your wedding day with him?” And I’m thinking at this point that I want to just die, for the sake of the women’s movement, for the sake of the poor BIL and my son and the two other young men who are traipsing down this hillside with us, for the sake of all men everywhere, frankly.

The kids and fianc&eacute; go home in two cars and BIL and nephew and I head to the Bricomarch&eacute; to buy a chain saw. It’s just astonishing how big the new store is – aisle after aisle of DIY stuff, &agrave; la fran&ccedil;aise, and an official “greeter” at the entrance. Gone are the young “Brico Boys” we used to ogle at. Gone is the pesky, sexy, irritable Jeanette, the Bricobitch who used to torment us. Now there is a whole new complement of temperate middle-aged employees who seem genuinely to want to help (though none speaks English…which is fine. I think shopping at the Bricomarch&eacute; more than doubled my French vocabulary!). There is an entire aisle of chain saws! We ask for help, and a fellow with more mustache than face comes to our aid. Like so many French people I’ve encountered in stores like this, he wants to do much more than make a sale. He wants to get into details. He wants to plumb the experience we will be having as a result of him making the sale. He wants to know what kind of trees we have. How tall they are. How full. On what kind of terrain. He wants to know what experience we’ve had with chain saws (hah!). He wants a vision of what we will do with this piece of equipment and how it will make our lives better. He’s precise, and kind, and wise, and demonstrative, taking the various saws out of their boxes and handling them and showing us exactly what does what. On his recommendation, we purchase a mid-priced one and BIL announces it is his present to us for inviting his family to StCirq. Lovely. Actually, says BIL, the present isn’t the saw, the present will be the regained view….

At home the girls are making couscous with chicken and carrots and zucchini and onions and chickpeas and raz-al-hanout and harrissa, and you can smell it from the driveway. We open a couple of bottles of P&eacute;charmant and set the table under the linden tree for a last evening with No View. It’s a cool and breezy night…sweaters in August! The girls serve up their Moroccan masterpiece and we spend a full two hours at the table. When finally night falls we head inside and play charades. Nine people laughing and shouting on a hillside in an otherwise silent patch of land. I wonder what the neighbors think.

I am loving your story.
Can't wait to hear if your view opens up.

Mellen, thanks so much for more of your beautifully written report!

We came across Limeuil unexpectedly and quite unaware on our Dordogne trip. Seeing a sign for a Most Beautiful Village of France on our way to Tremolat, site of the film Le Boucher, we detoured uphill into town, parked at the top and wandered happily through the streets, admiring the restored homes and envying the owners. Unfortunately, the best view of the confluence of the two rivers is owned by the Panorama Park but we did catch worthwhile glimpses.

We enjoyed Le Bugue too and its great market and helpful tourist office with internet facilities. We can completly understand why you chose your lovely little hamlet nearby and wanted to regain that marvelous view from the top of the hill.

Hi, St. Cirq. Just wanted to say that your description of mustache-man, the helpful sales guy at the Bricomarch&eacute;, is resonating with me today. I’m in the midst of writing a training script for retail sales associates, and my emphasis is squarely on the fundamentals. (Discover the customer’s needs by asking questions. Explain benefits, not just features. Show, don’t just tell. Etc.) This guy already took the course, apparently.

Lovely report. Onward (please)!

Thank you for continuing. This is so enjoyable.

M -
Your writing is especially appreciated in this time of financial uncertainty. For the price of a bit of electricity to power this machine I get a vicarious vacation. Merci bien, madame, et bon voyage a l'Inde.

Am continuing to enjoy your report so very much. Thank you.
&gt;:D&lt;

Thanks so much, all of you. I'll try to write more as I wing my way around the world later this week. I should have plenty of long-haul flights to get my thoughts organized!