Identifier: fieldsoffrancewi00ducl (find matches)
Title: The fields of France / with twenty illustrations in color
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Duclaux, Agnes Mary Frances (Robinson), 1857-1944 Macdougall, William Brown
Subjects: Peasantry
Publisher: London : Chapman and Hall
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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d volcanic stone (swept every day,but rarely washed), with its ceiling hung with herbs andsausages and huge sides of bacon, it is a warm and homelyrefuge, but not, as a rule, a bright or a pleasant place. Sometimes I think the beasts have the best of it. Thebarns here are as large as churches. Built against the sideof the mountain, they have two entrances, each on the levelof the ground : the higher story forms the barn, the lowerthe byre. I have sometimes counted as many as twentywindows, set some two metres apart, along one side of thosehuge stone structures. Here from mid-November till mid-May the cattle live under cover, chew the cud and see inmemory, no doubt, the meadows hard by with their deliciousgrass and the aromatic pastures on the mountain-top. Herein February and March the calves are born. Nothing isquainter than to see their wild delight, their leaps, theirbounds, their joy, their tearing races, their frantic gambols, 14 THE FARM AT OLMET e farm- TaMJO TA MflA^ 3HT h its
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A FARM IN THE CANTAL when, for the first time in their lives, they come forth intothe green fields and balmy air of May. The pigsties, airy, spacious, comfortable, form a long line near the farm. The swine, too, are kept close in winter, but in summer they roam all over the hillsides and munch the grass like sheep. The pigs here are, I think, the ugliest and perhaps the wittiest in the world—great long-backed, long-legged creatures, far larger than a sheep. They climb the rocky fells, scamper down the smooth sides of the combes, trot all night after the herds to the mountain farm in summer, are hardy, inquisitive, and sociable, beyond belief. With their coal-black heads and pink, naked bodies, my sister says they remind her of the famous Dame aii Masque. But they have no shame of their ugliness, and, when they hear a friendly voice on the other side the hedge, come trooping down from the top of the field to pass the time of day, with all the ease and assurance of an honoured acquain

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