La Creuse: Heart of Oak and Stone

Recently, a field close to my home was re-fenced; nothing very startling about that. Except that it is a pretty big field - at a guess approx 1km around its perimeter - and the entire job was completed without any sort of machinery by a couple who look to be well into their eighties. I have to drive past this field every day and for weeks I saw them laying out the posts, banging them in to the rocky ground, stretching the four rows of wire straight and finally trimming the top of each post at an angle to delay rot. This sort of sight is not unusual here: people continue to do manual labour to a very advanced age and even those who have sadly had to move to a retirement home still pop out for a brisk march up the nearest steep hill every day.

This land has bred a hardy and insular people. The Creusois are tough, self-sufficient and long-lived. They consider themselves Creusois first and French second. Indeed, there are still certain aged folk in the deep countryside who do not even speak French, but only the ancient "langue d'oc", which was spoken here before modern France was formed.

Creuse has never been awash with natural resources, but it does have extensive supplies of granite. The traditional trade of the men here was stonemasonry and associated building skills. Having learned their trade on the unforgiving local granite, the Creusois masons could handle other stone with ease. From the 17th Century onwards, reaching a peak during Napoleon's ambitious rebuilding of France, almost the entire male population of Creuse would leave in Spring to trek the 400 or so kilometres to Paris and other cities. They would spend the Summer working on those great building projects and then return to their families in the Autumn, when the shorter days and freezing weather closed down the building sites. It is often said that Paris was built by the Creusois.

Creusois workers set off on their Spring migration

They travelled on foot, and had to watch out not only for gangs of thieves on the roads but also for the gendarmes, who could arrest any man who could not produce the correct papers. Only the most basic, if any, accommodation and food were available, and they arrived to arduous working conditions, even poorer accommodation and the scorn of the city-dwellers, to whom they were ignorant paysans. The Creusois mason was famed for being able to work longer, harder and on less food than any other and for this and his skill was much sought after. In this way, the men earned just enough to see their families through the winter without starving.

This annual migration was, of course, also hard on the families left behind; the women, children and seniors left to manage the family smallholdings. With that sort of history to live up to, no surprise my elderly couple is out there bashing in fence-posts!