Cévennes Mountains (France); France -- Description and travel
From Langeac one can explore the granitic Margeride, peopled by a
race distinct from the Cevenols. They are pale, often fair-headed and
blue-eyed, grave, dignified, and intensely conservative. They are and
ever have been sturdy Catholics, have never been shaken, even ruffled,
by the shock to faith given by Calvin and his followers. Whereas a
Cevenol is ready at all times for a prophecy, a revelation, a new
doctrine, the upset of one that is old, taking up what is fresh with
fanaticism, and then letting it drop and lapsing into indifference,
the man of the Margeride remains as constant, as unmoved as his own
rocky mountains. The Margeride, "as seen from the Pec Finiels, is a
long black line drawn against the sky of central France, a wall without
battlements, without towers, without a keep." It is in reality a long
series of successive undulating plains high uplifted, covered with
forests of oaks, beech and pines, or else with pastures on which feed
during the summer the sheep of Basse Languedoc and the oxen of the
Camargue. It is composed of granite, and its loftiest points reach
only 4,650 feet. A visitor will probably content himself with an
expedition to Sauges, that lies in scenery called the Switzerland of
the Margeride. The rich green swath, the dark pine-woods, the abundance
of crystal rills contrast with the bare lava plain and mountain cones
of Le Velay.
The Sauge stream falls in cascade over a dyke of trap that has been
forced through a rent in the granite, near the farm of Luchadou,
built on and out of the ruins of a castle. There a phantom horse,
magnificently caparisoned, is said to be seen grazing. It neighs when
it sees children approach, and invites them to mount its back, which
will lengthen conveniently to accommodate as many as desire to have a
ride. When the horse has received a full complement, it dashes into
the river, and buck-jumps till it has flung all the riders against the
rocks or into the pools.
One day when a couple of dozen children were on its back, as the
steed was galloping towards the stream one little boy sang out
"Gloria Patri," etc., whereby he was able to master the "Drac" and
make it gallop round and round the field till exhausted, when it let
the children descend unmolested. This is none other than the Irish
Pooka. The celebrated fall of the Liffey, near Ballymore Eustace, is
named Pool-a-Phooka, and precisely the same story is told there of
a phantom horse as here at Sauges. The same also in North Wales of
the Ceffyl-y-Dwyr, the water-horse of Marchlyn. Can this myth have
originated and been told by the Celtic race before its separation into
several branches? I can see no other explanation of the puzzle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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