A Christmas fair...our winter life in the French countryside...
| Saturday, December 12, 2020
Dear Friend,
“On ne va pas baisser les bras ! La foire aux dindes, notre rendez-vous traditionnel doit être maintenu ! »
The "comité des fêtes," the events committee, of our nearby town of Sées did not intend to stand by, arms drooping helplessly, and allow the annual turkey fair to be canceled!
Perhaps this is due to the famously mercantile spirit of the Norman. The “repas de la dinde au pot,” the communal turkey feast, has been called off, the foot race was quashed, and we won’t be able to buy those delectable pommes frîtes, fresh from the wire basket and the boiling oil, as in prior years. But, as we read in the local paper, at least les éleveurs and their clientele will find each other at Sées’ traditional Christmas turkey rendez-vous.
And the clientele comes from all over our region to Sées, a once-powerful medieval religious and market center, where the twin steeples of the cathedral can be seen for miles from the surrounding plain, and an open-air marché has been held on Saturdays since “les temps immémoriaux.” There is the weekender in his chic “Burberry,” suffused with the “tendresses d’un amant pour la nature, les champs, les bois, les bêtes” – the “tenderness of a lover for nature, the fields, the woods and the beasts,” in the words of the French author Maupassant -- and delighting in an authentic rural tradition.
Others have more pragmatic concerns, like the père de famille campagnarde, a stout countryman, clasping the family’s restless Christmas turkey in his arms, his bonne femme carrying a basket of eggs and a jar of confit de canard, while the children beg for a pet rabbit.
For the fair isn’t just about buying a live turkey to fatten up for Christmas dinner. Eggs, confits, pâtés, foie gras and other products of les volailles, farmyard fowl, are for sale. You can go home with chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons and rabbits -- the traditional animals of la basse-cour, the French farmyard. Fanciers and doughty old farmers alike are here to admire, examine and acquire the old traditional types, like the Noir de Normandie turkey, the black-feathered Cotentine hen, or the large spotted rabbit known as le Papillon français, the French butterfly.
Most of these aren’t breeds in the formal sense, but reflect the specialization of earlier times, when each cluster of farms or region in France had its own favorite types, adapted over centuries to the local climate and available feed.
Here, for the pleasure of fair-goers, is the blue-eyed Normandy goose, trimmer than its fatty cousins of Toulouse or Alsace, its white feathers pleasantly mottled with grey, and happy to live outdoors in pastures or orchards, eating grass and apples – a useful trait in our cattle- and cider-producing region. Like the Cotentine, La Merlerault is a chicken breed that was mentioned by the 14th century. We’re partial to this black-feathered beauty with a fluffy tufted crest; the little town of Le Merlerault is right near Chateau de Courtomer. A sign propped up on a cage identifies another pair of chickens as the Bresse normande from Gournay, a black and white fowl also recorded in the 1300s.
Speckled hens and la Merlerault, our own local breed from near the Chateau. La Merlerault was recognised back in the 1300s as an excellent layer and a tasty rôti for Sunday dinner.
According to legend, these birds were originally white, the owner told us. One day, a paysanne disguised her brood as crows, covering them with soot. Her intent was to escape a tax levied by the local seigneur, commonly paid at Christmas with two chickens. But the ruse failed; as snow began to fall, the white feathers reappeared in large blotches – which accounts for the distinctive pattern of the Gournay.
As chatelaine of Courtomer and thus nominally on the side of the seigneurs, I withheld comment.
As the tale of the Gournay suggests, in the olden days chicken was a delicacy reserved for noble palettes, especially for the Christmas feast. But in 1492, a more exotic luxury was introduced to European tables. The "dinde" may have attracted less attention than the fabulous gold and silver of the Aztec, but perhaps it is the more lasting material contribution made by the New to the Old World. Columbus’ initial confusion of India with the new continent of America led the French to describe the amazing bird as a coq or a poule d’Inde, thus dindon, dinde and dindonneau, the cock, hen and chicks of the turkey family.
The first turkey known to have been eaten in France figured at the wedding feast of Charles IX in 1570. One of the Holy Roman Emperors first served turkey at Christmas in the 1600s. Today, the Foire aux dindes at Sées, held before Christmas every year, reflects the omnipresence of roast turkey at the French festin de Noël.
The hardy Noir de Normandie is our regional turkey. The Noir, like the distinctive races of poultry above, fell out of favor as Normandy farmers began to use imported poultry breeds that were more adapted to mass production of meat and eggs. By the end of the Second World War, most local breeds had disappeared.
“Le ventre n’a pas d’oreille,” said the breeder of a handsome pair of Pavilly chickens, stroking the speckled feathers of his hen fondly. The stomach has no ears, as the saying goes. No one was worried about preserving traditional breeds of chicken and turkey in the dark days of the Occupation. The Pavilly, he told me, which had once accounted for practically all the poultry eaten in the city of Rouen, was completely extinct in 1945. But a group of determined “passionnés,” including himself, recreated the breed.
Our enthusiast, sensing a sympathetic ear, warmed to his theme. “You see, in the old days, Pavilly was a very important place. It was founded by the Romans. And we always provided the city of Rouen with its meat and poultry, we were its market town. Even in medieval times, there was a big abbey, which owned the farms all around. They grew the food for Rouen.”
“The abbey was founded,” he added as an aside, “by Sainte Austreberthe.” I had stumbled upon a student of history as well as a fancier of poultry. “And she herself was given the veil by Saint Omer.”
Ah! Of course! I nodded knowingly. Our own Courtomer owes its name to this saint. He was sent from his native Orval, near the Normandy coast, to convert the inhabitants of Pas de Calais and Flanders back to Christianity. They had woefully regressed into pagan ways – and had undoubtedly forgotten about Christmas.
It was time to go home; the darkening skies glowed pink. On the cobblestoned place de Sées, where we had parked, the mairie was illuminated like a miniature palace, hung with garlands of light. As we drove away toward the Chateau, we looked back briefly to see the steeples of the 13th-century cathedral, lit from within like a pair of gleaming lanterns, beacons for the faithful in this Christmas season.
A la semaine prochaine...
And meanwhile, "un petit coucou" from one of Madame Francine's hens, perched in the yew tree outside the Chateau.
