Europe > France > Riviera Cote d'Azur > Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer > Articles > White Horses and Black Bulls

Under the harsh summer sun, the Camargue can appear starkly black and white. Looking across the salt flats on a May afternoon, I see everything divided, neatly, into shadows and light with few colours to balance the contrast. Long pale beaches, dark saline lakes, distant silhouettes of tamaris trees, the dazzling lime-washed walls of a stockman’s cabane. Beyond a sandy track there’s a line of Camargue horses tied up along a hitching rail. Fifteen, or so, of them. They are brilliant white. And directly behind them a manade of bulls, with horns like spear points, are grazing. They are dark, dark black. The horses and the bulls are light and shadow to each other. Which is appropriate as, in the Camargue, the lives and the histories of the horses and the bulls are entwined together. Neither breed would be as it is today without the other.

In the midst of modern France, and despite the thousands of tourists who annually visit this tiny triangle of wilderness squeezed between the Grand Rhône and Petit Rhône rivers, the Camargue has kept most of its traditions intact. And many, if not all, of those traditions come from France’s only ‘cowboys’ – the gardians of the Camargue – who use their small white horses to work the herds of fighting bulls. The gardians’ horsemanship and their bull herding skills are celebrated in the region’s numerous festivals each year.

Two of us arrived in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the small white-walled town on the coast that is capital of the Camargue, for the annual May pilgrimage. The town’s fortified Romanesque Church holds the relics of Mary Jacobé, Jesus’ aunt, and of Mary Salomé, mother to two of the apostles. It is these two Marys that give the town its name. Legend has it that the two women were exiled from Palestine at a time of Christian persecutions and set adrift in a boat which arrived at the point, by the mouth of the Rhône, where the town now lies. Recent scientific tests on bones found in the crypt suggest that they are those of two oriental women from around the first century AD.

But to the world’s Gypsies the church in S-M-de-la-Mer is better know as the shrine of the ‘Black’ Sarah, who was, (depending on the version you hear), either a servant to the two Marys, who accompanied them on their flight from the east, or a local chiefess who met the two asylum seeking Marys when they arrived in the Camargue, and who subsequently converted to Christianity. Around a painting of the Black Sarah on one wall of the church’s dark interior are hung crutches, faded photographs, handwritten notes and inscribed plaques. All attest to miracles of recovery from illness, to favours successfully granted or to the memories of dead pilgrims prayed for each year. Belief in the Black Sarah is strong amongst Gypsies.

Consequently, the day of the 24th of May sees thousands of Romanies from all over Europe – Gitano from Spain, Lothari, Sinti and Manouche from France, Germany and the Lowlands, Roma from east Europe – paying tribute to the relics of Sarah as they are lowered on ropes from their niche high in the churches interior and paraded around the town and down to the sea, where, (because the Gypsies prefer the ‘converted local chiefess’ legend), she symbolically ‘waits’ for the two Marys to arrive.

The Gypsy pilgrimage was short and intense. Barely arrived in the town, Christina and I were soon squeezed in with a bunch of Spanish and French gitanos on a café terrace. All were in their smartest clothes – gold rings, and black suits, full skirts and petticoats, fedora hats, and silk shawls. Flamenco guitarists and singers filled the small square, performing not for the non-Gypsies, who were heavily outnumbered, but for other Roma. Cries of song broke out, and couples, as intense in their movements as knife fighters, stalked between the tables in dance. Clans who saw each other perhaps only once a year, at this pilgrimage, did business, and drank together. The music and the drinking went on late into the night.

The next day the relics of Black Sarah were carried through the town to the beach in a solemn procession, and then returned to the church. By the late afternoon, the Roma’s pilgrimage was over and most of them were preparing to leave. Not long ago, certainly within living memory, the Gypsies would have arrived, and left, in horse-drawn wagons. But now it was convoys of motor-homes, chrome-flashed caravans, and pick-up trucks that left Saintes-Maires-de-la-Mer, passing the ‘wagon museum’ at Pioch-Badet, where examples of their old horse-drawn vardos, Reading caravans, showmen’s wagons and even an Irish bow-top now stood immobile.

So, in modern times, the horse side of things in the Camargue is left to the locals. The next day, the 25th of May, thousands of people thronged the town and pressed in on the walls of the church. A picked bunch of gardians, their horses washed and brilliant white, gathered in front of the church doors as the relics of the two Marys, on statue-decorated and flower-draped biers, were carried out from the gloom to be marched in procession towards the Mediterranean’s shore. The gardians fell in to ride as escort. All were dressed in traditional costume, though the traditions actually celebrated in the horsemen’s clothing and in their mounts’ tack gave some idea of the range of influences that have affected the horsemen of the Camargue over many centuries.

Their horses, the white Camargues, it has been argued descend in part from prehistoric horses as portrayed in the cave paintings of Lascaux and other ‘primitive art galleries. And probably, yes, in ‘part,’ they do, just as Lipizzaners, Tennessee walking horses and Shetland ponies also, in ‘part,’ come from prehistoric equines. But by far the greater influence is likely to have been the North African Barb, and at a much, much later period of time. The Phoenicians, the Romans, the Greeks and the Arabs all had settlements close to the Camargue or at least traded with the area, making it possible that the Camargue horses became naturalised and a ‘type’ several thousand years ago.

The gardians’ saddles are heavy, brass studded affairs with a high ‘wing’ across the front and a curved, waist-high cantle at the back, making for a ‘seat’ that the rider slots firmly into and which provides a firm support to wield his long trident from. Their stirrups are rounded, metal cages. So far, so Moorish. But the gardians themselves are more cowboy, or at least Mississippi riverboat gambler, in their dress. Thus, they wear tight, dark moleskin trousers or even smarter ‘charcoal-striped’ strides like the trews from a morning suit. Their silver-buttoned waistcoats and black jackets are also of the tight-woven cotton moleskin fabric. But, then, lest all this seems too somber, their shirts of choice are invariably something as loud coloured and gingham-y as possible, worn with a shoestring tie.

If all this costumery sounds a bit like a group of undertakers putting on a production of ‘Oklahoma,’ maybe it’s because much of their costume is theatrical, and relatively recent in its adoption. This is due in great part to the influence of one man on the relatively recent history of the gardians of the Camargue.

The Marquis Folco de Baroncelli-Javon was born in 1869 in Avignon. He was a William Butler Yeatsian character; a mix of poet, reactionary, and man of action. Despite, or, perhaps, because of, his aristocratic background he felt drawn to the romance - as he saw it - of the life of the gardian and made his home in the Camargue where he reveled in the horse games, the bull herding, the festivals and the outdoor life.

An excellent horseman and champion of the Camargue horse – he rode his own ‘Sultan’ the 311 kilometers to Lyon in a mere 42 hours once – the Marquis wasn’t above adding romance to the cattlemen’s life where he thought it was lacking. Thus he instigated festivals, including the procession of the Gypsies’ Sarah to the sea, encouraged tests of horsemanship, and generally ‘cowboyed up’ the French part of Camargue life, and ‘Frenchified’ some of the ideas he got from early western films and well travelled friends. So, for example, the array of broad-brimmed hats sported by today’s riders undoubtedly owe more to the influence of Baroncelli’s filmmaker pal, Sam Hamman, who made early cowboy films in the Camargue, than to any older traditions. But, whatever, it was a compelling combination, and had a rough authenticity to it that flowery shirts and tourist crowded festivals couldn’t and still can’t erase.

Above all Baroncelli gave the Camargue an easily identifiable ‘cowboy’ feel that could be recognised and celebrated not only by locals but by all French people. His romantic vision of white horses, black bulls and tough gardians all living together in an unspoilt wilderness was growing even as the reality of Camargue life between the two world wars, was giving way to the modern world, and land was being cleared of bulls and horses for more profitable rice fields. Crucially, this vision was harnessed to the stark beauty of the delta lands and to the variety of wildlife living in them, to make a case for designating the whole area between the two rivers as the Parc Naturel Régional that it is today.

It was an image, too, that made it fashionable to be - or at least play at being - a gardian in modern times. So today, like so many traditional horse skills in Europe, the old ways are kept alive in the main by enthusiastic and sometimes wealthy amateurs who can be assembled with their horses to help in the round-ups of steers for the annual branding and in the trying out of the fighting bulls in autumn. And, of course to parade the Marys to the sea each May.

At the head of the huge crowd the gardians led the relics of the saints on a long loop through the town. Running before, with cameras in hand, I found myself ahead of the great surging crowd and the line of horses as they approached the sea. Waves broke on the sands as the horses paced in through the surf. And the crowd pushed in behind them, surrounding the saints’ relics born aloft on the shoulders of sturdy men. Ornate religious banners were hoisted up. Arms stretched up to touch the images of the two Marys. Hands dipped down into the saltwater as a blessing. With their horses stirrup deep in the water the horsemen had turned their mounts to stand shoulder to shoulder, the waves running around them in curls of foam. Their tridents were held up in salute. More and more people pushed into the sea, clothes soaking in the waves, children being carried on shoulders.

From my position, waist deep at the wither of the end horse, I could see the impassioned crowd filling the beach and the shallows and still pushing in deeper. There were shouts and cheers and the sound of prayers being taken up, and the banging of drums and the soft sound of the waves breaking, but against people now, not sand. The horses, though, formed the limit to the scrum. In front of them was the milling, soaked, wading crowd of thousands. And, behind them, the empty sea with only a passing boat between their tails and the horizon.

Then the relics and banners and statues began their stately passage out of the waters and back to the church. The sea began to empty as the crowd trudged and dripped up the beach. The horses surged out from the waves and took up their positions as escort again. Seeing the horses in the foam had reminded me of the well-known French myth that their white horses came from the sea, and are the foam of the mistral-blown Mediterranean waves made horseflesh. It’s in the nature of pilgrimages to suspend rational belief for a while and to experience the incredible.

INFO BOX
The pilgrimage of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is held annually on 14th and 25th of May. Information on www. saintes-maries-camargue.enprovence.com

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