Rambles in Normandy. M. F. Mansfield
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administration of its own.
The ancient province of Normandy, after it had been confiscated and welded to the royal domain of Philippe-Auguste (1204), enjoyed many unique rights; of which the chief was the privilege of its inhabitants to be judged on appeal to their own supreme court, which sat at Rouen.
The peasants of the country-side had always rebelled against royal despotism, for which reason their individuality was most pronounced.
Upper Normandy had Rouen for its capital, and Lower Normandy, Caen. This last city possessed a university and long remained the intellectual centre of the province.
To-day its five departments, the Lower Seine, Eure, Calvados, Orne, and Manche, have their ecclesiastical metropolis and archbishop at Rouen, with suffragans and bishops at Evreux, Bayeux, Sées, and Coutances.
From “The French Drawn by Themselves,” of Bedollière, one learns that “the Normans are the Anglais of France, but in industry only.”
Jal says briefly: “The peasants of Normandy have a great love for the bonnet of cotton.”
Bedollière continues with the statement that “the costume of the Norman women is varied to the infinite, but all, down to the fille d’auberge, have the instructive science of coquetterie.”
“The Norman will never answer you directly,” says another; “yes and no are difficult replies for him to make to one’s question.”
“The Norman is the Gascon of the north and the Gascon is the Norman of the Midi,” one reads, also.
La Fontaine carried the simile still further, though it is difficult to follow his argument exactly:
“Les serments des Gascons et des Normands passent peu pour mots d’Evangile.”
A similar vein is the following Norman supplication which some cynical Frenchman has invented or unearthed from a hidden source:
“O Lord, I ask you not to favour me with good things. I merit not that which thou would’st give; but tell me only where they are and I will go and take them.”
The inhabitants of Normandy have unquestionably a strong individuality, “above all,” says a local chronicler, “good sense and good judgment.” The one would seem to include the other, but that is the way it is put.
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