A Book of the Pyrenees

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ...that of the quarrymen, they receive double the pay of these latter. For a slatecutter has to learn the art before he is aged fourteen, whilst the muscles are most flexible. At the age of twenty he has to undergo military service, and when he returns to his shed and tools, at the age of twenty-four, finds it very difficult to recover the skill he possessed before he donned uniform. One of the most interesting and perplexing themes connected with the Pyrenees is the origin of the Cagots, a " race maudit," that was found throughout the chain, but not there solely. It existed as well in Brittany. In a considerable number of churches may be seen the Cagots' door, through which alone they might pass into a portion of the church reserved for them, and cut off from the rest, and where alone they might assist at divine worship. In some of the towns are streets called Rues des Cagots, in which these outcasts herded. At one time they were not suffered to inhabit the villages, but were relegated to isolated hamlets, and they had separate burial grounds. They might not associate with the more privileged natives, and intermarriages with them were strictly interdicted. They were required to wear a distinctive badge--a goose's foot in red J cloth attached to one shoulder. The expression "Cagot" is still used as a term of opprobrium. But when one asks to be shown a Cagot, after some hesitation, a cretin or a poor creature afflicted with a goitre is pointed out. But the original Cagot was not such. Jean Darnal, a solicitor in the Parliament of Bordeaux, thus describes the Cagots, whom he calls Gahets, in his Chronique Bourdeloise, 1555. "The magistrates gave orders that the Gahets should reside outside the town on the side of S....