Poetic, Occitan, this Ariadne’s thread in the history of Alésien places
On Wednesday September 28, as part of Cévenole week, Marinette Mazoyer and Alain Bouras delivered a playful account of the origins of street and neighborhood names.
“ There is a problem of knowing our past and its heritage. The goal, via the Occitan language, the only language practiced since French did not exist, makes it possible to discover names and tell the story.” Wednesday, on the stage of the Capitole, Alain Bouras joined by Marinette Mazoyer in a lively, greedy, toponymic stroll on the city rich in teaching. Anthology of this stroll based on the compoix, a notary’s manuscript recording the possessions of notables dating from 1393.
1 Pan de la Roca
Called quarry (street in Occitan) de la Roca, it is one of the oldest streets in the city which took its name from the rock, the current grove, where the castles stood, namely Fort Vauban today. The street that winds at its feet, rue Soubeyranne has nothing of its own name. In Occitan, the oldest street in Alès is translated as upper street. The tallest in town. These two axes end in the rue Crotz de Fust (a wooden cross). Disappeared, it seems to have marked the crossroads towards the Berthole gate where a branch of the Gardon flowed. An island had formed and in its center was the Church of the Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem (1173). Island of Saint-Jean or Saint-Jean-d’Entraigues (between aiga), meaning in the middle of the water. What the inhabitants of Prés Saint-Jean will regretfully remember during the 2002 floods. town. Rue de la Cadènà was the chain street which made it possible to separate, in the evening, the popular streets from the castle and to establish the superiority of the bourgeois of the Middle Ages.
2 Pan de las airas
Another district of the city, that of Aires (Airas, place where cereals were fought) bore the mark of the various corporations which led to the latter. Thus the rue des Nauliers, written En Olier would probably take its name from Lord Olier. The Carrièra Blancarda was the street of the laundry where the leathers were also prepared. That of Pelissariè alludes to the skin industry, and that of Boucariè, butchery of goats and goats.
3 Pan de Mercat
In the same way, the guilds of trades and the goods form the name of the streets leading to this pretty market which was razed with the stroke of a pencil by the ex-mayor Paul Béchard, a follower of politics, blind, of the clean slate. . The Frucharié quarry, rue de la Fruiterie (fruit reserve) extends the rue de la Cadène. The Sabatarià career, street of shoe merchants, Canabassarià, hemp street, nothing to do with the CBD businesses that are flourishing today.
4 Old bridge section
The Tissarié quarry was also created there, i.e. weavers, but the Nova quarry, a new street that became rue des Casernes then the Morgas quarry, religious in Occitan, was therefore the street of the sisters. The convent of the nuns of Sainte-Claire had its entrance in the latter.
In order not to tire their audience, the couple regularly weaved their story with anecdotes and other testimonies from the period in order to bring the story to life. A city that had a talented storyteller in the person of Odile Rouquette whose reading of Lo conilh e lo garri (a rabbit from Conilhère abused by a rat fleeing a flood of the Gardon) ends as follows: “Ah! Scream the rabbit. Do good to Bertrand and him, like an ingrate he gives you back by caguing.
The story is told with laughter.