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Our Lady of Victories, Paris.

Princess Isabella of Orleans, Duchess of Guise.

Aymeric Picaud was a French priest that went on to fulfil St James’ way in the 12th century. He wrote about what he saw and found on his way in a sort of Guide for the Pilgrim, included in the famous Codex Calixtinus. 

He talks about the roads, the villages, and the people, and oh we Basques left a deep impression in poor monsieur Picaud: 2/3 of his chapter dedicated to the people that lived along the Way was about us. Sweet. He wrote:

The people of this land are ferocious like ferocious, wild and barbarian is the land they live in. Their faces are fierce, and their barbarian language as well, they put terror into the soul of the one who sees them. They can only legally charge the merchants, so the tax they charge the pilgrims and travellers is illegal. When the standard fee is about 4 or 6 coins, they charge 8 or 12. 

(…)

Wherever a Navarrese or Basque goes, they bring a hanging horn like the ones of the hunters, and they usually bring two or three spears that they call auconas. And when they enter their house they whistle like a kite. And when they are ambushed to hunt a prey and want to stealthily call their partners, they sing like an owl or howl like a wolf.

(…)

It’s clear that they dress poorly, and they poorly eat and drink, and in the house of a Navarrese it’s of custom to eat all the family at the same time, lord and servant, lady and maid, having all the dishes in just one pot and without spoons, but with their own hands; and they all drink from the same pitcher. When one sees them eating, they ressemble dogs or pigs. And when they speak, they sound like dogs barking, due to their language being so barbarian. They call God urcia; God’s mother, andrea Maria; bread, orgui; wine, ardum; meat, aragui; fish, aragui; house, echea; the lord of the house, iaona; the lady, andrea; the church, elicera; the priest, belaterra, which means beautiful land; wheat, gari; water, uric; the king, ereguia; and St James, iaona domne iacue.

Here monsieur Picaud can’t tell declensed and undeclensed words apart and doesn’t care. Water should be ur-urikis a declensed form - as church should be eliza-elicerais also declensed. 

Belaterrabeing “beautiful land” may work for Italian, but not for Basque: whatever Basque was his source for this trolled him and trolled him well. Belateis a mount near Iruña, and Belatera means to Belate. Belate may be translated as “the door of the crow” [bele+ate]. 

Another trolling? God being urcia. Urtzi / Ortzi means sky, as the pagan god of the sky. The priest probably pointed at the sky asking how do you call God? and our Basque ancestor doing their best answered: that’s the sky, my man! 

They’re barbarian people, different from everyone else in their customs and nature, full of evil, black, of ignoble looks, evil, wicked, treacherous, disloyal, lustful, drunk, aggressive, fierce and wild, heartless and damned, merciless and rude, cruel and troublemaker, they lack of any virtue and are taught in every vice and iniquity, as evil as the Getae and the Saracens, and frontal enemies of our Gaulish nation. For a miserable coin, a Navarrese or a Basque kills, by any means, a French.

However, they’re considered brave in the battlefield, hardworking during assaults, reliable to pay their tithe, perseverant in their offerings to the altar. 

Guess it’s all cool then!

dragon-fat:

beautiful-basque-country:

conneyes:

Listen I wont be annoying for too long but the fact that France send in a group that sings in Breton is so fucking important to me like.

We are talking about a language that the french higher ups have ALWAYS tried to get rid off !! They banished it from being talked in schools in the late 19th and early 20th century. But also generally as the Bretagne (Brittany) part of France have always been looked down upon and that region was always treated as some kind of experiment base.

The fact that the group is actually a bunch of bretons singing in breton is truly making my heart happy

Fuck you to all the people who tried to demolish this language. It will keep shining.

We have mixed feelings regarding this.

Of course it’s awesome that a song in Breton was at the ESC, and it’s not the first time and hopefully, neither the last. We wish Basque had the same chance just once! Minoritized languages need more representation and Eurovision is a huge platform.

HOWEVER

What’s the point in showing a minoritized language to the world if you’re still putting every obstacle and more for people to use it? To 100% live in it? To recover it? To promote it? In the real world, that is. For actual people? Up until two years ago it wasn’t allowed to put letter Ñ in Breton names because that letter doesn’t belong to the French alphabet, ffs.

Particularly France is an expert in showing Europe its regionallanguages as bonus points for diversity and tolerance and what not. They’re shown as an oddity or as a way to whitewash the crimes French governments commited - and commit - against these languages and their speakers. Minoritized languages like Breton, Euskara, Català, Corsican, etc have survived despiteFrance, not thanks to.

Yay for the minoritized languages.
But let’s not forget France’s blatant hypocrisy.

i don’t fully disagree but there’s a mistake in target here.

the attempts at destroying regional languages and cultures on french territory are 100% the doing of the government and its local officials, neither of which were responsible in the selection of our representatives at eurovision. maaaaaayyyyyybe there was some kind of trying to make the selection seem diverse and inclusive on france tv’s part when they picked the final lineup for cvqd (there was also a song that included lyrics in réunion créole, and last year’s had corsican and tahitian). maybe they weren’t actually thinking the songs that weren’t ~safe~ choices could come on top but in the end, fulenn won both the jury and televote when the show happened.

and when it comes to real life, we regularly have protests and events all over the country demanding local cultures and languages be respected and some people are fighting daily so their schools or organizations can be funded and kept alive.

so really, i fail to see how regular people+a handful of celebrities with debatable taste voting to send a song in breton to eurovision reflects in any way “france“’s desire to whitewash its crimes against minority languages. even more so when, as far as i remember (meaning since the mid 90s bc my memories from before then being blurry, i’m only 32), breton singers and bands, although not necessarily using their language but definitely using heavy traditional music influences, have always been super popular here.

Nice point.

We - possibly wrongly - assumed that like in Spain, the national French TV (or whoever in charge of the French song anyway) was dependant of the French state / aka French Government.

Either way, even if we’re completely mistaken about this and the French entries at the ESC, we stand our ground on French hipocrisy regarding minoritized languages and cultures: they exploit them for touristic purposes and then go and try to erase them.