Sabine Baring-Gould - A Book of the Pyrenees

It would be unpardonable to quit the Basques without a few words on the Couvade, a custom once prevalent among them, but by no means peculiar to them, as it has been found in Asia, Africa, and America.

Immediately after childbirth the woman rises and goes about the business of the house, whereas the husband at once retires to bed with the baby, receives the congratulations of the neighbours, and is fed on broth and pap during ten days. Strabo mentions this usage above eighteen hundred years ago as prevalent among the Iberians, the ancestors of the Basques. “The women,” he says, “after the birth of a child, nurse their husbands, putting them to bed instead of going to it themselves.” That this custom was widely spread in the south of France appears from the medieval tale of Aucussin and Nicolette . In it the hero finds King Theodore au lit en couche , whereupon he takes a stick and thrashes him till he vows to abolish the Couvade in his realms. Diodorus Siculus, at the beginning of the Christian era, tells us that this custom also prevailed in Corsica.

Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, met with it in Eastern Asia, so that the widow’s remark to Sir Hudibras was not amiss —

The same custom is found among the American Indians.

What can be its meaning? What topsy-turvydom of the human brain can have originated it? Mr. Tylor, in his Early History of Mankind , says that it proceeded from a notion that the woman was a mere machine for the turning out of babies, and that the babes were not in the least supposed to belong to her, but to the father. Also that the child was part and parcel of the father, a feeble and frail parcel, and that the utmost precaution had to be taken to keep the male parent in health lest the child should suffer. If the father were to take a pinch of snuff, the infant would sneeze its brains away; if he were to eat solid food, the babe would suffer indigestion. A missionary found it impossible to persuade his Indian servant to eat anything but slops directly after the birth of a son and heir, as he was persuaded heavy diet would injure the child. Then the missionary belaboured his servant with a stick, and sent him to look at his infant smiling in its sleep, and so convinced the man of his delusion.

This may be the explanation. I cannot say. Mankind does many things out of sheer cussedness.

Court of the counts of Foix – Froissart – Gaston Phœbus – Kills his son – And a cousin – Death of Phœbus – Evan de Foix – The bastards of Phœbus – Tragic death of Evan – Bridge over the Gave – Jeanne d’Albret – Her despotic actions – Flight to La Rochelle – Charles sends La Terride into Béarn – Jeanne invites Montgomery to her aid – He enters Béarn – Takes Orthez – Massacre – The castle capitulates – Broken faith – Murder of ten barons – Slaughter of priests and monks – Catholic worship forbidden – Death of Jeanne – Castle of Belocq – Puyôo – Battlefield of Orthez – Retreat of Soult.

Orthez has little to occupy it save to brood over its past. It is a dull town, without characteristic features, and it sulks because Pau the parvenue is flourishing, and flaunting, whilst itself, the venerable Orthez, the once capital, sits as a widow, desolate.

Till the fifteenth century it was the residence of the Court of the counts of Foix and viscounts of Béarn, whose castle of Moncada occupied the height above the town. A splendid pile it was, erected by Gaston VII, in 1240, after the pattern of a Spanish castle of the name that he had taken. This had proved to him a hard nut to crack, and he hoped to make the new Moncada by additional works wholly uncrackable. But the tooth of Time has broken it completely, and nothing of it now remains save the keep.

The town was astir and aglow when Gaston Phœbus resided in the castle. Froissart so describes it. Minstrels, merchants, knights, adventurers, swarmed in the streets, and streamed into the castle, which they did not leave empty-handed. “I have heard him say, when the King of Cyprus was in Béarn proposing a crusade, that if the kings of France and of England had gone to the Holy Land, he himself would have been the most considerable lord in the host, second only to them, and would have led the largest contingent.”

Gaston Phœbus, Count of Foix and Viscount of Béarn, was the son of Gaston IX and the elderly Eleanor de Cominges. On account of his beauty he was given the name of Phœbus, and he adopted the blazing sun as his device. He was arrested by King John of France when at Paris because he refused to do homage for his lands, but was released and given command of an army in Guyenne to war against the English.

Froissart visited Orthez, and lodged at the tavern “La Lune,” now rebuilt and renamed “La belle Hôtesse.”

“I must say,” wrote he, “that although I have seen many knights, kings, princes, and other great men, I have never seen any so handsome as he, either in mould of limb and shape, or in countenance, which was fair and ruddy, lit up with grey, amorous eyes, that delighted whenever he chose to express affection. He was so perfectly formed that it is not possible to overpraise him. Gaston Phœbus was a prudent knight, full of enterprise and wisdom. He never allowed men of abandoned character to be about his person; he reigned prudently, and was constant at his devotions. He mightily loved dogs above other animals, and during the summer and winter amused himself with hunting. He employed four secretaries, whom he called neither John, Walter, nor William, but his Good-for-noughts, and to these he gave his letters to copy out.”

But this prince was no other than a lusty, handsome animal, incapable of controlling his passions, and whilst profuse in largesses to wandering jongleurs and travellers, who would bruit abroad his praises, mean in money matters in other particulars.

Gaston Phœbus succeeded his father in 1343, and in 1348 married Agnes, daughter of Philip III of Navarre. By her he had one son, Gaston, as beautiful as Phœbus himself, and an amiable youth. Before long the Count and his wife fell out. The quarrel was sordid – it concerned money. Phœbus had imprisoned the Sieur d’Albret. The King of Navarre, Charles the Bad, brother of the Countess, interceded for his liberation, and undertook to guarantee payment of fifty thousand francs for his ransom. Accordingly Gaston released him, and d’Albret paid the money into the hands of the King of Navarre, who pocketed it, and declined to send it to the Count of Foix, under the plea that he was trustee for his sister and reserved it as her dower. The Count resented this upon his wife, whom he called by all the bad names in his copious vocabulary. He had taken a mistress, and he openly favoured her in the face of his wife for her humiliation. By this woman he had three sons. Then he ordered Agnes to visit the Court of Navarre and use her personal influence to obtain the money due. The Countess went, but failed to induce her brother to disburse; and knowing how ungovernable was the temper of her husband, how little he loved her, she shrank from returning to Orthez.

The boy Gaston at the age of fifteen entreated leave to visit his mother at Pampeluna. The lad was distressed at the estrangement, and pined for his mother. Accordingly his father gave him a splendid retinue of gallant youths, and the Bishop of Lescar as his chaplain. Charles the Bad resolved on a diabolical act of treachery. When the boy was leaving he drew him aside, assured him of his distress at seeing the lad’s father alienated in heart from his mother, and gave him a bag of arsenic, which he informed him was a love powder. This he was to strew on his father’s meat, or drop into his cup, when Phœbus’s love for his wife would infallibly revive. But on no account, said Charles, was Gaston to breathe a word of this to any one, and he must be cautious to seize the right moment for the administration of the dose, when unobserved. Gaston, fully believing what his uncle said, hung the bag round his neck under his dress, and returned to Orthez.