The Life of Joan of Arc Part 9

[Footnote 191: Wolf, _Mythologie des fees et des elfes_, 1828, in 8vo.

A. Maury, _Les fees au moyen age_, 1843, in 18mo, and _Croyances et legendes du moyen age_, Paris, 1896, in 8vo.]

Near by, on the border of the wood, was an ancient beech, overhanging the highroad to Neufchateau and casting a grateful shade.[192] The beech was venerated almost as piously as had been those trees which were held sacred in the days before apostolic missionaries evangelised Gaul.[193] No hand dared touch its branches, which swept the ground. "Even the lilies are not more beautiful,"[194] said a rustic. Like the spring the tree had many names. It was called _l'Arbre-des-Dames_, _l'Arbre-aux-Loges-les-Dames_, _l'Arbre-des-Fees_, _l'Arbre-Charmine-Fee-de-Bourlemont_, _le Beau-Mai_.[195]

[Footnote 192: Richer, _Histoire ma.n.u.scrite de Jeanne d'Arc_, ms. fr.

10,448, fols. 14, 15.]

[Footnote 193: For tree wors.h.i.+p, see an article by M. Henry Carnoy in _La tradition_, 15 March, 1889.]

[Footnote 194: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 422.]

[Footnote 195: _Ibid._, index, under the words _Arbre des Fees_.]

Every one at Domremy knew that fairies existed and that they had been seen under _l'Arbre-aux-Loges-les-Dames_. In the old days, when Berthe was spinning, a lord of Bourlemont, called Pierre Granier,[196] became a fairy's knight, and kept his tryst with her at eve under the beech-tree. A romance told of their loves. One of Jeanne's G.o.dmothers, who was a scholar at Neufchateau, had heard this story, which closely resembled that tale of Melusina so well known in Lorraine.[197] But a doubt remained as to whether fairies still frequented the beech-tree.

Some believed they did, others thought they did not. Beatrix, another of Jeanne's G.o.dmothers, used to say: "I have heard tell that fairies came to the tree in the old days. But for their sins they come there no longer."[198]

[Footnote 196: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 404.]

[Footnote 197: _Ibid._, p. 404, _pa.s.sim_. _Simple Crayon de la n.o.blesse des ducs de Lorraine et de Bar_, in Le Brun des Charmettes'

_Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc_, vol. i, p. 266. Jules Baudot, _Les princesses Yolande et les ducs de Bar de la famille des Valois_, first part. _Melusine_, Paris, 1901, in 8vo, p. 121.]

[Footnote 198: _Propter eorum peccata_, in the _Trial_, vol. ii, p.

396. There is no doubt as to the meaning of these words.]

This simple-minded woman meant that the fairies were the enemies of G.o.d and that the priest had driven them away. Jean Morel, Jeanne's G.o.dfather, believed the same.[199]

[Footnote 199: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 390.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HOUSE OF JOAN OF ARC AT DOMREMY IN 1419]

Indeed on Ascension Eve, on Rogation days and Ember days, crosses were carried through the fields and the priest went to _l'Arbre-des-Fees_ and chanted the Gospel of St. John. He chanted it also at the Gooseberry Spring and at the other springs in the parish.[200] For the exorcising of evil spirits there was nothing like the Gospel of St.

John.[201]

[Footnote 200: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 397.]

[Footnote 201: _Ibid._, p. 390. Bergier, _Dictionnaire de theologie_, under the word _Conjuration_.]

My Lord Aubert d'Ourches held that there had been no fairies at Domremy for twenty or thirty years.[202] On the other hand there were those in the village who believed that Christians still held converse with them and that Thursday was the trysting day.

[Footnote 202: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 187.]

Yet another of Jeanne's G.o.dmothers, the wife of the mayor Aubrit, had with her own eyes seen fairies under the tree. She had told her G.o.ddaughter. And Aubrit's wife was known to be no witch or soothsayer but a good woman and a circ.u.mspect.[203]

[Footnote 203: _Ibid._, pp. 67, 209.]

In all this Jeanne suspected witchcraft. For her own part she had never met the fairies under the tree. But she would not have said that she had not seen fairies elsewhere.[204] Fairies are not like angels; they do not always appear what they really are.[205]

[Footnote 204: _Ibid._, pp. 178, 209 _et seq._]

[Footnote 205: For the traditions of fairies at Domremy and for Jeanne's opinion of them, see _Trial_, index, under the word _Fees_.]

Every year, on the fourth Sunday in Lent,--called by the Church "_Laetare_ Sunday," because during the ma.s.s of the day was chanted the pa.s.sage beginning _Laetare Jerusalem_,--the peasants of Bar held a rustic festival. This was their well-dressing when they went together to drink from some spring and to dance on the gra.s.s. The peasants of Greux kept their festival at the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Bermont; those of Domremy at the Gooseberry Spring and at _l'Arbre-des-Fees_.[206]

They used to recall the days when the lord and lady of Bourlemont themselves led the young people of the village. But Jeanne was still a babe in arms when Pierre de Bourlemont, lord of Domremy and Greux, died childless, leaving his lands to his niece Jeanne de Joinville, who lived at Nancy, having married the chamberlain of the Duke of Lorraine.[207]

[Footnote 206: Concerning the Sunday and the Festival of the Well-Dressing at Domremy, see _Trial_, index, under the word _Fontaine_.]

[Footnote 207: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 67, 212, 404 _et seq._ S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. xx-xxii.]

At the well-dressing the young men and maidens of Domremy went to the old beech-tree together. After they had hung it with garlands of flowers, they spread a cloth on the gra.s.s and supped off nuts, hard-boiled eggs, and little rolls of a curious form, which the housewives had kneaded on purpose.[208] Then they drank from the Gooseberry Spring, danced in a ring, and returned to their own homes at nightfall.

[Footnote 208: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 407, 411, 413, 421.]

Jeanne, like all the other damsels of the countryside, took her part in the well-dressing. Although she came from the quarter of Domremy nearest Greux, she kept her feast, not at Notre-Dame de Bermont, but at the Gooseberry Spring and _l'Arbre-des-Fees_.[209]

[Footnote 209: _Ibid._, pp. 391-462.]

In her early childhood she danced round the tree with her companions.

She wove garlands for the image of Notre-Dame de Domremy, whose chapel crowned a neighbouring hill. The maidens were wont to hang garlands on the branches of _l'Arbre-des-Fees_. Jeanne, like the others, bewreathed the tree's branches; and, like the others, sometimes she left her wreaths behind and sometimes she carried them away. No one knew what became of them; and it seems their disappearance was such as to cause wise and learned persons to wonder.

One thing, however, is sure: that the sick who drank from the spring were healed and straightway walked beneath the tree.[210]

[Footnote 210: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 67, 209, 210.]

To hail the coming of spring they made a figure of May, a mannikin of flowers and foliage.[211]

[Footnote 211: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 434.]

Close by _l'Arbre-des-Dames_, beneath a hazel-tree, there was a mandrake. He promised wealth to whomsoever should dare by night, and according to the prescribed rites, to tear him from the ground,[212]

not fearing to hear him cry or to see blood flow from his little human body and his forked feet.

[Footnote 212: _Atropa Mandragor_, female mandragora, _main de gloire_, _herbe aux magiciens_. _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 89, 213. _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 236.]

The tree, the spring, and the mandrake caused the inhabitants of Domremy to be suspected of holding converse with evil spirits. A learned doctor said plainly that the country was famous for the number of persons who practised witchcraft.[213]

[Footnote 213: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 209.]

When quite a little girl, Jeanne journeyed several times to Sermaize in Champagne, where dwelt certain of her kinsfolk. The village priest, Messire Henri de Vouthon, was her uncle on her mother's side. She had a cousin there, Perrinet de Vouthon, by calling a tiler, and his son Henri.[214]

[Footnote 214: This is probable but not certain. _Trial_, vol. ii, pp.

74, 388; vol. v, p. 252. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, _Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc_, pp. xviii _et seq._; 7, 8, 10, _pa.s.sim_. C. Gilardoni, _Sermaize et son eglise_, published at Vitry-le-Francois, 1893, 8vo.]

Full thirty-seven and a half miles of forest and heath lie between Domremy and Sermaize. Jeanne, we may believe, travelled on horseback, riding behind her brother on the little mare which worked on the farm.[215]

[Footnote 215: Capitaine Champion, _Jeanne d'Arc ecuyere_, Paris, 1901, 12mo, p. 28.]

At each visit the child spent several days at her cousin Perrinet's house.[216]

[Footnote 216: Boucher de Molandon, _La famille de Jeanne d'Arc_, p.

627. E. de Bouteiller et G. de Braux, _Nouvelles recherches_, pp. 9 and 10. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. xlv _et seq._]