SABOTS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume 1, Issue 8, 14 February 1914, Page 3 (Supplement)

SABOTS.

BRETON FOREST INDUSTRY. I ! Seen from afar, this Breton beechwood is just a blue mist on the horizon. But within it the stillness is so deep that no twig can fall or undergrowth rustle without being noted. With these sounds comes the sense of an abiding presence, as of one who moves about his own house. In summer the ponds reflect the green world that surrounds them, and across the long white roads, where the branches almost meet overhead, blows the woodland smell, damp and fresh with the breath of earth and moss. "Lord of the Seven Forests" was an ancient title of the noblesse when almost all the Breton land was forest, the temple of strange worships, each spring therein a haunt.or goat-fpoted dwarfs. Now, through the tunnel of the trees, there shines this winter day the open sky and, beyond it, more mist of woodland. A silver birch waves its few pale leaves in the air. There is the scent of cleft wood from the heaps of chips where pathways run between the blackberries arid " ferns.' Here and there rise low, green triangular huts. Built of interwoven branches, stuffed with moss, and roofed with green rush, these are the homes of the sabotmakers. Through the central ventholes coil blue spirals of wood-smoke from the hearthstones, within. In the doorways work the sabptiers, men and women, cutting blocks of beechwood, boring with augers the belly, or ventre, of the sabot, toiling fiercely, incessantly, even in the forest. GUYADER'S HUT. It is dark in Jules Guyader's hut, where the only light- comes from - the doorway and the/wind blows the smoke through the room. , The floor is of beaten earth, the. bed a shelf piled with bracken, from the mossy crevices oozes the forest smell,- for the whole hut' is rebuilt every year. The sabots in Guyader 's hand are-carefully shaped, blacked also, and worked on the. toe with an ancient design; a woman's shoes, almost pliable) though, cut in beechwood. At the making of them Guyader had sung a crooning song as wordless as the pigeon's note. Suddenly he rose, and, stretching up, stuck the sabots by their toes into a. hole in the thatch. But ail the while he worked he.saw nothing of his tools, handling them by instinct, as .his hairy breast heaved and the sweat-drops gathered on . his low forehead. One picture he saw: the Cafe de l'Aurore of the day before, decked for the fete with ribbons hung: beneath the bush outside. He saw again the red, puffed cheeks of the bombarde player, ; the hatchet jaws of the man who piped") as both sat on barrels at the door of the inn. Thin, shrieking, came the tune of the <Mniou; pom, pom, - pom, the roar of the, bombarde. Up v and down romped the dancers, two maidens .to a man between, the three joined byinterlocked little fingers,vj.ules Guyader, with Henriette and Marianne among the rest. At last the rain that lashed .-the, elms .round -the. granite calvary drove the company into the'cafe. There at the, corner of the table sat Henriette,; white* cheeks rose flecked, delicate nostrils working. Down her cheeks the black-pencilled eyelashes lay; maidenly fine was her, face under the white 'coiffe. •••;■ ; ..■■*''.■' ... . .;''. ■ '.'" SABOTIER SEES VISIONS. It wa3 a foolish time for a gift, but Guyader was simpleton-. He laid his pair of women's sabots.on the table by Henriette, watched, as he thought, only by Marianne of all the rest of the party—Marianne of the dwarfish form, with one shoulder higher than the other. Cut with finest nicety of craftsmanship, those shoe'B would fit like gloves, for had not Jules once held Henriette's foot in the palm of his,., hand? He was proud, arid yet ashamed, for Henriette belonged/to the farm, not the woodland. ' None-the le:;s, he saw visions of their wedding procession to the Mairie, himself velvet-clad, sabotier though he was. Then glasses paused -in mid-air, men stood up,'craned over heads to watch, and a girl shrieked, as with one swoop of her arm Henriette dashed the sabots .from the table and across the floor of the room. At the clash a roar of laughter burst out and, pressed against the wall as though they actually crowded him, Guyader waited, his arm flung up. It was Marianne who at last ; picked up the sabots and put them in his hand. And presently the bombarde and the biniou outside began again, while the stars came, out and the wind roared across the forest. It was not till two nights after that the: clearing echoed with blows of an itxe. Marianne in the valley where the owls hooted stuffed her fingers in her ears, for she knew that the noise meant Guyader's despair. He was hacking down the hut he had worked on all the summer for Henriette and himself. Down here, where the wood opens on a lake, there is a. wateriall with its basin lined with brolceii shards of pottery placed there by thV* vvoodlanders of long ago who sought to solace the ghosts that thronged the fountain with quaint mosaics. Pins, too, there were to show love's fate by sinking or floating, and also, some said, to serve as fastenings for the toms' shrouds in the long cold nights.

MARIANNE AND JULES. Marianne, with a pin, had gone back to the faith of her fathers. Presently she hurried to the clearing. There oh a ladder stood Jules, his form outlined against the evening sky. "Come down," she cried to him, "come down." She knew-that her crooked shoulder must show, but still she waited, whitefaced, big-eyed, sorrowfully, poor. Jules remembered how she, too, had been laughed at, for when her soldier lover died she went on sending to his comrade the packet of shellfish she had sent every year to her man. Foolish, faithful, a simpleton. Then Jules stepped down. '' Come along home,'' cried he roughly, seizing her arm. At the door of her hut, in the fireglow from within, shone a piece of bacon hanging on a bash. '' For the birds,'' cried Marianne, with a half-sob. .Jules nodded; he found that not so simple since he himself never trapped a wild thing, but always scratched the nose of a friendly horse. -He could imitate the bird-calls, too. For, of the two -ways of being Lord" of the Forest, Jules knew one. Then he saw in a flash Henriette's sharp teeth gleaming as-she beat the farm-dog, crying in triumph: "He is afraid**!! me," ''Marianne," cried ,he; ''Marianne, -we two .together " It was but a cry of comradeship, a

cry of the inarticulate of *two sore f olks>. moekerl and derided both. But the wood spoke for them in the swaying of the trees.. She understood, for they were both her children, this poor Jr.le". 'Kiid Marianne. M. P. Willoeks in "News and Leader."