DOWN AN OUBLIETTE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXVIII, Issue 262, 13 December 1894, Page 4

DOWN AN OUBLIETTE.

:'- -. '. ' - : — o Rev. S. Baring-Gould, in CasselVs .Family Magazine. ■ One qf the most uncomfortable features of a mediaeval castle in Germany and France is the oubliette, a subterranean dungeon, down which it is said that those were cast whom the feudal seigneur wanted to be rid of speedily. In Germany there were unquestionably such horrible pits wherever there was an Iron Virgin ; " then, when the instrument unclosed, the mangled corpse was allowed to drop into an abyss where it disappeared for ever. Xhat oubliettes were employed in France cannot be doubted, though it is to be hoped their employment was rare. Bernard VIII., Count of Armagnac, cast his cousin, Gerald Ari^agnac, 1403, down one in his his castle of Rochelle, Bigorre, The unhappy man lingered in it from ten to twelve days. Bernard had also taken and imprisoned the two sons of Gerald. He had the younger brought to the same dungeon ; but the horror caused by the sight of the oubliette in which lay his father's corpse, and the fear lest he also should be cast down, produced such a shock on his sjstem that the young man dropped down dead on the spot. Ihe Chateau of Castelnau de Bretenoux lies in the ancient viscounty of Turenne, and is at the junction of the Bave and the Dordogne. It owed feudal homage to Turenne and the due of one egg every year. The castle belongs to several epochs ; the earliest portion is of the twelfth century, and comprises the hall in which Henry 11. of England is said to have assembled the estates of Quercy in 1160, when he came to Guyenne to demani acknowledgment of his rights as the husband of Eleanor, the heiress of Duke William K. The donjon is later — or the thirteenth century — and probably replaces a much earlier tower. It is quadrangular, whereas the more ancient donjon was circular. In the basement of this structure is the prison, a small chamber twelve feet long by ten wide, lighted by a. narrow slit through vyhicb no body could pass. Admission to the prison is through an anteroom, eight feet six inches square, which has no window in it, only a doorway through the wall, which at this point is six feet thick. This anteroom is barrel- vaulted, but only six feet high in the middle ; it is walled and paved with stone. The extremity is filled with what looks like fa well, raised on a step above the floor. There is a low breastwork surrounding a narrow round hole, which is one foot eleven inches in diameter. The vaulted- wll is not wy deep. This sort of horrible well was the barathrum of Roman prisons, often mentioned in the Acts of the Martyrs. In the Acts of the Scilitane Martyrs we read of the Proconsul giving sentence : " Let them be thrown into prison ; let them be put into the lignum till to-morrow." The lignum was the place with wooden stocks round the deep hole which Was the barathrum, and which received all the sewage of the prison. The heat, the stench of the lignum was bad enough. In the Acts of St. Pionius and others of Smyrna we read that the jailers "shut the mup in the inner part of the prison, so that, bereaved of all comfort and light, they were forced to sustain extreme torment from the darkness and stench of the prisun." But tho worsfc of all was the barathrum that opened by a in the floor of the. piisoa eel). Sometimes prisoners were coLfined in it, sometimes they were despatched by being cast headloug iuto it through the opening. Indeed, those prisoners who were executed in prison were finally thrown down into this horrible hole, it was it to puch a pit us this that St JTerreolus of Vienna, in Gaul. waß let down in 304. Stiflad by tho loathsome odours of the place, aching from the wounds ho had received Irom the ecourgoe, he dared not attempt to sit down, or ho would sink into tha foulness j that cams to bis kneee. He determined I to make an attempt at eEcape; he tnccecded iv breaking the shackles off his feet, and lio managed to worm hi 3 way through the outfall into the Ehoae, which he crossed by swimming. He succeeded in reachiug the further bank j but his appearance aroused suspicion, He was arrested, led back to Vienna, and decapitated. Classic authos likewise mention the barathrum. Ihe remains of old castles iv Ifranco and Germany deserve much more careful investigation before we can say that oubliettes were a part of their stock prison, and before we can say to exactly what epoch they belong, where they exist.