Blues, haints and bayous: snippets from the Deep South: Cajun charm

We are in the land of swamps and bayous in Louisiana, and so much of it is so different from Mississippi. Water is everywhere.

The folk are quite unique for one thing. With some unusual ways and customs. Many are Cajun, a term which seems to have evolved as an extraction from the word, Arcadian, that part of eastern Canada, around Nova Scotia, where many Catholic refugees from western France took up land grants, and made themselves a new home. Only to be persecuted, a century later, by the British, then driven out in the Great Expulsion, where, like the Indians further south, they were herded together, but this time put on ships, and removed from Canada’s shores.

Some went back to France. Some went to islands off the east coast. Many came south to Louisiana, bringing their rural farm skills with them. They were offered land grants here, and many established settlements on these, throughout rural Louisiana, working the land, living off it.

We learned much about their ways by spending the day along a bayou at Vermillionville, a Cajun cultural centre in the city of Lafayette. Which is like a folk museum, with authentic installations

Their kitchens would be outdoors as many were back then. Their built rooms were essentially large bedrooms that fit the family. Boys, as they grew older, would ascend the outside stairs at nights and use the garconniere, or attic, as their sleeping space.

The Acadians brought their hunting and trapping skills with them. Traps were built and laid and they caught muskrat and raccoon, and other animals, so efficiently, that inadvertently, they increased the sale of fur coats in New York during the Roaring Twenties. Many of their skins were used as the actual seating for wooden chairs throughout their homes. For these, they often preferred long haired deer or the short haired cow hides. Very comfortable, too.

They learned to utilise the Spanish Moss dripping from every swamp tree, harvesting it extensively, for bedding mattresses, sofas, and, later, in the twentieth century, automobile seats came to be stuffed with it, until synthetics took over. Spanish moss was harvested with a hook, then retted, or soaked, for two to three weeks so that the green-grey soft outer fibre fell away, leaving tough inner black fibres which were dried, and then cured. Great for rope making.

Dried moss was effective, too, as tinder for fire-making. You just needed to strike a bit of flint on steel and develop a knack for directing the spark that resulted.

Mama and her girls would weave cotton picked from their own fields. Their looms were brought into the house, and work in progress, such as quilts, would be hung from nails in the rafters in one of the bedrooms that would be converted into a sewing room for the afternoon.

Young children had the task of ginning the cotton needed the next day. Before bedtime, they had to fill their shoes with the cotton seeds to show their work was done. Slightly older children would card that cotton, and Mama would train even older girls how to turn it into thread. Making a ball of thread took some five hours. So, these children all stayed very busy. Just to make Papa a shirt a girl would need six balls of cotton, and, from start to finish, one shirt could take nearly a year to finish. Girls were responsible, too, for creating their own trousseau from spun cotton, so each girl would spend much of the first thirteen years of her life filling her treasure chest, or glory box, with sheets, linen towels, bridal gown and nightdresses.

Baths for the family, typically, would happen once a year. In the spring. Often before a spring wedding. Papa would haul in the bath, fill it with hot water, take the first bath, Mama second then the children down from the eldest to the youngest followed.

At fourteen, a girl would be married, establishing her own routines. This, after Papa had painted a white painted strip around the bousillage chimney, signifying to all eligible bachelors in passing, that in this house there was a marriageable-age daughter who might be amenable to a proposal. A complete white chimney meant that there were no girls of marriageable age remaining.

If there was good news in the family to celebrate Mama would hand a brightly coloured quilt on the deck. Settlers further down the bayou would see this, and someone would call in to find out what was going on. A dark coloured quilt meant bad news.

And, for their times of play, the Cajuns have their music. We were lucky enough to be able to sit in on a long jam session at the folk museum, and just loved it. Our Cajun band was an ensemble of accordion, guitars, and fiddles with many home-made instruments utilised throughout a jam session.

The accordion seems to set the beat — a beat which encourages uninhibited foot-stomping on wooden floors, almost half notes. So, it is very catchy and upbeat, but as well, many of their older songs have lyrics still in the French, oft’times marked by a high and somewhat mournful chorus. Mindful of their sad times, too. Our Cajun band members were keen that their music continue to evolve and be heard, and not lost.

We were completely charmed.