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Updated: May 22, 2025
There were certain boundaries imaginary lines on the nave and in the isles which they might not pass. In one or two of the more tolerant of the Pyrenean villages, the blessed bread was offered to the Cagots, the priest standing on one side of the boundary, and giving the pieces of bread on a long wooden fork to each person successively.
I ought to say, however, that Borrow was at that time my hero. From my childhood I had taken the deepest interest in proscribed races such as the Cagots, but especially in the persecuted children of Roma. I had read accounts of whole families being executed in past times for no other crime than that of their being born gipsies, and tears, childish and yet bitter, had I shed over their woes.
Cagots are an outcast race or clan of dwarfs in the region of the Pyrenees, and formerly in Brittany, whose existence has been a scientific problem since the sixteenth century, at which period they were known as Cagots, Gahets, Gafets, Agotacs, in France; Agotes or Gafos, in Spain; and Cacous, in Lower Brittany.
Then the workmen laid down their tools, and rushed off from their labour to play mad pranks up and down the country. Perpetual motion was required to alleviate the agony of fury that seized upon the Cagots at such times.
The Pope issued a bull on the thirteenth of May, fifteen hundred and fifteen ordering them to be well-treated and to be admitted to the same privileges as other men. He charged Don Juan de Santa Maria of Pampeluna to see to the execution of this bull. But Don Juan was slow to help, and the poor Spanish Cagots grew impatient, and resolved to try the secular power.
I may here mention, as a fact accidentally made known to myself, and apparently not known to Southey, that the Cagots, under a name very slightly altered, are found in France also, as well as Spain, and in provinces of France that have no connection at all with Spain. "Strulbrugs."
He was expected to shrink away from any passer-by, for fear that their clothes should touch each other; or else to stand still in some corner or by-place. If the Cagots were thirsty during the days which they passed in those towns where their presence was barely suffered, they had no means of quenching their thirst, for they were forbidden to enter into the little cabarets or taverns.
M. Emile Souvestre records proofs of the hatred borne to them in Brittany so recently as in eighteen hundred and thirty-five. Just lately a baker at Hennebon, having married a girl of Cagot descent, lost all his custom. The godfather and godmother of a Cagot child became Cagots themselves by the Breton laws, unless, indeed, the poor little baby died before attaining a certain number of days.
They are, indeed, like the Cagots of France; and as little is known of the cause which reduced their ancestors to their present degraded state as in the instance of the last-named race. One thing alone could, and assuredly would, restore them to communion with their fellow-creatures, and that is the introduction of pure Christianity among them and the population at large.
The great French revolution brought some good out of its fermentation of the people: the more intelligent among them tried to overcome the prejudice against the Cagots. In seventeen hundred and eighteen, there was a famous cause tried at Biarritz relating to Cagot rights and privileges.
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