"ElizabethGaskell-AnAccursedRace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gaskell Elizabeth C)

houses for fear of coming in contact with the accursed race.

In the Pays Basque, the prejudices--and for some time the laws--ran
stronger against them than any which I have hitherto mentioned. The
Basque Cagot was not allowed to possess sheep. He might keep a pig
for provision, but his pig had no right of pasturage. He might cut
and carry grass for the ass, which was the only other animal he was
permitted to own; and this ass was permitted, because its existence
was rather an advantage to the oppressor, who constantly availed
himself of the Cagot's mechanical skill, and was glad to have him and
his tools easily conveyed from one place to another.

The race was repulsed by the State. Under the small local
governments they could hold no post whatsoever. And they were barely
tolerated by the Church, although they were good Catholics, and
zealous frequenters of the mass. They might only enter the churches
by a small door set apart for them, through which no one of the pure
race ever passed. This door was low, so as to compel them to make an
obeisance. It was occasionally surrounded by sculpture, which
invariably represented an oak-branch with a dove above it. When they
were once in, they might not go to the holy water used by others.
They had a benitier of their own; nor were they allowed to share in
the consecrated bread when that was handed round to the believers of
the pure race. The Cagots stood afar off, near the door. 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.

When the Cagot died, he was interred apart, in a plot burying-ground
on the north side of the cemetery. Under such laws and prescriptions
as I have described, it is no wonder that he was generally too poor
to have much property for his children to inherit; but certain
descriptions of it were forfeited to the commune. The only
possession which all who were not of his own race refused to touch,
was his furniture. That was tainted, infectious, unclean--fit for
none but Cagots.

When such were, for at least three centuries, the prevalent usages
and opinions with regard to this oppressed race, it is not surprising
that we read of occasional outbursts of ferocious violence on their
part. In the Basses-Pyrenees, for instance it is only about a
hundred years since, that the Cagots of Rehouilhes rose up against
the inhabitants of the neighbouring town of Lourdes, and got the
better of them, by their magical powers as it is said. The people of
Lourdes were conquered and slain, and their ghastly, bloody heads
served the triumphant Cagots for balls to play at ninepins with! The
local parliaments had begun, by this time, to perceive how oppressive
was the ban of public opinion under which the Cagots lay, and were