Condoms, drunks and the village that was saved by cats

Mauroux (32), Lectoure, Condom, Montréal, Castelnau (32)

There is, in the département of the Gers, a village called Condom. Legend says the black, white and red sign at the entrance disappeared amazingly frequently. Nobody knew why. Condom doesn't mean anything in French, in which the equivalent word is préservatif or indeed, in translation, "English overcoat."

Then someone worked out that there are proportionately more British people in the Gers than anywhere else and that perhaps they were pulling a jolly jape. Out they'd go at night with a set of tools for housebreaking and home would go the sign in the back of someone's car to be displayed as a trophy for the giggling delight of other English-speakers.

Legend says that since then the signs have been unusually securely bolted to their support. Never one to let you down when it comes to research, I had a look. That bit of the story doesn't seem true. We have to assume the first part is, though, the bit about the robberies, because the mayor of the town dependably took things too far and encouraged the opening of a museum celebrating not Condom but condoms. I don't think it's high on the tourist trail, except perhaps among 14-year-olds.

They have a thing about signs in the Gers. Some years ago the same civic mentality that decided what the region needed was a contraceptive museum set to worrying about the number of

drivers who crashed into trees. As in many parts of France, the roads of the Gers are often lined by trees planted at regular intervals, it is said, to protect Napoléon's soldiers as they tramped about the country. You have to be pretty half-cut to drive off a straight road and into one of these trees but nevertheless it happened. The subject came up at a meeting and, breathtakingly, the decision was taken to cut down all the trees. It didn't dawn on anyone that the problem lay with the people who did the crashing and not the trees that were crashed into.

The decision created outrage, of course. These no doubt aren't the trees that were planted in Napoléon's time but they are nevertheless trees and trees are Good Things and they take decades to grow.

The councillors weren't of a mood to back down. A compromise was needed to save civic pride and to save lives. And what was it? It was to put up at the start of each row of trees a sign saying "Trees". The fact that the signs are smaller than the trees and that therefore if you don't see the trees you won't spot the signs doesn't seem to have come into the reckoning. I've no idea if fewer drivers now plunge into the woodwork and, frankly, I don't care much. At least the trees are still there.

Other signs spotted today to while away an exceptionally hilly but otherwise genial day include one boasting that St-Clar is the garlic capital of the Gers. It seems a limited claim but

St-Clar boasts that it's the garlic capital of, er, the local area.

we must all boast what we can, I suppose. St-Clar does it with a garlic museum and, although it's unconnected, a pretty wooden cart of garlic outside the single supermarket. It seemed a jolly paradox of ancient and modern.

There were signs all over the place, too, for villages en fète. It says something of a nation how it does its celebrating. Rio has its Mardi Gras procession. So does New Orleans. The British eat pancakes. There are no parades in France that rival the old French city of New Orleans but there are lots of local events, France being a huge collection of tiny communities. The first village I passed through, St-Créac, was en fète. I don't know what else was

going on but on this Sunday morning someone had decorated the entrance and centre of the village with life-sized dolls. Half the village was in its Sunday best, or "on its 31s" as French puts it without anybody knowing why. It was also walking slowly from the church to the parish hall, a rather more modern place in that it had been built last century and not, say, in the 1300s.

"We've just been to mass and now we're going for apéritifs," said an old chap not entirely comfortable in a suit. In another era he would have been nervously screwing his cap as he awaited instructions from the squire.

"And which will be more enjoyable?" I asked with a hint of mischief.

He gave a slow smile that revealed a row of teeth that had seen life.

"That's between me and the Lord," he said with a wink.

In La Romieu, only a short distance away, it wasn't the Lord but cats that got the lording. The village is full of model cats that look down from window sills, nestle on ledges and peep from unexpected quarters. If you're a culture-lover you go there for the ecclesiastical buildings and their grounds. If, like me, you think erudite is a brand of glue, you look for the cats.

Why?

Well, it goes back to 1335. I know this because the avuncular Parisian who runs the bar didn't so much explain as expound it to me. He said that in 1335 two villagers called Vincent and Mariette married and three years later had a daughter called Angéline. The poor girl grew up an orphan because her father died when one of the trees he was logging fell and crushed him. Her mother died of heartbreak shortly afterwards.

Angéline grew up with neighbours and, missing her parents, devoted her love to cats. She was only four when the area had a disastrous winter. The same thing happened in the two following years, made worse by rain in spring that washed the seeds out of the fields. The village starved and many died.

The church distributed food but there was too little. The villagers set to eating all they could, including the village cats. Angéline was horrified at having her cats gobbled down and so she kept two, a male and a female. Her stepparents collaborated. The villagers felt briefly better after eating the cats but soon realised their mistake. The weather improved and the harvest promised wonders. But the rats multiplied in the absence of cats and for a fourth year the village faced famine as the rodents ate the crops.

The villagers were weak with hunger and despair. Those who could struggled to a meeting to see what to do. Nothing could be done. But then a seven-year-old, as hungry as the others, said she had a confession and perhaps an answer. Yes, she knew she had done wrong but she had kept her cats and her cats had had 20 kittens. If the village would promise not to eat them, perhaps she could release the cats and let them kill the rats.

And that's what happened. The rats died, the harvest prospered and for the second time La Romieu had been saved by its cats. It is still celebrating the event six and a half centuries later. The story is doubtless true. I've never seen it challenged. It goes on to say that over the years Angéline came to look more and more like a cat and that her ears became pointed and her eyes widened. There is a bust that shows her that way. But you don't have to believe everything you're told.

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