the essential
They are from Gers and have taken up their pens to tell us about the department, its stories, its legends and even its “bad plants” which are nevertheless so precious. Here is our selection of works released during 2024.
“In Praise of the Undisciplined” by Alain Canet and Florence Gendre
Chard amaranth, basket willow, floating jussie, hedge clematis, lamb’s-quarters… These pretty names evoke “unloved”. “Spontaneous plants” which thrive in wastelands and gardens abandoned to anarchy, on vacant lots and in ditches, or even on sidewalks.
DDM – CC
Sometimes pungent or smelly, these plants with a bad reputation are nevertheless precious and full of lessons. In a magnificent 143-page work published by Terran, Gersois Alain Canet, former director d’Arbre & Paysage 32, tells us about them, along with the illustrator Florence Gendre.
For pset out to discover themgo to your bookseller (notably available at Page à Page and at Petits Papiers in Auch) or on the website ofs Terran editions (price: €29.50).
“Regards on Gers Gascony” by Robert Sourp
Born in the neighboring Hautes-Pyrénées, Robert Sourp lived in Auch most of his life. A professor of history and geography for future teachers, the theme of landscape has been a central axis of his thinking and his work as a lecturer.
A lover of Gers Gascony, he is interested, over 295 richly illustrated pages, in “the image constructed in this department and in the current era”. The reader is invited to delve into the past but the author also deciphers the new attractiveness of a rural territory which attracts inhabitants of Northern Europe (English, Dutch, Germans, etc.) as well as neo-rural and city dwellers in outskirts of large cities.
Poets, historians and painters are invited on a journey through the centuries to sketch the contours of a Gascony that is both immutable and constantly reinvented.
Available on the Editions Cairn website, the book is also on sale in around ten bookstores and tourist offices in the Gers (price: €20).
“The tomb of the chief of Pauilhac, an archaeological mystification?” by Alain Beyneix
Crowned with Pierre-Dumont Prize 2024, cThis captivating book presents itself as a quasi-police investigation around the discovery ofa falls in the middle of the 19th century.
DDM archives – Ysabel
It all began in 1865, in Pauilhac in Lomagnewhen diggers working on the Auch-Agen railway line uncovered long flint blades, two large polished axes made of green stone, two pig or wild boar tusks, as well as a plaque and sept gold beads. The workers claim to have found these objects two meters deep, with bones.
Alain Beyneix takes up the chronology of events, exhuming previously unpublished archival documents and unraveling the actions of the successive actors in this affair. Car tAll the clues converge towards the hypothesis of a mystification, the constitution of a fantasized funerary panoply…
Online sale on the Editions Jérôme Millon website, 144 Pages (price: €18).
“Beliefs, legends and mythical beings in Gers Gascony and surrounding areas” of Rose-Marie Caprice-Richard
After research among the population and through ancient literature, the author wanted to take stock of Gascon beliefs and develop a mythology. She addresses both healing sources, as well as facts of witchcraft, belief in fairies.
The book is illustrated with old but also more recent photos of the places, the author’s own drawings, representing these mythical beings who still haunted Gascon minds not so long ago: “CI love Cruso”, “Hadettos”, “Pousoueros”…
Of the witnesses tell Thus how parents, still in the years 60obtained the obedience of their children with the first mentioned, “Camo Cruso”, being who devoured children and flocks of poultry who ventured too far or after dark…
Available online and in Gers bookstores (price: €16).
“The man in the street Jules Seillan”, by Pierre Seillan
LConsultation of the family archives allowed Pierre Seillan to retrace a golden age for Mirande, the 19th century, through the life of a man: Jules Seillan, one of his ancestors.
DDM – Armelle Clabaux
Born in 1824, Jules Seillan worked as a lawyer. Cwas also a founding member of the Société d’Agriculture de France and he was reknown for his topography of the Gers vineyards published in 1859. Through this notable career, who was also mayor of Mirande and general councilor of the district, we discovers the functioning of the administration of the Second Empire.
The author returnsur the evolution of agriculture, the growth of markets and fairs, the development of town planning in a city which increased from 1,500 to 4,000 inhabitants in less than a century.
The work (144 pages) is notably available in bookstores in Auch (Page à page) and Mirande (price: €18).
