From the back of his half-wild looking, cream and dust coloured Camargue horse, he directs us with gestures and grunts; down from the high-sided farm wagon in which we have just jolted over the fields, and into to single-file along a sparse hedgerow of bramble and bamboo beside a dry stream bed. A harsh cry draws our eyes to a hawk circling quite low overhead; all six of us visitors point and jabber.
“Attention!” Monsieur Linsolàs says, with quiet urgency. “Silence…Ne bouge pas!” (Don’t move or, more accurately, don’t budge). He nods in the direction of the stream bed. On the other side, separated from us by nothing but the flimsiest looking three-stranded barbed wire fence, two gardians (Camargue cowboys) have begun le triage du bétail, the process of separating out the cleverest, liveliest bulls for the course camarguaise –the Provençal bull games -- that take place throughout this region between March and November.
A cowboy devoted to his bulls
This is no game for Monsieur Linsolàs, a manadier, or Camargue rancher. Unlike many other manadiers, he doesn’t plant rice or harvest fruit trees. His ranch, le Manade des Baumelles, not far from the Mediterranean resort and gypsy pilgrimage centre, Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, is completely devoted to raising bulls for the local games. And only bulls with brains and personality have the high earning careers that can pay for a spread like this -- 45 hectares (about 110 acres) of otherwise uncultivated land beside the Petit Rhone.
The taurine traditions of the Camargue and the parts of western Provence closest to it (a rough triangle that takes in St. Rèmy de Provence, Nîmes and Arles) are a world away from the more familiar Spanish bull culture. Even French holiday-makers find the area unique and exotic.
Although the course camarguaise, in its present form, has been played for little more than 100 years, its roots may go back all the way to the early days of the Roman arenas in Nîmes and Arles -- where the games still take place. According to the Féderation Française de la Course Camarguaise, which regulates the game, it originated in a kind of gladiatorial circus, the jeu taurin , which recalled Roman games, pitting all kinds of animals – lions, dogs, bears – against farmhands and bulls. Such a game was recorded 1402, in Arles, in honour of a local nobleman.
The playful bulls of the Camargue
By the end of the 19th century, public criticism against the violence and cruelty of those “entertainments” had put an end to them. At about the same time, local breeders realised that, of all the animals, their small, wily, native bulls -- too independent for work and of limited use for meat – had the perfect temperament for games. The modern game, in which players compete to snatch paper rosettes, bits of string and other tokens (called attributs) from the horns of the bulls ( and through which bulls become high earning celebrities!) was born.Two of Monsieur Linsolàs’ helpers have quietly worked their way into the herd when he joins them. These men are amateurs in the original sense of the word; those who pursue an activity for the love of it. And it is amateurs enjoying the Provençal equivalent of a dude ranch holiday who make it possible for manades like this one to focus so exclusively on the local bull-centred traditions.
The horsemen, on either side of the herd, hold back as Monsieur Linsolàs slowly eases his mount into the midst of the bulls. Most of them edge away but one stands his ground, snorting and stomping to challenge the horse. This is the kind of bull they are after today. The gardians break into a gallop, scattering the other animals and separating the plucky little beast from the rest of the herd. Four are eventually chosen and driven into the field in which we are stand. Now it is six giddy tourists' turn to scatter as we dash for the protection of the high sided wagon.