Piegut en Felibree

Whilst market day on a Wednesday has Piegut bursting at the seams because of the popularity of its extensive market, for the rest of the week it is a fairly sleepy little town. However, during our first weeks here it seemed that they were taking the preparations for the annual fete very seriously indeed.

It didn’t matter which way we came into town there would be different roads closed off as temporary scaffolding and cherry picker platforms enabled the local population to decorate their street from pavement to roof line. This was not just a bit of patriotic bunting either but thousands upon thousands of artificial flowers in every colour imaginable.

It seemed to be an incredible amount of effort for an annual town fete but further investigation proved that this was rather more than that and made us realise how lucky we were.

It seems that this was going to be the Felibree, a major festival celebrating Perigordian culture that takes place in a different town of the region every year. By wonderful chance for us, this year was the turn of Piegut; the last time they had hosted it was over 50 years ago!

The local villages are all involved and each one is allocated a part of the town for which it has to prepare and put up the decorations. The common theme to all the decorations is the artificial flower but it can be used in myriad different ways. Every single flower is handmade and, because of the vast numbers required, people from the local communities start work creating them six months in advance. Each street has a different colour theme reflecting the different villages and the flowers appear strung from building to building, cascading down the walls and clustered together to create different images.

The Felibree celebrations last over three days with music, dancing and feasting. We decided to go along on the final day to witness the advertised parade through the town. We planned to park just on the edge of town and wander in to see a parade made up of about half a dozen tractors pulling decorated floats with jolly people on board waving to the crowd. How wrong we were!

For a start we were not allowed any nearer than about a kilometer away where we were directed to park a field and set off on foot. The entrance to the town had been transformed into a medieval gateway with towers either side – decorated of course with artificial flowers. The town itself was full of people dressed in traditional Perigordian costume, some demonstrating ancient crafts, others dancing to music made by musical instruments not used this side of the 15^th Century. Food (as ever) was in plentiful supply with a particular highlight being a large group of people cooking up strange looking meat in vast cauldrons set over open fires which was then mixed with other exotic ingredients and turned into a foul smelling, but surprisingly tasty, black sausage.

I have to confess that although I tasted said sausage, lunch for me was an enormous duck burger – there’s something new for McDonalds to put on the menu!

The parade itself involved not a single tractor or trailer – instead it seemed that all those dressed in costume paraded through town, each group behind a banner representing their local commune, dancing and singing to the wonderful strains of the traditional folk music. It took nearly an hour for them all to pass where we stood and then culminated in……….well in a rather disappointing finale which involved endless speeches by rotund local dignitaries weighed down with their chains of office, each apparently trying to out do the other with their public speaking prowess.

We headed back to the car loaded with wine and tasty treats purchased from the stallholders and having enjoyed a fabulous day out. We were struck by how hard the people of this region work at preserving and celebrating their local customs and traditions, without the sense of embarrassment we have in the UK when we see Morris Dancers, but with a real sense of pride and pleasure.