For this blog entry it is interesting to note that in both titles of the paintings the  word  ‘Chasteau’ is used rather than the modern ‘Château’; with its circumflex accent above the letter ’a’.

The historical reasons for this are of interest:

During the 16^th and 17^th Centuries French speakers started to drop the ‘s’ in chasteau (although it still exists in the English ‘castle’, the Spanish ‘castillo’ and the Italian ‘castello’). When the spoken word was written down writers adopted the circumflex above the ‘a’ to show they knew an ‘s’ used to be there. As well as indicating the loss of an ‘s’ in ‘Château’ the circumflex is used in the same way in other words where oral contraction had taken place.

When Old French was introduced in England by the concurring Normans in the 11^th Century the word used for ‘hospital was ‘hospital’ and the word for ‘forest’ was ‘forest’ and so it remains today. But, later, back in France, the French, in their everyday speech, started contracting certain words that contained the letter ‘s’ and eventually dropped the ‘s’ altogether. Thus, in France ‘hospital’ became ‘hopital’, ‘forest’ became ‘foret’ and ‘host’ became ‘hote’…. For a while the written form of these words continued with the old spelling. Eventually the writers had to get ‘up to date’ and acknowledge the general oral trend of dropping the ‘s’. Writers, i.e. monks, decided to still indicate the original presence of these lost letters and put a circumflex over the preceding vowel to indicate that there had previously been an ‘s’ (or other letter) present. So, in France the word hospital became hôpital, forest became forêt, host became hôte, coast became côte, fenester (a church window) became fenêtre (window), paste became pâte or pâté, beast became bête, feast became fête, master became maître, hostel became hotel, isle became île, vestments (clothes) became vêtements, etc. The French word dîner, to dine, comes from the Latin disjejunare, meaning to ‘discontinue the fast’, so here the circumflex represents a whole lot more is missing than just a single ‘s’!

Sometimes a letter other than ‘s’ was dropped in spoken French, and later replaced in written form by a circumflex including: aage (age) became âge, meur (wall) became mûr, seur (sure) became sûr.

Just to throw a spanner in the works the disappeared letter often reappears in derivative words, like adjectives, that have come from the root word. For example, the French have hôpital, but the adjective is hospitalier, vêtement, (clothes) but vestimentaire is used, forêt, but forestier (woodman) and chemin forestier is a forest path.

Another use is in verbs ending in aître like and oître, e.g. disparaître – to disappear and apparaître – to appear.

The circumflex was officially introduced in the 1740 edition of the dictionary of the Académie Française and is actually a combination of the grave and the acute accents.

I was talking with my friend, Colin Dyson, as I was writing this blog entry. He made the observation, “Oh, so a circumflex’s like an apostrophe then.”  If I’d used this definition I have a feeling this blog would have been a lot shorter!
P.S: If you ever want to type a letter with a circumflex when you in Word or other Microsoft programs, then you can do so by: 1. Holding down the keys: CTL, SHIFT and the key with the ^ symbol (usually the number 6 on English keyboards). 2. Releasing all the three keys and pressing either an a, e, i, o, u… or an A, E, I, O, U. and â, ê, î, ô, û or Â, Ê, Î, Ô, Û should appear.

And so, finally, to the old images of Clermont Château  http://gallica.bnf.fr/

Now, just as I was writing the above, I remembered my recent post, Further early C20th images of women of the Touraine with its portrayal of a young, local Touraine woman in traditional bonnet. This picture I’d identified as being “by B. McManus(?)”.

Now a little research on t’interweb produced the following information:

Enjoy her work below and you can find other examples of her artistry on one of my previous blogs.

• For students: a learning tool to increase comprehension and retention
• For teachers: a ready-made teaching tool to add visual impact in the classroom
• For history buffs: new technology to add new perspectives

It certainly is useful as an introduction to the development of European and Middle Eastern states, USA, colonialism, de-colonialism and for an understanding of current inter-state tensions across the world.

My personal favorite is:Europe at the time of the Congress of Vienna 1815 – 1848. This Congress saw the four great victors after the defeat of Napoleon and the international ideals of the French Revolution (Austria, France, Russia and the UK) redrawing the map of Europe. Enjoy your explorations!

Source http://gallica.bnf.fr/

Do right-click on any image to enlarge.

It is postmarked 1908 but, if you look closely you will see a sign for 1906 just above their heads. I wonder what the rural occasion was? For a previous blog of women’s costume in the Touraine click here.

I have no idea if the blazing planks represent comets or meteors ~ but certainly the warring armies in the heavens have got to indicate that there was either a lot of noise associated with the incident or, perhaps, that the gods had fallen out.

I’ve asked my Touraine-based astronomer friend Colin Dyson, but he’s no idea. So, do you have any suggestions? If so, do share.

Représentation d'un phénomène épouvantable que l'on a vu en Touraine du 5 au 15 août 1670

It is signed on the front by H Simon who sends his greetings to Mary (presumably L.E. Lefevre’s wife). The card is franked “Indre et Loire” but the postage of 5 cents does not seem to tie in with the handwritten date on the front of the card of 12th November 1906 ~ I would have thought that it would have been more expensive to send such a card abroad. On the reverse of the card the sender has crossed out the words “Carte Postal” and handwritten the word “Imprimé” (Print). This was because it was cheaper to send a Postcard if it was an ‘advertising card’ rather than one used for ‘correspondence’. It is for this reason, I presume, that the sender wrote his messages to his friends on the front of the card. Even so, from the research I have done I would have expected the cost to have been higher. Be that as it may, the post certainly got through!