Ecards from The Daily

Cypriera

Prairie Bosse

Prairie des Femmes and other Locales

Via Mike Leblanc: 

10.0 Adjacent Angles, Prairies and Points

There is yet other places, known as Prairie Laurent, Prairie des Femme, and Point Clair. Each has its distinctive character based on the stories upon which its sense of place was created.

10.1 Prairie Laurant

Prairie Laurant is also known as Prairie des Mulates, that is literally, Prairie of Mulattoes. Mulatto is in French, is called a mulâtre for men and mulâtresse for women.[1] Perhaps one of the most well known residents of La Prairie Basse is Clifton Chenier, and his brother, Cleveland, both proud black men, who are among the founders of Zydeco music. Reflecting their racial heterogeneity, their music is a hybridization of Blues, Jazz, Cajun, Country and Western, and Rhythm and Blues, played with an accordion, that quintessential French instrument, and a washboard, a folk instrument used to create African rhythms.

10.2 Prairie des Femmes

To south of Prairie Laurent, a place is still called La Prairie des Femmes (or literally Prairie of Women). If you ask an inhabitant of that place (who are mostly Cajuns) what is the origin of that place name, you will be told that all of the men were killed while on a hunting expedition in time long forgotten or during a war, particularly World War I or World War II. However, the earliest maps of the area created by Spanish indicate that the place was called the same name so the meaning has been placed mouth to ear for some 300 years, its true meaning lost to the ghosts of another time.

To the east of La Prairie des Femmes is a place called Pointe Claire, a pasture used in the spring to herd cattle upon the grasslands. As late as the 1960’s, the cattle were driven by horseback from land laid fallow in the winter months to these nearby pastures for their spring grass. These lands were first discovered by that early band of Africans who hunted deer to extinction and were later to inter-marry with Acadians who herded cattle upon those lands.

10.3 McVeigh Plantation

To the south of La Prairie Basse lies the McVeigh plantation, a place of level lands upon a prairie cleared of its high grass and where slavery was practiced in the 19th Century and later where share cropping also enslaved Afro-American, Creoles and Cajuns in a labor system meant to drive their laborers and their families into penury and serfdom meant to tie them to land as well as to enrich their land owners. Today, McVeigh Road runs down the middle of this plantation and is bordered on both sides by cane fields.

McVeigh Road comes to an end at its intersection with Louisiana Highway 31, which parallels Bayou Teche. Alongside of highway is a narrow strip of land upon, which was too narrow to farm and which was the location of the sharecropper shacks used in the early 20th Century. While the descendants of Ton Ton were free persons of color and devote Catholics, the descendants of the slaves working on the McVeigh plantation were lively Protestants, practicing within the Baptist Convention.

Information via  Mike Leblanc

Prince est Mort

 

Le meme jour que Prince est mort, la grosse maison blanche, plus grande maison dedans la territoire a commencée a bruler et a continue a bruler pour tout la nuit. La maison avait pris deux ans pour bâtir autour de 1937-38. Coincedence? Je crois pas. Mais toujours bien.

A Blue Journal 2007

Malheureuse Style Board

Prairie Femme in Country Roads Magazine

https://countryroadsmagazine.com/art-and-culture/people-places/prairie-des-femmes-louisiana-french-culture 

Photos by Paul Kieu

Ô Malheureuse on Amazon

Click the image to order O Malheureuse

https://www.amazon.com/Malheureuse-French-Writings-Louisiana-Women/dp/1946160547/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Malheureuse&qid=1587667123&sr=8-1

Prairie Aux Femmes

PDF Mardi Gras Map

La Prairie des Femmes style board 2019

Chaudron Fairy

Jeanne d’Arc et les Azaleas

When I found wild violets on the brown banks of the Bayou Bourbeux

Heart Nettles

New Orleans Magazine

 “Prairie des Femmes” is another space that is both real and virtual, where a new generation of Franco-Louisianians is developing an authentic voice. Its creator, Ashlee Michot, recently launched a project, “Ô Malheureuse,” where she threw out a sort of message in a bottle, calling on Louisiana women to submit texts in prose or poetry. The extraordinary response has revealed amazing creative voices. New Orleans Magazine 2019

La prairie des femmes journal page

Nintendo à Vendre

New Year

Oh Malheureuse Interview

Click here to listen to an interview about Oh Malheureuse

Qui court les affaires? Les femmes.

The gang's all here.

La Marianne Shrine

O Malheureuse Lady of Shalott

Oh Malheureuse!

O Malheureuse

'Garde Malheureuse!

Opelousas Road

Evangeline Parish Moonrise, Ashlee Michot 2015

Opelousas Road

Qui a pendu les cornes de la lune 
Sur l'Opelousas Road? 
J'suis parti ‘oir un cœur si noir et 
Bleu comme l'indigo 
Quand la demie lune sourit 
C'est dessus la terre de Tate Cove 
Et j'suis parti 'oir un un cœur si noir 

Comme le chemin àyou j'rode

We drive that parish highway 
After we've had a few 
And if you can see clearly 
The caution light will wink at you 
J'rentre dans ma paroisse 
Là-bas la lune me semble si proche 
Quand la Plaisance est à ma doigt 

C'est la Prairie Ronde qu'est à ma gauche 

Who hung the horns of the moon
On the Opelousas Road?
J'suis parti ‘oir 

Les yeuxs si noirs

Gros comme des socos

La lune est bien trop croche  

Je passe le chemin de Zydeco

Et j'suis parti 'oir et 

 -guette vos guard 

La Toussaint Cane Fires

Ethel Mae Bourque

 
 photo by K. Cornell

Song for my Papa 
(La Vie d'une Pauvre Malheureuse)


 


Equand moi j'été énée longtemps passé 
Oh when I was born, a long time ago
Avec des grands cheveux noirs  
with long black hair
Des yeux marrons comme des socos 
eyes brown as muscadines
Equand moi j'été énée, longtemps passé 
Oh when I was born, a long time ago
Moi j'étais la chère jolie 'tite fille à mon papa. 
Me, I was my Daddy's girl.
Pas du tout ce lui il avait besoin 
I wasn't at all what he needed
Mon cher Papa c'était un pauvre recoltier 
My dear father was a poor farmer
Et si mon papa a desiré ein ti garcon  
But if he wanted a little boy
Moi j'ai sûr jamais attendu cela monté 
I sure never heard him show it
Moi et mon papa et mon cher 'ti frère Jess 
Me and my Daddy and my dear little brother Jess
On a fait la chasse et on l'a pêché  
We hunted and we fished 
On a piagé au long du Bayou Vermilion   
we trapped along the Vermilion Bayou 
Pour faire une vie, la vie des pauvres malhereux 
to make a life, the life of poor unhappy people
Moi j'suis plus mon Papa au long du Bayou Vermilion  
Me, I don't follow my Daddy along the Bayou Vermilion anymore
Je suis mon vieux chien Speck 
I follow my old dog Speck
On traverse des cherokees  
We cross the cherokees/wild throny rose patch
On traverse des éronces  
We cross the briars/blackberry bushes
Et on traverse des marais 
and we cross the marshs
Pour faire une vie  
To make a life
La vie d'une pauvre malheureuse. 
The life of a poor miserable woman



Ethel Mae Bourque (1933-2011) was the daughter of Sidney Bourque. 

La Malheureuse Vie d'une Femme Ordinaire