ALSACE-LORRAINE

By George Wharton Edwards

 “Section 3”

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Ferrette, a Toy Village

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The charming little village of Ferrette is reached from Altkirch by a toy train of two or three miniature cars drawn by an absurd squatty engine, all gaily picked out in red and green paint. In German it is spelled Pfirt, and pronounced as comically by the quaintly garbed, red faced, and shy conductor, who obligingly gave me a card emblazoned with the name of the inn, the “Stadt New York,” which he recommended with an emphatic nod of his close cropped head.

 Pfirt or Ferrette is a typical village of the Sundgau region, so renowned for its picturesqueness and its pottery. The toy train puffed its way along the route in so leisurely a manner that one had ample opportunity to see in detail the rich rolling country and mark its great difference to the landscape of higher Alsace.

 The large and open valley, with its prairie spaces, presents a great contrast to the Valleys of the Vosges, whose slopes are so masked by heavy dark forests. Here the villages are more isolated—farther apart, and the châlets remind one of those in Switzerland. Proceeding so slowly towards the foothills, the slow little train covers the fifteen miles to Pfirt or Ferrette all too soon.

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A sort of outskirt to the village, consisting of a few châlets, first appears, called by the inhabitants (so explains the conductor) the “faubourg.” Here is a heavy mass of trees, in which are vast flocks of rooks. The village itself is hidden from view, but one can see above, on a steep wooded cliff, the ruin of an ancient château—the castle of Pfirt, formerly the seat and stronghold of the Counts of Pfirt, who in olden days dominated the whole Jura mountains. Nothing could be more enchanting than the view of this old ruin on the summit of the embowered cliff, shining in the golden glow of an August evening.

Ferrette proved to be a worthy setting for the old castle, and though it had few more than five hundred inhabitants, all told, they all seemed to have congregated in the small, clean square that evening. The reason for the gathering proved to be the arrival of a moving picture show, then a great novelty, and men were busily erecting a large tent in the open space. Here was a charming old church, erected upon a quaint, grassy walled and buttressed eminence approached by a flight of stone steps which wound delightfully about the old mossy walls of steep roofed and galleried houses. The church had a tower surmounted by a singular sort of pent roof, for all the world like unto the cocked hat worn by the old Sergeant de Ville, who was then on guard, superintending the erection of the moving picture tent, with a

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dubious and watchful eye upon the boys who excitedly studied the operation.

This sort of church roof is remarkable in this region of bulbous and pyramidal belfries, and reminds one of those commonly seen in Normandy. The village Street of Ferrette, delightfully named the “Boulevarde,” is along the terrace, which overlooks the valley and the quaint pent roofs of the old houses descending the hillside in steps. A polite villager took pains to point out to us the Hotel de Ville, which he gravely informed us was “of the fifteenth-sixteenth century, but somewhat modern likewise, because it was newly furnished this very year!” He pointed out the roadway at one side by which we could mount to the château above the village, and volunteered the information that we would first pass through the seignorial donjon of the Counts of Ferrette; that Louis XIV in 1659 gave the Seigneurié to Mazarin, whose landmarks, bearing the arms of the Cardinal, are still to be found in the neighboring forests. After Mazarin, he said, the Valentinois inherited the domain, then the Grimaldis, and that at present the Prince of Monaco enjoys, among other titles, that of a Count of Ferrette. Later we discovered that this erudite villager was none other than Monsieur the Mayor himself. From the terrace of the château the view of the country round about forms one of the most unique and moving spectacles in all Alsace. The gap of the Rhine valley

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between the Vosges and the Black Forest lay bathed in tender, lambent, misty light, and nearer were the golden green undulating fields of the Alsatian Jura. The whole region is peopled and filled with knights and warriors, their deeds of prowess and valor; their loves and their ladies, as well as tales of giants and dwarfs, and dragons ferocious.

Monsieur the Mayor, we afterward discovered, enjoyed a local reputation as historian of the region of the Sundgau, and although a German official appointed by Berlin, was secretly a pronounced and loyal Alsatian in feeling. To him I owe a great many of the facts and details set down in this random description of both Ferrette and Altkirch. ¹

In his quaint home he had a most unique collection of china and ancient carved furniture, in which he took an almost childish delight, and this was not the least of his attractions. He was really a mine of information concerning the country and the people. Telling the story of Altkirch in floriated language, for which he showed great fondness, he said that the name of this most picturesque town clinging to the slope of the sun-bathed hill on the Swiss frontier came from the old church erected in the year 1050 by Hugues the Venerable Abbé of Cluny, after a visit which he paid to Louis the Count of Montbeliard,

¹This kindly gentleman died the year following my visit to Ferrette. (Author.)

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and his Lady Sophie de Bar, the ancestors of the Counts of Ferrette, who so long dominated upper Alsace.

It seems that the good Abbé, ever a man of moods, as well as extreme holiness, desired one day to have his dinner served to him out of doors beneath the great trees, but soon it came on to rain, seeing which the Abbé got down upon his knees before the statue of the Saint and prayed him loudly and eloquently for fair weather and bright sunlight, “when behold: The sun shone forth, the clouds vanished, and all nature smiled!”

The son of Louis Thierry sojourning here between Ferrette and Altkirch was miraculously cured of “a grave malady,” and in gratitude he erected a monastery in the neighborhood, and later, the Grand Abbey of Cluny, which was dedicated to Saint Christopher under the name of Saint Moraud, in remembrance of a most holy man who came here during the twelfth century and preached the Holy Gospel to the inhabitants of the Sundgau, who even to the present day venerate him as patron Saint.

The remains of the great Abbey on the hillside are now used as a “hospice,” sheltering a few quaintly clad monks, who till the well-kept gardens and care for the walled orchard in the intervals of prayer.

[End of Section 3]

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