Camargue, Land of tradition
Daughter of the Rhone and the Mediterranean, the Camargue forms a magical triangle of hell,
Between the two branches of the river, where the sky celebrates its wedding day with the sea,
Its immense marshy plains are the refuge of the black bull and the white horse,
Some of them raise their horns in a lyre, others in the sheaves of foaming gallop.
In these aquatic plots, is seen daily an equipped between sky and sea by the guardians,
These men, enamored with liberty, sometimes rebellious, sometimes frondeurs, watched over their flocks,
Their "fe di biou", the passion of the bull, makes them proudly ride their "white horsehair"
Equipped with the "ferri", trident and "sedem", lasso in horsehair, during the "abrivados".
These flat expanses cracked by the drought and bleached by salt form the "sansouire"
Where salad and salicornes with changing colors each season offer the cover in delirium,
In avocets, nicknamed "beak of alena", with the curved beak excavating the mud of the salt marshes,
To the plover, a small wader called "couriole", a kind of little mechanical toy on wheels, funny.
This delta, pierced with ponds and lagoons communicating with the sea by its "grauses"
Serves as an aviary for large waders where the pink flamingo lives in a colony at rest,
Sometimes like a fireworks of petals of roses, a squadron springs towards the clouds,
Then landed, advancing with a steady step, head under water, in search of small molluscs welcome.
Jucked on their flat-bottomed boat propelled by a long rod,
Fishermen and sagniers roam the lakes of the "roubines", some depositing their long nets,
"Trabaques" to the three pockets separated by a narrowing of bottlenecks,
The others slipped into the reed-beds, collecting the sage for the roofs of the penny shacks.
In this country where people of land and seamen are united by the heart,
La Croix de Camargue symbolically associates the guardians and fishermen,
While Sarah, venerated by the Gypsies for her black hair and her tanned skin,
Leave in procession to Saintes Marie, every 24th May, close to Marie Jacobé and Marie Salomé.
L’ARIÉ….JOIE