Saint Barbara to the Rescue

Two young 'pompiers' came by the house a couple of days ago with their calendar for 2009. They do this every year, at about this time which is another reminder that winter is setting-in.

The Sapeurs-pompiers is France's fire and rescue service and is largely voluntary for the smaller communes. It is expected that we give a donation for the calendar. We always oblige - you never know when you might need their services and besides, next year is our local brigade's 150th anniversary.  The busy, six-page glossy calendar is full of dramatic scenes

of their derring-do over the past year as well as some homely, family touches such as a large photograph of 'Le petit Luca et son papa, le sergent Jérôme Courcelaud'.

The first page of the calendar is entirely taken with 'mugshots' of the whole brigade; one Chief, 14 other officers down to the rank of 'caporal' and 11 more 'sapeurs, 1st classe'. Out of these 26, four are women. On the last page we are treated to photographs of five more under the title "La section Jeunes Sapeurs-Pompiers" in their uniforms - sort of apprentices or 'cadets', aged form 11 to 16 years. Four out of the five are young women. All this for a town of 3,000 inhabitants. A bit like the scouts, but with some serious hardware to play with. Wikepedia has a description of these cadets and their duties here in English.

A small 'flyer' accompanied the calendar inviting us as residents, to a free knees-up ('Grand Bal Gratuit'. It does sound better in French), in January in the sports hall. The occasion is an address on behalf of the patron saint of pompiers, Sainte Barbe, to be followed by general jollity with dancing - all organised by 'Fred et Lulu'.  Sounds intriguing.

Sainte Barbe  - Saint Barbara was an interesting, albeit shadowy saint in the catholic world. Originally she was prayed-to to protect one from lightning strikes.

Really? Is it worth it, I ask myself. Then again, we get some pretty awesome thunderstorms in these parts at times.

 Anyway, the way she came to be associated with lightning was through a typically tortuous set of circumstances. Her father didn't like the way she was always eyeing the boys so he locked her up in a tower. Having little else to do while she was in there, she somehow learned about christianity and converted to it. From what, I don't know (flirting?). This made her father even madder so he had her tortured.  She held-out against that, so he beheaded her (himself!). It seems that fathers were pretty strict in those days. It makes me feel that I got off lightly when I was smacked - hard, mind you, on the bum by my dad when I wouldn't stop asking for an ice-cream which he was not inclined to buy for me at the time. Ages ago, of course, but luckily not back in Bab's time.

I digress. As soon as Barbara's father had carried out the rather harsh punishment, he was struck by lightning and died. Served him right, you might say. Not for him our modern remedy of a spot of family counselling with a holiday at the seaside for all the family, just to help rekindle those happy earlier days.

After the unfortunate result of this mediaeval family spat, Sainte Barbe then acquired even more admirers and is now the patron saint of lightning-avoiders, architects, geologists, miners, gunners, metallurgists(!) and so on. Anything vaguely related to fire. Which finally brings us to the pompiers - she is well and truly, their guardian angel.

With a list like that, I suppose you could say that it goes some way towards compensating her for a rather heavy-handed bit of scolding from her dad.

Mapmaker