Périgord - Noir, Blanc, Vert, Pourpre - And Others - Daney Charles

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Résumé :
History recognises only the Périgord confined within the limits of the seneschalsy by the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360. Geology and tourism give another four or five, if not more. The Black, the country of the honey-coloured stone and the lauze, clusters around Sarlat. it pretends to be Périgord tout court. The White, from the valley of the Dronne, was the granary of Périgord. The Green, tracing an arc from Nontron to Hautefort (which likes to think it is Black) remains the land of wood, of rivers and meadows, very near to Limousin. The Purple rules over vineyards from Bergerac to Monbazillac. The Périgueux region reaches out to touch each of the others. There are castes everywhere. Prehistory, which they wanted to confine to the Vézère, is spreading to new, outlying sites. The old forges are in Périgord Vert, but the cannons were cast at Le Bugue in the Noir. The old paper mill at Rouzique is in the Pourpre, but Payzac boasts the mill at Vaux which is in the Vert. Forest is everywhere. It is as unsettling in Hautefaye as it is in Hautefort or in the Double, two domains described by Eugène le Roy - or in the Noir of the rebellions. The Auvézère erodes the rocks into gorges, but the Vézère and the upper Dordogne glide by in the shelter of the overhanging rocks. We can discover in Périgord enough fanciful imagery to nourish all our dreams, to delight every visitor. This farming territory, marked by bitterness and rebellion, has become "a beautiful landscape" since landscape entered into the consciousness of artists and tourists. Chantal Tanet and Tristan Horlé went so far as to speak of inventing paradise. It required an imaginative faculty wherein, of an instant, appear castles, fine cuisine, peasant architecture, prehistory, cliffs, lakes and woods: history and its terroirs. When this imaginative world of Périgord is a part of us, we are never far from a paradise.