Once upon a time there was a king who ruled supreme over France, and was known as the Sun King. Louis XIV was a powerful and prideful man, infamous for draining the kingdom’s coffers with his sumptuous parties and entertainments at Versailles, where grandeur and excess were constantly on display for all to see. These parties were the prestige of his court. They dazzled the bourgeois and foreigners, and kept the oft-wayward nobles confined to the palace. In Versailles, each week was divided between concerts, theatre, tragedies, games and ballets. Colbert, the Minister of Finances (also known as ‘the snake’) was not well-liked by a people kept in poverty by their king.
Brittany had been part of France for only a century, and still enjoyed certain freedoms and exemptions – they did not pay the gabelle, the famous tax on salt. When kingdom of France was at war with Holland its coffers dried up, and Colbert advised the king to impose a tax on papier timbré, a revenue stamp needed to make any document official. The Bretons were incensed by the new tax; by God but this king had gall! It sparked a revolt in Brittany, where anger was expressed not only against the king, but also the lords who represented him. The insurgents wanted to force the lords to give up their rights of privilege. The Bretons went forth from their homes, wearing red and blue bonnets, to lay siege upon the palaces and cry out their rage, and the rebellion came to be known as the ‘revolt of the red bonnets.’ The uprising was quickly suppressed, and the king had the leaders hanged or sent to the pits. The women of Brittany lost their husbands, their sons and their brothers, and this sad story would remained etched in their hearts forever. And so a new custom was born: the coiffe bigoudene, a tall headdress worn to symbolise the bell towers torn down during the suppression of the revolt. As the years went by, the headdress grew taller and more refined.
Today, in 1956, the women of Bigouden country wore their headdresses with pride. They were made with the finest lace, and stood as high as forty centimetres. It was a sign of Breton pride; the land that never surrendered, still independent and full of pride. The Breton language flourished in their mouths, for they would never forget all that they cherished about their land.
Trugarez!
Alan Alfredo Geday