FÊTE DE LA SAINT-ROCH

The Feast of St. Roch (patron saint of shepherds) is a great peasant festival that traditionally takes place every year in mid-August. These 2 days of festivities are an opportunity for many activities to the sound of traditional music and dances: workshops and demonstrations of craft and agricultural trades, making beeswax objects and a living hive-hive school, discovering the activity of bees, making felt objects, pottery workshop with potter's wheel on foot, many workshops of old, horticulture workshop... The sheep parade takes place on Sundays to the sound of the bells exposed at the town hall: a highlight of the festivities !

The brotherhood of Saint-Roch seems to have been created before 1778. The confreres were animal owners who donated livestock and money, which gave a charitable role to the brotherhood. In order to complete the livestock, the brotherhood bought animals and thus managed a real business, buying or selling sheep, cheese or wool for its own management. The nest egg obtained made it possible to help a shepherd in financial difficulty by lending him money, or by renting the livestock, through the signing of a contract. In 1899, the company opened its doors to goatherds, then to the Granilais.

On the day of the celebration of the patron saint, during the great mass which takes place in the morning, the statue of the saint accompanies the procession through the streets of the village surrounding the collegiate church and is preceded by the prior carrying the flag of the brotherhood.