Home " Toponymy " Reflections on Coulet, Collet, Tracol, Trescol, Accol and Saccol

Reflections on Coulet, Collet, Tracol, Trescol, Accol and Saccol

Bernard Pommel's article (Tracols, Accols & Saccols) is very interesting and has provided me with valuable information, but also with questions, or rather non-answers to questions that I've been asking myself for a long time.

After listing the 'Coulets' of Ardèche, he says: "The etymology of the word COULET poses no problem: is the collarthe "petit col", COULETET therefore being the "petit petit col"...". So "Coulet" would be a regional form of collet, which would be the "petit col". Although I agree with this statement, is it really that simple? Because although the Pégorier gives this definition for 'Coulet': hill, small mountain, small pass -Ubaye, Alpes- (Ardèche, Cévennes, etc. are not mentioned!!!) for 'Collet' we find... nothing. This word "collet" therefore seems to me to pose many problems.

According to Alain Rey (Dictionnaire Historique de la Langue Française), the word has been around since the end of the 11th century, when it was used in the sense of "neck" to designate the part of a slaughter animal between the head and the shoulders; by metonymy, the poachers' noose (1547) and, technically, the part protruding around a circular object. It only retains its old meaning of "part of the garment surrounding the neck" (1280) in the locutions collet monté and mettre la main au collet! There is no allusion to the meaning of small geographical pass.

We know that the meaning of geographical pass for the word " collar The term "port" was not used until 1635, gradually eliminating the old terms "port", "pas" and "détroit", which only survived locally (port in the Pyrenees; pas, especially in the south-east, but not exclusively; détroit changed its meaning).

Collet in the sense of small geographical pass is not given in any of the classic or specialist language dictionaries (Petit ou Grand Robert, Petit ou Grand Larousse, Littré, etc.), the only attestation I know of appears in the Dictionnaire critique de la Documentation Française, but only in the sense of petit col. In reality, however, this word is used even more frequently in the sense of hill, and there is no record of it being used in this sense. Although collet is found more than 200 times in our bible Le Chauvot, the IGN maps probably use it 4 or 500 times in the sense of hill! Even A. Pégorier doesn't mention it! (at least not directly).

Here is a term used hundreds of times on maps (in the sense of a geographical hill) and for which there is no record! To designate a hill, here are the terms proposed by A. Pégorier suggests:

couletcolet, collarmontagnoun, mountet, mourre, piechet, poiget, pouget, poui, pouiet, pouioulet, puech, puechoun, pujol, puget, puyet, puyot, pujoulet, raspet, serre, tap, taural, taurel, tosenn, toucoulet, toural, truc, truquet, tuchen, tuc, tuquet, turret...

The list was not exhaustive, but was intended to express the subtle particularities of each region that are lacking in today's French.

If we stick to the "academic proofs", only the meaning of hill for "collet" should be retained - strange! As for 'coulet', it does not appear in the French dictionary.

The problem I have is the double meaning of these two words coulet and collet, the latter being even more widespread (6 or 700 attestations in the south-east)! The fact that these are fairly widespread surnames (1), (for coulet Bernard Pommel indicates at least 951 registered + those on the red list + those who don't have a tel, This is a question that (like many others) can, in my opinion, only be answered by patois speakers, as the local languages were very rich and very precise in terms of the descriptive vocabulary used. But how many dialect speakers are left who can enlighten us? My favourite Cévenol interviewee only gives it the meaning of a pass, so why does it mean a hill, which is also used on ign maps?

(1) For "collet", a proper noun, I found 340 entries in Isère (22 for "coulet"), 8 in Alpes de Haute Provence (110 for "coulet"), 24 in Ardèche (63 for "coulet"), 5 in Lozère and 85 in Hérault (136 for "coulet"), and so on.

[The distribution of these 2 surnames alone would no doubt merit a specific study.]

Note: in the Italian Alps COL = hill, summit; a pass is called Passo or Valico + a series of synonyms corresponding to collet, pas, porte, selle, etc. in French: Bassa, Bocca, Bocchetta, Bocchetto, Breccia, Colla, Colle, Colletta, Colletto, Colma, Colmine, Culmine, Foce, Forca, Forcella, Forcola, Forcelletta, Forcellina, Crocetta, Giogo, Goletta, Goletto, Porta, Porte, Sella, Selletta, Soglia, Soglio, Varco. The following terms sometimes refer to passes: Croce*, Crocetta*, Fosso°, Gola°°, Stretta°°°, Trincea***, Trincee***. The following are local terms: Bocchin, Bocchino (Liguria); Bassetta, Joch, Jochl, Sattel, Scharte, Scheideck, Tor, Torl, Turl, Coi, Col, Colle (Trentino, Alto Adige); Coi, Col, Colle (Veneto) Forche, Forchia, Foredor (Friuli); Callare, Maesta, Marginata****, Foce, Focetta, Focola, Forbice (Tuscany); Guado, Vado (Abruzzo); Arcu, Gemma, Gianna, Janna, Enna, Sedda (Sardinia); Portella (Sicily). Terms in italics have a double meaning: pass and summit in most cases, but also cross*, ditch, gorge, defile, trench, ****.

This glossary, which does not claim to be exhaustive, clearly shows that the problem is obviously not limited to our regions.

TRACOLS, TRESCOLS

"Tracol" and "trescol" are the same word: "tra-col" or "tres-col". As in French, where we have "tra-verser" and "tres-passer", which originally had the same meaning. So why do we mainly use 'tracol' in Ardéche? Could it be habit or a change in the language? The prefix 'tra' exists just about everywhere in other words. One we all know is "la tramontane". More locally, we find "tra lou serre", "tra la crous" (beyond the cross; the "s" is pronounced at the end) and we could think of the name of the "Trabuc" cave (located in the Gard region, 15 km south-west of Alès).

Let's take the term "Trescol", which appears in the Chauvot with locations in the Aveyron, Gard and Hérault departments. This term, which can be found on the 25,000th scale ign maps, does not appear in any of the classic or geographical dictionaries. Here is what I could find about it:

A. In his glossary, Pégorier gives "Trecol, trecou": highest point of a mountain, summit - Alps, Languedoc, (I have never found anything like this in the Alps, nor in Languedoc, but I know less),

Alibert in his Occitan-French dictionary gives "Trescol": highest point, summit, horizon, sunset of a star (very curious, but see 4 a),

In the field, the "Trescol" on the ign maps can be used to designate both passes and hamlets very close to these geographical passes, generally a hundred metres or so (cf. 4b),

two discussions with patois speakers:

a) A 93-year-old patois speaker (from the Tarn, on the border with Aveyron) was furious that the local council had given the name "trescol" to a district to the east: "It's a mistake, it should have been to the west, where the sun sets"!

b) a Cévenol dialect speaker in the Ardèche (originally from the Gard) told me that this word is perfectly familiar to him and refers to "what is below the pass you are crossing", i.e. the nearby hamlet, but perfectly identifies the presence of a pass!

Here are a few details provided by a patois speaker from the Ardèche:

SACCOL

The "saccol" is called "sescouol" in the Villefort region, but it has nothing to do with the mountain passes, as it is a kind of cushion used to carry loads across these "acouols" where mules and donkeys cannot pass. In fact, it's not really a cushion but a bag. A thick jute sack (like the ones used to transport potatoes, among other things) is filled with straw and then firmly closed with a string; it is turned over to pack the straw on the side that has just been closed and on the opposite side the sack is folded in half on itself by tucking one corner into the other, forming a sort of pointed cap and giving the sack the appearance of a little cape. The straw protects the wearer's back, but its purpose is to form a kind of hump that prevents the load from slipping and allows it to lie almost flat, making it easier to carry (it's all relative!). And I can say, having experienced it myself, that it's the head that quickly hurts because the whole load pulls on the 'hood' and it's the forehead and cervical vertebrae that bear the weight. In fact, it's the man's 'collar' that does the work! In the dialect of southern Lozère, there's just one word for 'neck' and 'collar'.

ACOUOL and .......plus

"Acouol" is the same as "accol".

When I give words from the "patois" it's always a "pseudo-phonetic" transcription because I've never learnt the spelling, assuming there is an "official" one!

You quote the Provençal word "ACOU". Since we're on the subject of language (well beyond the semantics of the "col"), I'd like to point out a possible ambiguity with the word "acou":

Just add a "t" to "acou" to make "acout" (pronounced "t") and you get a completely different meaning; an "acout" (still in the Villefort region) is the sharpening stone used by mowers, a stone about 30 cm long. This stone is in a sort of container that the mower hangs from his belt in front of him; it contains water so that the stone is always wet to sharpen the scythe regularly during mowing. In Lozère, this container is made of wood and shaped like a clog, without a heel of course. Its name is "lou coud(r)io".

There is sometimes as much difference in pronunciation for the same 'patois' word between Villefort and Carpentras as there is for the same word between French and English.

A word of warning: be careful not to look for a single root for two apparently very similar words.

E.g. "draille" and "daille" have absolutely nothing to do with each other, "draillo" you know of course. It's the path taken by the transhumants. "daillo" is simply the scythe...... that is sharpened with the "acout".

Michel de Brébisson
[email]michel.debrebisson@wanadoo.fr[/email]