AN ACCURSED RACE
Elizabeth Gaskell


We have our prejudices in England. Or, if that assertion offends any of
my readers, I will modify it: we have had our prejudices in England. We
have tortured Jews; we have burnt Catholics and Protestants, to say
nothing of a few witches and wizards. We have satirized Puritans, and we
have dressed-up Guys. But, after all, I do not think we have been so bad
as our Continental friends. To be sure, our insular position has kept us
free, to a certain degree, from the inroads of alien races; who, driven
from one land of refuge, steal into another equally unwilling to receive
them; and where, for long centuries, their presence is barely endured,
and no pains is taken to conceal the repugnance which the natives of
"pure blood" experience towards them.

There yet remains a remnant of the miserable people called Cagots in the
valleys of the Pyrenees; in the Landes near Bourdeaux; and, stretching up
on the west side of France, their numbers become larger in Lower
Brittany. Even now, the origin of these families is a word of shame to
them among their neighbours; although they are protected by the law,
which confirmed them in the equal rights of citizens about the end of the
last century. Before then they had lived, for hundreds of years,
isolated from all those who boasted of pure blood, and they had been, all
this time, oppressed by cruel local edicts. They were truly what they
were popularly called, The Accursed Race.

All distinct traces of their origin are lost. Even at the close of that
period which we call the Middle Ages, this was a problem which no one
could solve; and as the traces, which even then were faint and uncertain,