Mardi Gras!

It's time for Mardi Gras in south Louisiana. Many towns in North Louisiana have an abreviated Mardi Gras celebration, consisting of one or several parades over the weekend. South Louisiana does it better, making parades for four or five days leading up to Fat Tuesday. The biggest celebration in the state is New Orleans, and those folks are partying right now.

I prefer the smaller celebrations, the street dances held in the little towns.

One old tradition is the Courirs, or people on horseback that ride the countryside in costume, asking for food items for a communal gumbo. The largest such celebration is in Mamou, LA, where the Courirs still ride. They have a song that celebrates there ride and it is sung in the traditional French.

There is a Windows Media clip of the song here. The words to the verse are something like this:

The Mardi Gras come from everywhere, all around around the hub.
They pass once a year to ask for charity, even it's a (sweet) potato, a potato and some cracklings.

I'll be in Mamou on Tuesday to welcome the riders back into town. It's a heck of a party.

This year we get to introduce our daughter-in-law to the party. She's never been to a traditional Mardi Gras and I hope to show her some of our family's heritage.