Buste et tombeau de Charloun Rieu

Charles-Henri Rieu (Charloun) was born in Le Paradou on the 1st November 1846 on the road to St Roch, near the Caladat. He is the eldest of a family of eleven children. His father is a small landowner, a peasant who supplements his income with seasonal work. Charloun goes to primary school to learn to read and write. Lucien--Marc Chabaud, the teacher, is said to have given the young Charloun the rudiments of Latin and Greek to make him a priest. From the age of 15, Charloun was employed in the digging of the drying canal in the Vallée des Baux. Eldest of the family, he does not have an easy life and when he rents himself out in a farmhouse in the Camargue, his father quickly repatriates him. The situation of the peasants becomes more and more difficult. Charloun works in the big farmhouses, in the oil mills. His father and mother die leaving a meagre family inheritance to share. Charloun, the peasant poet, captures all the moments of this life close to the land, harsh and without concession. He delivers the sweetness, the sorrow. His poems are published in three collections. "Li Cant dóu Terraire". "Les chants du terroir" contains 133 songs. Frédéric Mistral prefaces the first "chant". Charles Rieu also writes chronicles, a dramatic comedy: " Margarido dóu Destet" and a translation of Homer's Odyssey into Provençal. He carries his songs from mas to mas, from party to party. As his popularity grew, he was soon introduced by Frédéric Mistral to the Félibre milieu and became "Majoral" on November 1, 1910. He died on 11 January 1924, at the mas d'Auge.