Southwest Experts: Why do we say “cabins on stilts”?
By Catherine Darfay - “Sud Ouest” Archives - Article originally published on August 19, 2020
SUMMER SERIES - (2/20) Like the Landes waders, the huts have long legs that prevent them from silting up and allow them to withstand the tides.
These huts perched on Bird Island could only shelter the very rich Robinson Crusoe, and we don't remember that Daniel Defoe's hero was shipwrecked in the Bay. The persistent song of countless birds, the assured solitude, despite the abundance of tourists who rush at low tide to immortalize this feigned precariousness, make the islanders privileged.
If we persist in calling their houses cabins, it is in memory of those that once housed the oyster farmers overseeing their parks nestled in the south of the island. But they certainly are. The term tchanque, pronounced tianque, refers to the stilts of the Landes shepherds, themselves called tchancayres. Like them, the cabins have long legs that prevent them from silting up and allow them to withstand the tides.
Elsewhere, we say pilotis, but it's less pretty and more banal. In tchanqué, in fact, there is hidden sleeping.
SudOuest
