Acadians and Cajuns

What do the Acadians and Cajuns have in common? Well they have lots in common. First of all, they both descend from Acadian ancestors. They both are a strong people. They are both survivors. The Cajuns brought with them lots of Acadian customs. For example, I am reading a book by Carl A Brasseau. Here is an exhert from it.

Familial ties permeated all facets of Acadian life: as in vieille Acadian, family members worked together, played together and worshipped together. Many homes were the same, the men worked in the fields cut timber and built levees (aboiteau)."Note: The acadians built these levees and when they were in Louisiana they built them there too."

The women took care of the barnyard,milked the cows, spinning and weaving cotton, or wool, sewing and cooking. Family and friends gathered in homes of neighbors having a hard time and helped them either with their homes or with their harvest."Note: They did that in Acadie and the custom continued in Louisiana." The cajuns had house parties, these parties included dancing which was an important diversion from the hard frontier life. So the cajuns had house dances, and had a great time. Now the Acadians also did the same, I remember going to a house in the country before I was married , and they used to be bootleggers, and my late husband took me one time, I was amazed, there was this man playing the fiddle and his wife was stepdancing, then they had a square dance. Talk about I enjoyed this. And the day before yesterday we took Mom out for a drive and she was telling me , she remembers going to Old Mister Mill's house and they had what they called a Pound Party, what the guests were suppose to do, was to bring a pound of food, of their choice to the party , in return, they would move all the furniture out of the way and have a square dance. That sounded like lots of fun.

I think this is a great custom that we Acadians and Cajuns have, the custom of a good time, the custom of happy times and the custom of getting together with our friends and neighbors on such a happy note.

When I was newly married my husband used to get some of his friends to come and play music at our house. They played the guitar, the fiddle ,the accordion, and harmonica, what fun we had.

I have always loved the piano , had I been good at reading music, I would loved to have learned to play. My dad played the Jew's harp, the harmonica and accordion.

So where ever you are, keep on enjoying life, because life is so short, we can be here today and gone tomorrow. So Let the good times roll, Vive le bon temps.

Thanks for the visit, do stop by again

Have a great day

Aline