“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!”
…and so it did for two days, needing no exhortation from a King Lear heading for madness.
It’s called le vent (wind) d’Autan–the name is obscure but seems to suggest a bye-gone age (autrefois–other times); its force is primeval, outrageous, unreasonable. It blows from the south-east and in principle is a warm wind–but that implies some degree of benevolence on its part.
It doesn’t feel that way as it tears into the newly-leafed trees, shaking them so violently that our judas (redbud) for one, lost a large branch, in a brutal unnatural pruning.
They put up with it, survive and stand today uncomplaining while Nature is admitting nothing.
“Moi?” she seems to be saying.
It drives people mad (ça peut vous rendre fou), like the Mistral, (it’s better-known cousin in Provence) and can blow for a week.
According to our neighbour, René (brother of Alice the beekeeper), old folk say that if it blows on Palm Sunday it will be a windy year.
This year it blew on Palm Sunday.
The countryside is calm again–but the wind has blown so deafeningly for two days that hearing a cuckoo and the percussion of dueling woodpeckers on my morning walk was a shock!
I had grown accustomed to the “rage”.
Robin Ellis 
i’ve always been intrigued by “le vent d’autan” and so reading your post i went onto french wikipedia… rather dry and technical, but they did have a link to an archive piece from 1916 when “le vent des fous” was responsible for derailing a train !
http://www.lauragais-patrimoine.fr/HISTOIRE/DERAILLEMENT/DERAILLEMENT01.htm
xx L
Hi Lucie–I read that too.
Plus ça change….
I like vent des fous–forgot that.
I couldn’t find the exact meaning of autan.
my Petit Robert says… aultan (1545)… old languedocien, from the Latin altanus “vent de la haute mer”… for meaning it has only : Name given in the Midi for stormy wind blowing from the south or south-east… and poetic Les autans : les vents impétueux… sounds like the sort of thing Lear might have been calling up !
Winds like those rattle my nerves. When I lived in the Pacific Northwest/Seattle, we had the Chinook winds which came for a short time in November or so (similar to the mistral winds, I believe). It used to make me want to run and put my head under the bed covers. It was weird! I have heard or read somewhere that the chinooks came with a load of more than usual negative ions (or was it positive? — can’t recall) that caused certain people to get really edgy. I was definitely one of those people.
Good luck there, Robin and Meredith!
Lucie–see below-just pointed out that this wind is nicknamed le vent des fous-ie the wind that makes you crazy.
The chinooks sounds similar, Steven.
Winds like this have the same effect on me–I don’t like ’em!
Where do the helicopters come in?
powerful & poetic images here Robin!
Hand it to William!–
Strong, hot (90 degrees) winds here in Oklahoma blowing from the south, south-east. Very tired of it, too. Been going on for days.
seems they occur everywhere and effect people in the same way.
Hello Robin,
Le vent Français inspired many, also in a well knowed French film with Michelle Mercier, where one of her male friends has some nice poems (in French ofcourse) .
Today we had rain, rain, rain and now sunny.
many regards from Chantal x.(Antwerp-Belgium).