As David Hopkin has argued, the careful study of folklore—in the form of songs, tales, legends or proverbs—offers insights into the experience and culture of the working population, into the lives of those—the poor, reticent and illiterate—who have left few written records. It provides a vital supplement to the sources available for the history of rural society, and a means of challenging the simplistic dichotomy between ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’ previously employed by researchers. William Pooley, in his study of folklore and folklorists, of actors and audiences, and of the transmission and adaptation of language(s) and folk traditions in the moorlands of Gascony, an area often described by nineteenth-century travellers and officials in neo-colonial terms as backward and primitive, substantially reinforces the point. He also stresses the importance, in the decoding of symbolic meanings, of relating culture to context. In the late nineteenth century, both were subject to considerable change as a traditional agro-pastoral system combining crop farming with pines, sheep, and supplemented with fish and game, was transformed by state led (1857 law) drainage works, and the planting of resin providing pines on an industrial scale. This rapid shift imposed considerable stress on existing sharecropping systems. A ‘web of dependency’, based on customary practices and oral agreements, had previously been imposed by landlords. In return for access to land sharecroppers, in a desperate effort to meet the needs of their families, had developed strategies, labour routines and internal family arrangements which allowed them to meet a wide range of obligations (including carting and maintenance work). In response to the familiarity and brutal contempt of the landlord, contained within a ‘benevolent, patriarchal discourse’, the sharecropper, as the Prefect reported in 1858, observed an ‘everyday deference’ which he was concerned might conceal a simmering sense of aggression. Uncertainty and tensions were also intensified by the complex impact of the spread of transport networks and literacy, together with a growing rural exodus and improved living standards.