I do not make it every years, but whenever I can I always enjoy spending the Sunday of Carnaval in Malmédy, in the South of Belgium, in the Ardennes. There is a very special celebration there each year, with some formal and traditional events, but especially a carnival parade with free participation from anybody who wants. This year was the 556 year that this tradition has existed. There are records dating back to 1458 – however, nobody can be quite sure how many parades there have been in total. It probably changed a little bit over the years too.
The Sunday celebration opens with the “Dance de la Haguète” – last time we came, we missed that as we were still having lunch, so I wanted to make sure that we saw it this time. We setup at the front of the crowd early and waited.
As I said, there is a lot of free participation to all events. Three teen girls, dressed as Pandas entertained us for a few minutes – they were obviously having fun.
The Haguète is a very colourful traditional costume. They must have been treated very poorly in the past, or in traditional lore, or legend … some time any way as their carnival “trick” is to capture the ankle of an innocent bystander with their wooden tool (not sure what it is called) and force them to apologise on their knees, before they are released. Traditionally also, a different society each year gets to open the parade with a dance. As you can see on this picture, some of them start very young…
There were a lot of people watching from every point of view. There was also a duo between the band accompanying the Haguète and the brass band on the balcony here.
As the parade was getting ready, we actually met the three clowns who get to open the parade. It is obviously a great honour to be selected for that job; as soon as she saw my camera, I got the best smile in the world! And we chatted a while after that.
The theme this years seems to be the seventies. There was a band dresses in “flower children” and disco dancers. As I said earlier, anybody can join in – you just come disguised and walk! you can even walk if you are not disguised, but then few people pay attention to you.
Here is a family who spent a lot of time on their costume!
A group had a Venice Theme. Men wore gondolas around the waist; ladies were dressed in fancy costumes and they had a float that copied the Rialto Bridge. Elvis must have played a gig there recently as he was parading with them.
Since this is farm country, they still have a few Belgian Clydesdales – these were used to pull the Rialto Bridge. They probably work the rest of the time for the timber industry as the horse is still the best tool to pull a tree from where it has been felled to a passage where a truck can pick it up, especially if the side of the hill is particularly steep.
Amongst the traditional costumes, there are the “Long Nez” or Long Nose – There was a very large gathering before the parade. Their “trick” is to split into groups of 6-8 “Long Nez” and pick an individual and do everything he does until he buys them a beer. Some people go to extreme lengths to try and ‘beat’ them – we saw some doing push-up, running, one decided to kiss his wife (I hope it was his wife) and she got 8 more kisses from the Long Nez.
There are also the “Lu Boldji” or the Baker in the local dialect. You have to be careful as they will sneak behind a pretty girl and use their long wooden palette to gently pat her behind! Some of the ladies have great reactions, especially if it is the first time they are picked for this honour.
There are many groups, some which include a local band or musical society, who parade. There are also whole villages which organise themselves to parade. Often it is the local teens who dress-up in order to spend a fun day out.
The floats can be quite fancy – this is a functioning ice cream truck.
And there were actually two of them. Competition!
The parade took about 1.5 hours where we were. We were close to the start, so we could have seen it all again by moving further along the route. But we had seen enough. Since we wanted to avoid the big rush at the end, we made a quick and early exit.
I will end with this costume, quite extravagant and not a traditional costume; I do not remember this one before, so is it a one-off?
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