About two dozen south Louisiana Cajun and Creole communities celebrate Mardi Gras with a courir, a house-to-house "run" either in the countryside or in town. Accompanied by an accordion, a fiddle, and a 'tit fer' (an iron triangle), maskers sing a traditional tune, begging the man or lady of the house for ingredients to make a gumbo. Onions, flour, or rice may be offered, but the most prized donation is a chicken. But to obtain it, the Mardi Gras ("Mardy Graws"), as the maskers are called, must catch the live animal, an intense and exhilarating contest. When the course (another French word for the run) ends, the revelers return to town, where residents share the day's bounty in a gumbo and enjoy the dance, which ends promptly at midnight, the beginning of Lent.

Basile, Allen Choupique Church Point, Acadia Duralde Elton, Allen Eunice, St-Landry Evangeline, Acadia Gheens, Lafourche Grand Prairie, St. Landry Hathaway, Jefferson Davis

Jennings, Jefferson Davis Kinder, Allen Lacassine, Jefferson Davis L'Anse de 'Prien Noir L'Anse Maigre Mamou, Evangeline Oberlin, Allen Ossun, Lafayette Tee Mamou-Iota, Acadia Ville Platte, Evangeline

Customs associated with this rural Mardi Gras were brought to southwest Louisiana by French and French Canadian settlers as well as by free African-Americans and slaves who introduced African-based traditions of processions and masking. Increasing Americanization and governmental suppression of the sometimes-rowdy celebration resulted in the decline of the courir in many places by World War II. While such communities as Basile and Duralde maintained their courirs, others, like Mamou and Eunice, revived theirs in the 1950s and 1960s.

Overview of current practice

Traditionally, maskers made the run on horseback, as they do today in Mamou and Eunice. In many communities, such as in Basile, Tee Mamou, and Duralde, the Mardi Gras ride in wagons or flatbed trucks.

Medieval Origins

The courir may have come from the fête de la quémande of medieval France, in which disguised revelers visited households in the countryside and performed for some sort of offering. The Mardi Gras run also resembles traditional European-derived customs, known as mumming or belsnickling, which usually occur around Christmas, New Year's, and Twelfth Night. Carried to North America by English, Irish, and German immigrants, these practices found their way to such places as Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New York, and Pennsylvania. In Quebec and French parts of Missouri and Illinois, this questing ritual, performed on New Year's Eve, is known as guignolée. Mumming also evolved into an Afro-Caribbean practice, and Jamaican Jonkonnu, another Christmas-time custom, included masked performances in exchange for money and food.

The chicken chase itself may have originated in French medieval or early modern carnival celebrations, which often featured contests and races. Kinder's Mardi Gras also implies medieval origins. There, one masker will pretend to be dead, and his fellow maskers will then "revive" him with a few drops of wine or beer. This vignette, known as "The Dead Man Revived," was a popular miracle play performed on the steps of cathedrals during the Middle Ages.

	Dance for a Chicken
Realvideo

Women's Courirs

The Cajun and Creole courirs have traditionally been male events. Beginning in the 1950s and through the 1970s, women formed several runs of their own-called "ladies' runs"-or sometimes joined men's runs. Tee Mamou, for example, holds a women's run on the Saturday before Mardi Gras, using the same male captains as the men's run. In Eunice and Basile, female Mardi Gras accompany the men. Woman have contributed innovations to some runs, like the distinctive needlework masks created and worn by the Tee Mamou women and the practice of distributing candy to children.

	Dance for a Chicken
Realvideo

Elements of the Courir

• Structure

	Singeing chickens for community gumbo at the end of the [...]
	© Syndey Byrd 1998

The Mardi Gras sing, asking for la charité. They also dance, in effect performing for their supper. If the farmer donates a chicken, the capitaine instructs the maskers to wait behind an imaginary line then throws up the chicken, and the maskers follow in wild pursuit, diving in mud and climbing trees to catch the prize. When the chicken is caught, the Mardi Gras sing and dance again, in celebration and appreciation. Before the maskers return to the road, they invite their hosts to the gumbo and dance that evening.

	Paillasse and costume with capuchon
	© LSM

The typical courir suit consists of loose-fitting, colorful pants and a tunic. Although the New Orleans Mardi Gras colors of purple, green, and gold have gained in popularity in southwest Louisiana, other colors, especially yellow and red, predominate. Most maskers wear the cone-shaped capuchon for a headpiece. A mask, either the traditional handmade wire screen creation, or a rubber, Halloween-style mask, completes the outfit.

	Acadian Costumes
	© LSM

Some maskers assume the parts of stock characters. The paillasse (French for straw mattress), a masker whose costume is stuffed with pillows or other material, performs as the ritual fool or clown. Following traditional carnivalesque practices, the revelers' costumes may also reflect identity inversions: they dress as something there are not.

1. Capitaine

	Capitaines of Mardi Gras, Church Point, La
	© Syndey Byrd 1998

Le capitaine organizes and controls the pace and tenor of the run. Usually, he (women are rarely captains) is a "retired" masker and respected community leader. Typically, he assumes the position on a long-term basis; when he decides to step down, he appoints his successor.

2. Les Mardi Gras
Running Mardi Gras is a rite of passage, particularly for boys, who demonstrate such traditionally masculine activities as providing food and riding horseback. The courir also serves as a way to welcome girls into the community of women.

Les Mardi Gras play a variety of overlapping roles, including those of outlaw, trickster, thief, fool, and beggar.

3. Drinking

	Courir du Mardi Gras, Chuch Point, La
	© Syndey Byrd 1998

Throughout the day, maskers drink alcohol, usually beer, and the captain controls their consumption. Drinks are dispensed during stops along the road, not at the houses visited. While some degree of inebriation is permissible and even desirable, captains seek to ensure that maskers do not get so drunk that they become disorderly or endanger themselves or others.

4. Begging

	Begging
	© Syndey Byrd 1998

Begging is perhaps the most important component of each visit. The maskers beg in a ritual manner through their song. Additionally, sometimes the Mardi Gras will make chicken sounds and chant together, "Ayoù la poule (Where's the chicken?), ayoù la poule, ayoù la poule?" The maskers also beg on an individual basis. For example, they might ask for "tit cinq sous" ("five little pennies") in high-pitched voices, pointing to their palms.

5. Antics

	Rider standing on horseback
	© Syndey Byrd 1998

Maskers' antics are an important part of each visit. Mock battles between maskers and captains entertain onlookers. Some maskers climb trees, while others stand on their horses and dance.

6. Whipping

	Whipping at Tee Mamou and Gaines, La.
	© Syndey Byrd 1998

In most runs, captains carry leather whips or braided burlap whips called quoits, mostly for a symbolic show of control as well as for mock antics. In a few communities, however, whipping rituals, perhaps descended from the ritual flagellation of medieval Europe intended to atone for the sins of society, are central and speak more to the penance of Lent than the revelry of carnival. The maskers surround the supplicants and deliver blows just hard enough to sting.

7. Music

	On route to dance to music and Marc and Ann [...]
	© Syndey Byrd 1998

The begging song varies from place to place, but most versions resemble medieval modal music. Black Creole runs perform theirs in a call-and-response style, characteristic of African music.

8. Horseback Run

	Horseback rider-gallop to farm donating chicken
	© Syndey Byrd 1998

Routes can be as long as sixty miles, and maskers may visit as many as thirty households. Maskers show off their dexterity on horseback, a skill especially valued in the cattle ranching areas of the southwest Louisiana prairie. Mamou features the largest horseback courir, with as many as two hundred riders.