The turmoil tower of the Mas de Truc once allowed travelers to orient themselves in the burle or the turmoil, names that are given locally to the blizzard.
Description
The storm tower is a construction particularly common in hamlets. It is a simple work of masonry supporting a bell and often surmounted by a cross. Built at the beginning of the XNUMXth century by the inhabitants of these hamlets, the primitive role of these bell towers is to allow travelers not to get lost and perish, if by chance they find themselves caught in "turmoil". This term designates a fearsome bad weather that arises at altitude during harsh winters, when snowfalls and gusts of violent winds combine. As soon as the turmoil raged but also in foggy weather, the bells were then activated, sometimes night and day, thus providing a sound reference to travelers, a bit like a lighthouse, so that they could orient themselves towards the houses.
Established in the heart of the hamlets, the bell towers of turmoil punctuate life and their role extends to replacing the church of which they are deprived, contrary to the villages of larger sizes. They are then used to ring the Angelus or to mark events such as births and deaths. Local belief even goes so far as to attribute protective virtues to them, such as repelling storms towards neighboring villages.
The lines of communication having fundamentally improved since the XNUMXth century, the bells no longer ring when the storm reigns.
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