Compared with Spain, Britain and even Germany, modern-day France doesn’t revel too much in its traditional idiosyncrasies. However, one exception survives in the Dordogne. The little-known carnival in the town of Nontron has a name so risibly rude it’s guaranteed to raise a gasp or titter, even among fellow Frenchmen. An English guidebook translates La Fête des Soufflaculs as “The Festival of the Whistle Arses”, which really would be something to see.

In truth, though, the Soufflaculs are nothing but “Arse Blowers”. Every April, scores of men, women and children parade through the streets in broad daylight dressed for bed and armed with bellows, in a tradition that takes its inspiration from the Middle Ages.

Wearing old-fashioned nightcaps and long, white nightshirts, they liven up the proceedings by using their bellows to pump air up their neighbours’ backsides or, even better, the skirts of unsuspecting women.

Time was when bottom bellowers could be found throughout southern France, particularly in Provence and the Dordogne – sometimes as part of the equally bizarre Danse du Feu aux Fesses, or the “Pants-on-Fire Dance”.

Legend has it that Nontron’s Soufflaculs are a mockery of local monks who once tried to purify the town by sticking their bellows wherever sin might lurk, particularly the skirts of les femmes dangereuses, who gave the town a reputation for having “more whores than chimneys”.

Nowadays, though, the town is best known for its handmade knives. And, as an American arriving in France during the fracas over the Iraq War, before heading there I am a bit worried that Nontron’s knives might be out for me.

However, when I get there, the President of the Arse Blowers is clearly delighted to meet a Yank. Clad in a nightcap, a grey wig and a white nightshirt, he bends over and moons me with a pair of novelty buttocks – the latex posterior decorated with bright-red lip prints. “I’m the Bush of Nontron!” he hoots.

After a raucous bar crawl, during which I am inducted into the Order of the Priceless Sardine, the cavalcade stumbles to the top of the town, where a giant carnival effigy known as the Buffadou stands on a pyre of green tree branches.

“The Buffadou represents everything that’s wrong with the world,” one of my companions tells me, explaining that this time around it’s been rechristened the Bush adieu. “He’s the illegitimate child of George Bush Snr and Lolo Ferrari, the late porn star. His parentage was discovered only recently.”

As the Soufflaculs sing and dance around the burning Bush, purging the world’s wrongs for another year, it strikes me that this is why otherwise senseless traditions like Arse Blowing and Baby Jumping have survived. They provide a sense of continuity with the past and remind us that, despite our present worries, we will get through this – if only through sheer, human cussedness. Why, last I heard, even Spain’s Goat Tossers hadn’t given up. “We’re thinking about using an inflatable goat,” an organiser tells me. They’re available in all good Spanish sex shops, apparently.

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