Auvergnat

The Auvergnat are the people of the volcanic highlands of the Massif Central, around Clermont and Le Puy, whose speech is the northernmost major dialect of Occitan, the Romance language of southern France. Their country was the land of the Arverni, a powerful tribe of Gaul, whose king Vercingetorix defeated Julius Caesar at Gergovia in 52 BC before the Roman victory at Alesia; the Roman town of Augustonemetum grew into modern Clermont.

In the feudal age the counts of Auvergne ruled from the mountains until Philip Augustus attached most of the county to the royal domain, after which it passed to the dukes of Berry and Bourbon; Francis I's confiscation of the Bourbon lands in 1527 and Catherine de' Medici's inheritance of the last fief bound the province to the crown.

Auvergne nourished Occitan poetry, giving the troubadour Peire d'Alvernhe among others, and local official documents were written in Auvergnat from about 1340, peaking between 1380 and 1480 before French took over administration and the upper classes, leaving the dialect to shepherds and cheesemakers.