Rambles in Brittany
by M. F. Mansfield · English · Gutenberg #42866 · 419,594 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Rambles in Brittany
Author: M. F. Mansfield
Illustrator: Blanche McManus
Release date: June 3, 2013 [eBook #42866]
Language: English
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RAMBLES IN BRITTANY
_WORKS OF FRANCIS MILTOUN_
_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely
illustrated. Net, $2.00; postpaid, $2.16_
_Rambles in Normandy_
_Rambles in Brittany_
_The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_
_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely
illustrated. Postpaid, $2.50_
_The Cathedrals of Northern France_
_The Cathedrals of Southern France_
_L. C. PAGE & COMPANY_
_New England Building, Boston, Mass._
[Illustration: _<u>Constable’s Tower, Vannes</u>_
(_See page 147_)]
Rambles
in
BRITTANY
BY FRANCIS MILTOUN
_With Many Illustrations_
BY BLANCHE MCMANUS
[Illustration: colophon]
BOSTON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
1906
_Copyright, 1905_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
Published October, 1905
_COLONIAL PRESS
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U. S. A._
APOLOGIA
No promise given to the hostess of one’s inn is alleged as an excuse
for writing this book, but it is true that rosy, busy Madame X of the
Soleil d’Or, in the fishing village in which the work received its
final collation and revision, watched its growth for many a week, daily
declaring her hope of some day receiving a volume containing “your
impressions.” And, indeed, her hope shall not be vain, for one of the
first copies shall be most speedily despatched to her. Moreover, the
author and artist hope that it may be acceptable to her critical mind,
for she is not likely to be lenient, though she knows full well that to
the many authors and artists who make a refuge of her modest inn for
months she owes her livelihood.
The book is a record of many journeys and many rambles by road and rail
around the coast, and in no sense is it put forth either as a special or
as a complete survey of things and matters Breton.
Many lights and shadows have been thrown upon the screen from various
points, but the effort has been made to blend them all into a pleasing
whole, which shall supplement the guide-books of convention.
It were not possible to do more than has been attempted within the
limits of a volume such as this, and therefore many details of routes,
and historical data of a relative sort, and a certain amount of
topographical information have been scattered through the volume or
placed in the appendix, in the belief that such information is greatly
needed in a work attempting to purvey “travel talk” even in small
measure.
Some of this knowledge is so little subject to change that it may well
stand for all time, and, in these days of well-nigh universal travel,
may be not thought out of place in a volume intended both for the
armchair traveller and also for him who journeys by road and rail. That
only a very limited quantity of such information can be included is a
misfortune, inasmuch as such a handbook is often used when no other aid
is accessible to the traveller.
Finally, the illustrative material, the large number of drawings of
sights and scenes, of great architectural monuments, and of the dress
of the people, is offered less as a complete pictorial survey than as a
panorama of impressions received on and off the beaten track,--and more
satisfying and truthful than the mere snap-shots of hurried travel.
In addition, many maps, plans, and diagrams should give many of the
itineraries a lucidity often lacking in the usual railway maps.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
APOLOGIA v
PART I.
I. INTRODUCTORY 3
II. THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE 11
III. THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE 33
IV. TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY 45
V. THE BRETON TONGUE AND LEGEND 59
VI. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 70
VII. THE FISHERIES 88
PART II.
I. THE LOIRE IN BRITTANY 99
II. NANTES TO VANNES 116
III. THE MORBIHAN--VANNES AND THE “GOLFE” 140
IV. AURAY AND THE MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS OF
MORBIHAN 159
V. MORBIHAN--LORIENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD 179
VI. FINISTÈRE--SOUTH 187
VII. FINISTÈRE--NORTH 221
VIII. THE CÔTES DU NORD 249
IX. THE EMERALD COAST 271
X. ON THE ROAD IN BRITTANY--MAYENNE,
FOUGÈRES, LAVAL, AND VITRÉ 309
XI. RENNES AND BEYOND 329
XII. RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS AND PARDONS 341
APPENDICES 359
INDEX 373
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
CONSTABLE’S TOWER, VANNES (_See page 147_) _Frontispiece_
THE LOIRE AT NANTES facing 4
DEVICE OF ANNE OF BRITTANY 17
ANNE OF BRITTANY 18
BRETON POST-CARD 21
ST. BRIEUC facing 30
CROISIC facing 42
MAP OF BRITTANY facing 44
THE MAIN ROADS OF BRITTANY 48
TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY 55
ST. POL DE LÉON facing 60
THE BRETON TONGUE 62
GILLES DE LAVAL 66
YOUNG BRETONS 78
FROM THE ARTIST’S SKETCH BOOK 80
LA COIFFE POLKA 81
IRONING COIFS 83
BRETON TYPES 85
DOUARNENEZ facing 88
PORNIC 113
DONJON OF CLISSON facing 114
ST. NAZAIRE 123
ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS OF GUÉRANDE (DIAGRAM) 126
CHÂTEAUBRIANT facing 128
CHILDREN OF REDON 133
TOUR D’ELVEN facing 138
MARKET-WOMAN, VANNES 142
THE COUNTRY NEAR VANNES 143
ANCIENT CITY WALLS, VANNES (DIAGRAM) 147
CHÂTEAU OF SUSCINO facing 148
GENERAL PLAN OF CHÂTEAU OF SUSCINO (DIAGRAM) 149
PLOËRMEL facing 152
SHRINE OF ST. ETIENNE, JOSSELIN 154
CHÂTEAU DE JOSSELIN facing 156
INTERIOR OF MARKET-HOUSE, AURAY facing 160
SHRINE OF ST. ROCH, AURAY 162
THE LINES OF CARNAC 168
THE LINES OF CARNAC facing 168
MAP OF CARNAC AND THE SURROUNDING COUNTRY 170
QUIBERON facing 172
HENNEBONT facing 182
QUIMPERLÉ facing 188
MARKET-HOUSE, FAOUËT facing 192
MARKET-DAY 193
ROSPORDEN 196
STONE CRUCIFIX, CONCARNEAU facing 198
CONCARNEAU 199
PONT AVEN facing 202
ENVIRONS OF PONT AVEN (MAP) 204
FROM THE MUSEUM AT QUIMPER 207
CAPE DE LA CHÈVRE facing 214
WOMAN OF CHATEAULIN 217
CAMARET facing 220
LANDERNEAU facing 224
CALVARY, PLOUGASTEL facing 228
LIGHTHOUSE OF CRÉAC’H, OUESSANT facing 236
ROSCOFF 239
MA DOUEZ 244
CARVED WOOD STAIRCASE, MORLAIX facing 246
PROCESSION OF SAILORS, ST. JEAN DU DOIGT 247
OLD HOUSE, TRÉGUIER 253
HOUSE OF ERNEST RENAN, TRÉGUIER 254
SHRINE OF ST. YVES, TRÉGUIER 256
A BINOU PLAYER 261
BINIC 267
RAMPARTS OF ST. MALO facing 272
HOUSE OF DUGUAY-TROUIN, ST. MALO 281
TOWER OF SOLIDOR, ST. SERVAN facing 284
PLANS OF THE TOWER OF SOLIDOR 285
THE VALLEY OF THE RANCE (MAP) 292
DUGUESCLIN 293
REZ-DE-CHAUSSÉE OF DONJON, DINAN (DIAGRAM) 295
COIF OF MINIAC 307
MAYENNE facing 310
PLAN OF THE ANCIENT WALLS AND TOWERS OF
FOUGÈRES 314
BEUCHERESSE GATE, LAVAL 319
PLAN OF VITRÉ IN 1811, SHOWING CITY WALLS 321
CHÂTEAU DE VITRÉ facing 322
TOWER OF ST. MARTIN, VITRÉ 323
CHÂTEAU DE ROCHERS 325
ARMS OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ 327
MONASTERY OF ST. MÉLAINE, RENNES 331
HUELGOAT facing 340
PARDON OF ST. JEAN DU DOIGT facing 352
THE PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 359
THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 361
COMPARATIVE METRIC SCALE (DIAGRAM) 364
SKETCH MAP OF CIRCULAR TOUR IN BRITTANY 366
ARCHITECTURAL NAMES OF THE VARIOUS PARTS OF
A FEUDAL CHÂTEAU (DIAGRAM) 367
TIDE AND WEATHER SIGNALS IN THE PORTS OF
BRITTANY (DIAGRAM) 368
PART I.
RAMBLES IN BRITTANY
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY
The regard which every one has for the old French provinces is by
no means inexplicable. Out of them grew the present solidarity of
republican France, but in spite of it the old limits of demarcation
are not yet expunged. One and all retain to-day their individual
characteristics, manners, and customs, and also a certain subconscious
atmosphere.
Many are the casual travellers who know Normandy and Brittany, at least
know them by name and perhaps something more, but how many of those who
annually skim across France, in summer to Switzerland and in winter to
the Riviera or to Italy, there to live in seven-franc-a-day pensions,
and drink a particularly vile brand of tea, know where Brittany leaves
off and Normandy begins, or have more than the vaguest of vague notions
as to whether the charming little provincial capital of Nantes, on the
Loire, is in Brittany or in Poitou. A recollection of their school-day
knowledge of history will help them on the latter point, but geography
will come in and puzzle them still more.
There are many French writers, and painters for that matter, who have
made these provinces famous. Napoleon, perhaps, set the fashion, when
he wrote, in 1786, that eulogy beginning: “It is now six or seven years
since I left my native country.” More familiar is the “Native Land” of
Lamartine. Camille Flammarion wrote “My Cradle,” meaning Champagne;
Dumas wrote of Villers-Cotterets, and Chateaubriand and Renan of
Brittany; but head and shoulders above them all stand out Frederic
Mistral and his fellows of the Félibres at Avignon and Arles.
[Illustration: <u>_The Loire at Nantes_</u>]
All this offers a well-nigh irresistible fascination for those who
love literary and historic shrines,--and who does not in these days of
universal travel, personally conducted or otherwise? Not every one can
follow in the footsteps of Sterne with equal facility and grace, or
bask in the radiance of a Stevenson or a Gautier. Still, it is given
to most of us who know the lay of the land to discover for ourselves
the position of these celebrated shrines, whether the pilgrimage be
historical, literary, or artistic.
This is what gives a charm to travel, and even where no new thing is
actually discovered, no new pathways broken, there is, after all, a
certain zest in such an exploration rivalling that to be obtained from
an expedition to the uttermost confines of the Dark Continent, to Tibet,
or to Tierra del Fuego.
Primarily, the ancient provinces of France have a story of historical
and romantic purport not equalled in the chronicles of any other nation.
The distinctive types are but vaguely limned, but the Norman and the
Breton stand out most distinctly, and such figures as the Norman and
Breton dukes of real history live even more vividly in one’s mind than
D’Artagnan and his fellows in the great portrait-gallery of Dumas.
One need not be of the antiquary species in order to revel in the great
monuments of history abounding in Brittany even as in Normandy. There
are many and beautiful shrines elsewhere,--and doubtless some are more
popularly famous than any in Brittany,--but none have played greater or
more important rôles in the history and development of the France of
to-day than those of the two northwestern provinces.
As has been said, each of the great provinces into which France
was divided previous to the Revolution possessed characteristics,
unmistakable even to-day. As to the topography of any single one,
the question is so vast in its detail that more than mention of
principal features can hardly be made in a book such as this. It is
then perhaps enough that some slight information concerning Brittany
and its principal places should be recorded here, and that the chief
configurations of its territory should be outlined.
In addition to the principal old-time governments, there were the
ancient fiefs and local divisions, and these in many cases had names
often encountered in history and literature. Sometimes these were relics
of the still earlier day, of Gaul before the Roman conquest, their
ancient names having come down through the ages with but little change.
If one would understand the economic or agricultural aspect of France of
to-day, he must know these principal provinces by name at least.
When one is at Chartres, he must be aware that he is on the edge of the
great plateau of Beauce,--the granary of France,--and that as he crosses
into Brittany--perhaps through Perche, whence come the great-footed
Percherons--he enters the country of the ancient Veneti. Farther west
lies rock-bound Cornouaille, which in every characteristic resembles
Cornwall in Britain; Léon on the north, and finally Penthièvre.
The traveller remakes his history where he finds it. If he have a good
memory, this is not a difficult process, but, in any case, the French
guide-books, that is to say, those written in French, not the English or
Anglo-German variety, are sufficiently explicit as to dates and events
to set him on the right track.
The armchair traveller usually desires something more. He likes
his plain stories garnished with a not too elaborate series of
embellishment, both as to text and illustration, giving him some
tangible reminder of things as they are in this enlightened twentieth
century, when tram-cars have taken the place of the diligence, and the
electric light has supplanted the tallow dip, and one may well say with
Sterne: “Since France is so near to England, why not go to France?”
Here, in spots all but unknown even in Normandy and Brittany, the
traveller finds for himself monuments of a civilization gone before and
of a local history not yet completely erased, and as interesting as
those of any land made famous by antiquaries whose only claim to fame
rests upon their questionable ability in propounding new theories, of
which the chief merit is plausibility,--a process of history-making
sadly overdone of late in some parts.
Both in Brittany and in Normandy there are innumerable glorious
architectural monuments of a past from which history may be builded
anew. Character counts for a great deal with cities as with individuals.
One can love Rouen as the capital of the ancient Normandy, or Nantes as
the capital of Lower Brittany, but he will no more have the same sort of
affection for Lyons or for Nice than he will have it for Manchester or
for Chicago.
In the days of old, when each little town had its dignitaries, who may
have been counts or who may have been bishops, there was perhaps more
individuality than in the present age of monotonous prefects and mayors.
Nantes had its dukes, and Rouen had its prelates, and both of them,
even to-day, overshadow the civic dignitaries of their time; hence it is
the memory of the parts played by them which induces an association of
ideas prompting a desire to know personally the ground trodden by them.
Normandy and Brittany are supposed to be the happy hunting-grounds of
cheap tourists and trippers, but, as a matter of fact, the former do
not go beyond Dieppe, or the latter beyond the Channel Islands,--with
possibly a day excursion to St. Malo,--so no discomfort need really
arise from the fear of their presence. Furthermore, the tourists from
across Channel that one does meet in Normandy or Brittany to-day are not
so outrageous in their dress and manners as the type pictured by _Punch_.
It is a generally recognized fact that no special hardship is involved
in modern travel; caravansaries have for the most part given way to inns
which, if not exactly palatial, at least furnish creature comforts of a
quality quite as good or a great deal better than those to which most
travellers are accustomed at home. One may, and most likely will, miss
his or her particular brand of tea or tobacco, but will find substitutes
quite as excellent, and as far as the language question is concerned,
why, that lies at one’s own door, unless one wants to go out as a
disciple of Esperanto, the modern successor of Volapuk, dead years ago
of sheer weight of consonants.
This book, then, is meant to ensure better knowledge on the part of
the casual traveller of that delectable land which may be somewhat
vaguely described as old France, of which Brittany and Normandy are as
representative in their survivals as any other part.
CHAPTER II.
THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE
Brittany, the ancient province which underwent such a strife of warfare
and bloodshed in the struggle against invaders, and finally against
France, has become one of the most loyal of all the old-time divisions
making up the present republic. Her struggle against a curtailment of
her ancient rights and the attempts to conserve her liberties were
futile, and when the Duchess Anne took Louis XII. for her second
husband, Brittany became a part of the royal domain never to be
separated therefrom.
It was Duguesclin who saved it for France, Duchess Anne who enriched it,
Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Laennec, and Renan who made it illustrious in
letters, and Duguay-Trouin, Jacques Cartier, Surcouf, Du Couëdic, and
many besides who added to all this the spirit of adventure and romance
with which the chronicles of Brittany have ever abounded.
Commonly it has been called a land of granite, an expression which has
been consecrated by the usage of many years, but it is also a land most
picturesque, melancholy, and dreamy, with immense horizons of sea and
sky, and a climate strictly temperate throughout all the year.
“O landes, O forêts, pierres sombres et hautes,
Bois qui couvrez nos champs, mers qui battez nos côtes,
Villages où les morts errent avec les ventes,
Bretagne! d’où te vient l’amour de tes enfants.”
Brittany in early days had a parliament the most important in France.
Armorica was its more ancient name, which in old Breton signified “near
to the sea,” or “on the sea.”
From the beginning of the fifth century, for a matter of perhaps a
hundred years, the peninsula was known as Armorique, and its people
as Armoricans. After this time the name disappeared from general
use, and Brittany and Breton came. From the sixth century onward the
change became permanent, and such chroniclers as Gregory of Tours, for
instance, always referred to Britannia, Britanniœ, Britanni, and
Britones, in writing of the peninsula and its people.
When first peopled from Britain across the Channel, Brittany was the
most thinly populated part of all Gaul. Each wave of immigration, as
the Britons from across the water fled from the invading Saxons, added
to the population of the land, until ultimately it became as a hundred
Britons against ten Armoricans. At least, this is the way the French
historians and antiquaries put it, and so Armorique became Brittany,
and such is the origin of French Brittany, quite independent of the
etymology of the word Breton itself.
The inhabitants even to-day--more than in any other of the ancient
provinces of France--have preserved the ancient nomenclature of the land
and its people, and everywhere one finds only Bretons whose home is
Brittany.
Mercator, the map-maker, was more of a success than Mercator, the
historical chronicler. He said of the Bretons, in 1595, that they were
“for the most part avaricious and largely given to making distinctions
between glasses and tumblers.” As a matter of record, this is not so
true of the Bretons as it is of the Normans, or of the Germans, or of
the Spaniards. Up to the time of Cæsar the name Armorica seems to have
been applied to all the coast of Northwestern France of to-day, with a
little strip running as far south as the mouth of the Garonne, but more
particularly it afterward designated the peninsula of Brittany as we
know it to-day.
The region was early put under the guardianship of a chieftain, who
invariably, here as elsewhere in those days, took advantage of every
opportunity to advance his frontiers.
This attempted aggrandizement was not so successful here as in other
parts, and by the fifth century Armorica had shrunk to the region lying
entirely between the Seine and the Loire. In the life of St. Germain of
Auxerre one reads:
“Gens inter geminos notissima clauditur amnes
Armoricana prius veteri cognomine dicta est.”
Finally, at the close of the sixth century, Armorica merged itself in
Brittany, but the “Concile de Tours” makes a remarkable distinction
between the new settlers and those who had previously been known as
Romans. This distinction was also clearly made by St. Samson, who wrote
in the seventh century that Britannia was the name given to Armorica by
the exiled Britons who had fled from the Saxons and the Angles and had
there taken up their home.
Before the Roman conquest there were five tribes in the country, named
by Cæsar as the Nannetes, the Veneti, the Osismii, the Curiosolitæ,
and the Rhedones,--names which, with but slight evolution, exist even
to-day. Things went on quietly under Roman control, but when Clovis
became the master of a part of Gaul he was obliged to treat with the
Armoricans. Finally the Britons from across the sea came “like a
torrent,” and established themselves, changing the names of certain
regions to Cornouaille, Léon, Bro-Waroch, etc. Conquered in 799 by a
lieutenant of Charlemagne, the Bretons revolted again some little time
after, and, at the death of the great emperor, successfully withstood
the attacks of the formidable army which Louis the Amiable had sent
against them. For a quarter of a century Brittany now suffered attack
and pillage by the Normans, relieved only when Alain Barbe-Torte drove
the invaders from his territory. Previous to the Norman inroad, the
Bretons lived in petty tribes, of which each formed a “_plou_,” a prefix
still often met with in Breton place-names. The chief of a _plou_ was
known as a _machtiern_.
Up to this time no foreign customs had been introduced, but, after the
victories of Alain Barbe-Torte, tribal organization was succeeded by
that of the fief.
By the tenth century feudalism was thoroughly established throughout
most of the ancient provinces of France, and the land was covered with
seigniories, great and small, the one more or less dependent upon the
other. Dukes, counts, and seigneurs, each in his own territory, played
the hereditary sovereign in little, and above them was the suzerain
power of which they were vassals.
After the expulsion of the Normans, the ancient Breton kingdoms of
Domnonée, Cornouaille, and Bro-Waroch disappeared, and the sovereign of
all Brittany bore the title of duke.
Historians write of the nine ancient barons of Brittany, among whom
was divided the governmental control of the country, all of them being
virtually subject to the reigning duke. They were:
I. Seigneur d’Avaugour or De Goëllo.
II. Vicomte de Léon.
III. Seigneur de Fougères.
IV. Sire de Vitré.
V. Sire de Rohan.
VI. Seigneur de Chateaubriand.
VII. Seigneur de Retz.
VIII. Seigneur de la Roche-Bernard.
IX. Seigneur du Pont.
These original baronies expanded into a round hundred by the fifteenth
century, and the list of them contains the ancestral names of the Breton
nobility.
Henry II. of England dealt severely with Brittany, but his son Geoffrey
married Constance, the daughter of Duke Conan IV., and this made the
condition of the province more tolerable.
The first step toward the union of Brittany with the kingdom of France
came when--through the intrigues of Philip Augustus--the daughter of
Geoffrey Plantagenet married Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux, and a
prince of the blood royal of France. Joan of Penthièvre also married the
Count of Blois, another lieutenant of the King of France.
[Illustration: <u>_Device of Anne of Brittany_</u>]
The war of succession in Brittany between the ducal houses of Blois and
Montfort was, up to the fourteenth century, the principal event of the
province’s early history. The Montforts achieved final victory at Auray
in 1364. Upon the death of Francis II., his daughter Anne, the chief
figure in all Breton history, so far as existing memorials of her life
are concerned, became duchess.
[Illustration: <u>_Anne of Brittany_</u>]
In 1491, she married Charles VIII. of France, and eight years later his
successor, Louis XII. The daughter of this last marriage, the Princess
Claude of France, married the Duke of Angoulême, afterward Francis
the First, and the fortunes of Brittany and France were thenceforth
indissolubly allied, for, upon becoming Queen Claude of France, the
inheritor of Brittany ceded the province to her royal spouse and his
descendants in perpetuity. Queen Claude died in 1524, which event for
ever assured France of this province,--the most beautiful gem in the
royal crown. The union of Brittany and France was celebrated with much
pomp in 1532.
The ancient county or duchy of Bretagne was bordered on the east by
Anjou and Maine, on the west by the Atlantic, on the north by the
British Channel and Normandy, and on the south by Poitou. The province
had two territorial divisions, Upper and Lower, and Rennes was the
parliamentary capital.
Upper Brittany comprised the five episcopal dioceses of Dol, Nantes,
Rennes, Saint-Brieuc, and St. Malo, and Lower Brittany counted four
similar divisions, Quimper, St. Pol de Léon, Tréguier, and Vannes. Thus
the political divisions of a former day corresponded exactly with those
of the Church.
To-day Brittany is divided into five departments: Côtes du Nord,
Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Inférieure, and the Morbihan.
The administrative government of Brittany, or rather of its present-day
departments, like that of the rest of France, radiates from the
capital of the department, which is the residence of the prefect, the
tax-collector, the bishop, and, in general, of all heads of departments.
The chief town is also the seat of the General Council and (with few
exceptions) of the assize court.
The most ancient codified law of Brittany was known as the little book,
but the manuscript copy has been lost. The most ancient work which
recites the “customs” of this great province dates only from 1330. This
curious document is known as the “Very Ancient Law,” and contains 336
articles. “The Ancient Law” was compiled and published at Nantes in
1549, and contains 779 articles.
Brittany has been, and perhaps ever will be, considered by Frenchmen
an alien land, where, in its great plains and mountainous regions, in
the valleys of its bubbling rivers, and on its rock-bound shores, the
people, one and all, “speak a tongue so ancient and so strange that he
who hears it dreams of a vanished race.”
Yes, Brittany is a land of menhirs, of legends and superstitions, but
all this but makes a roundabout journey the more enjoyable, and one
must really cross and recross it to its uttermost confines in order to
realize its great variation of manners and customs, to say nothing of
speech, for, even though the Breton tongue is dying out as a universal
language, one still buys his post-card with a queer legend on its face,
which looks like Dutch at first glance, but really is Breton.
In Madame de Sévigné’s time the ladies of Lower Brittany were famous
for their beauty. In “Letter XLIV.,” written to her daughter, Madame de
Sévigné said: “Many beauties of Lower Brittany were present at the great
ball, the brilliant Mademoiselle de L----, a fine girl who dances very
well.”
[Illustration: <u>_Breton Post-card_</u>]
Things do not seem to have changed greatly to-day, and, although Madame
de Sévigné wrote of court beauties only, in the Lower Province one
frequently meets such beauty of face as one does not see everywhere in
France. It must be owned that the figures, if not exactly found wanting,
are often too ample. The sternness of the land, like the bleakness of
Holland, has, apparently, added no end of grace to the features of the
women, whatever may have been its hardening effect upon the men.
In Cornouaille, Latin _Cornu-Galliæ_, one finds almost the same name
and the same derivation as in English Cornwall, and the topographical
aspect is much the same in both instances. “The people of Cornuaille are
faithful to tradition, and above all others merit the name of Bretons,”
says J. Guillon.
The Province of Léon forms the northern part of the Department of
Finistère. The name was a development from Pagus Legionensis, a large
military colony having been quartered there in Roman times.
In the south the ancient Breton Province of Bro-Waroch became the
county of Vannes, the counts being in reality dependents of the Duke
of Brittany; their people spoke, and retain even to-day, a distinct
dialect, greatly varying from that of the rest of Brittany.
In the earliest times, both Nantes and Rennes were the seat of important
administrative governments, but the Counts of Nantes ceded their fiefs
to the Bretons in the eleventh century. Chief of these were the fiefs of
the Baron of Retz, the Seigneur de Clisson, who defended the southern
frontier against Poitou, and the Baron of Ancenis, who was the bulwark
between Brittany and Anjou.
In the north, the ancient Breton kingdom of Domnonée was, in the twelfth
century, divided into two counties, that of Penthièvre and Tréguier.
It was Duke Geoffrey who introduced feudalism of the Anglo-Norman and
French variety. In earlier times, when a nobleman died, his children
divided his lands and goods in equal parts among them, but in Normandy
and France the estate went to the eldest of the line.
It was only in the twelfth century that the Bretons went outside their
own domain. Previously, they were decidedly an untravelled race, but
under Philip the Fair Paris came to know Breton well, though chiefly
through the poorer classes.
They went to the schools and seminaries of Orleans to become clerics;
sold their cattle and horses in the markets of Paris, and their wheat
in Maine and Anjou, and their feudal lords, it is perhaps needless to
say, bought their dress in the capital of fashion, and their wines in
Gascony. From this time, Brittany may be said to have been opened to the
world.
Not always were the Bretons a peaceful, law-abiding race, at least
they did not always appear in such a light to their contemporaries.
According to Bouchart, Duke Francis II. received a letter wherein his
brother-in-law, the Count of Foix, said: “Monseigneur, I declare to
God, I would rather be the ruler of a million of wild boars than of such
a people as are your Bretons.”
In 1460, Francis II. founded the University of Nantes, thus doing away
with the necessity of the young Breton’s going to Paris, Orleans, or
Angers for his education.
Printing was discovered in Germany, and all in good time it appeared
in Brittany, at Lannion, and at Tréguier. There were establishments
devoted to the art even before they existed in such important places as
Lyons or Montpellier. One of the first books printed in Brittany was a
French-Breton dictionary, published in 1499, and known as the Catholicon
of Jean Lagadeuc.
By this time, a remarkable form of government, unique in all the
world, was established in Brittany. In some respects it was modelled
on the English Parliament, but in no way resembled that of the French
legislative body.
The Estates met each year at Rennes, at Vannes, at Nantes, at Redon, at
Vitré, or at Dinan, and at last, under Francis II., Parliament came to
be a fixture at Rennes.
Even after the union of Brittany with France, the ancient rights,
privileges, and liberties were assured to the old province until the
Revolution. These sittings of the Estates at Rennes were sumptuous
affairs, accompanied by a round of feasting and dancing at which
appeared all the aristocracy who could.
Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter of one of the grand affairs as
follows:
“The good cheer is excessive; the roasts are brought on entire, and the
pyramids of fruit are so huge as to make it necessary to take down the
doors for their entrance.... After dinner, MM. de Locmaria and Coëtlegon
danced with two Breton girls, taking some amazing steps.... Play is
continuous, balls endless, and thrice a week there are comedies.”
The relations between the nobility and peasantry in seventeenth-century
Brittany were perhaps closer and more affectionate than in any other
part of France. The noblemen frequently visited the peasants on their
farms, and on Sunday the peasants danced in the courts of the castles
and manor-houses.
“Virtually, under the old system, Brittany was peopled by rural
nobility,” says Cambry, and indeed this must have been so, for within a
small radius of Plougasnou were more than two hundred noblemen’s houses,
“so poor,” says the chronicler, “that their inhabitants might well be
classed with the labourers themselves.”
Brittany’s part in the Revolution was equivocal. The Republicans really
had beaten the Royalists, but they had also aided the Girondins, and at
Paris the Girondins were as much hated as the Royalists themselves. The
Convention sent its representatives into the province, not to thank the
Bretons for their help in the great struggle, but with the idea of still
further arousing the passions of the people.
Among these representatives were Geurmer, Prieur de la Marne,
Jean-Bon-St.-Andre, and the rascally and heartless Carrier, who drowned
his hundreds at Nantes, and guillotined twenty-six Bretons in one day at
Brest.
The Breton feeling and sympathy was in the main with the Republicans,
though manifestly the majority had no sympathy with the rule of
the Terrorists. It is curious to note, however, the change in the
nomenclature of places in the endeavour to eliminate the religious
and aristocratic prefixes and suffixes with which many of the Breton
place-names were endowed.
St. Cast became Havre-Cast.
St. Fiacre became Fiacre-les-Bois.
St. Gildas became Gildas du Chaneau.
St. Gilles-les-Bois became Bellevue.
St. Jacut-de-la-Mer became Isle Jacut and Port Jacut.
Chateaulin became Cité sur Aôn.
Pont l’Abbé became Pont Marat.
Quimper became Montagne sur Odet.
St. Martin des Champs became Unité des Champs.
St. Pol de Léon became Port Pol.
Belle Ile en Mer became Ile de l’Unité.
Château Fouquet became Maison-des-Sans-Culottes.
Isle aux Moins became Isle du Morbihan.
Roche-Bernard became La Roche Sauveur.
Rochefort en Terre became Roche des Trois.
St. Gildas de Rhuis became Abélard.
St. Briac became Port Briac.
St. Lunaire became Port Lunaire.
St. Malo became Port Malo.
St. Servan became Port Solidor.
With the incoming of the Empire, most of these names reverted to their
early form.
In our day, while many of the old provinces of France have suffered--if
they really do “suffer”--from a decreasing population, Brittany has
augmented her numbers continually. It is a well-worn saying among the
political economists of France that the “fine and healthy race of
Bretons is one of the greatest reserves and hopes of the republic.”
Three-quarters of all those who man French ships come from the Breton
peninsula.
Hamerton has said that no race, more than the English, had so strong
a tendency to form attachments for places outside their native land.
There may be many reasons for this, and assuredly the subject is too
vast and varied to be more than hinted at here. Brittany, at any rate,
has proved, in and out of season, a haven, as safe as a home-port,
for the Briton and his family, when they would not wander too far.
Possibly it comes after Switzerland, though France as a whole, “the most
architectural country in Europe,” has been sadly neglected, for, as has
been said before, no Englishman ever loved France as Browning loved
Italy.
The native love of the Frenchman for the land of his birth is, to him,
above all else. It is almost incomprehensible to an outsider; it is
something more than mere patriotism; it is the love of an artist for his
picture, as Balzac said of his love of Touraine. This sentiment goes
deep. After the province comes the immediate environment of his village,
and then the village. “_Rien n’est plus beau que mon village, en verité
je vous le dis._” Thus has written and spoken many a great Frenchman.
Nowhere in the known world is provincialism so deep and profound a trait
as in France; and the Breton is always a Breton, contemptuous of the
Norman, God-fearing, and peaceful toward all. There is throughout France
always an intense provincial rivalry, though it seldom rises to hatred
or even to jealousy.
Probably there is no great amount of truth in the following quatrain,
evidently composed by a resident of Finistère, and there first heard
by the writer of this book, but it reflects those little rivalries and
ambitions which have appeared in the daily life-struggle among the
inhabitants of other nations since the world began:
“Voleur comme un Léonard,
Traitre comme un Trégarrais,
Sot comme un Vannetais,
Brutal comme un Cornouaillais.”
Sometimes the love of one’s own country may be carried to an extreme.
We read that for long years, and until recently, the inhabitants of
Trélaze positively refused to assimilate with outside conditions of life
to the least degree, and finding a Breton of this little zone or islet
who spoke French was as improbable as to find one who spoke English.
At St. Brieuc there is a special quarter where the Breton-speaking
folk live to the number of two thousand, and this out of a population
of only twenty-two thousand, while at Nantes the Bretons number ten
thousand. At Angers there is a large and apparently growing Breton
colony; likewise at Havre, in Normandy, where they have a special chapel
in which the priest preaches in the Breton tongue. At Paris, too, there
are various Breton colonies, and the Church of St. Paul and St. Louis,
in St. Anthony’s Street, has a Breton priest. It is the same with the
church of Vaugirard. At Havre there are something over three thousand
Breton-speaking persons, and in Paris seven thousand.
Perhaps Brittany has produced fewer great painters and sculptors than
any other section of France, but all Bretons are artists in no very
small way, as witness their wonderfully picturesque dress and their
charmingly stage-managed fêtes and ceremonies.
The pioneer painter of Breton subjects was doubtless Adolph Leleux, who,
as one of the romantic school in Paris, found in this province what many
another of his contemporaries was seeking for elsewhere, and discovered
Brittany, as far as making it a popular artists’ sketching-ground is
concerned. His first paintings of this region were exhibited in the
Salons of 1838-39-40, and Paris raved over them. His peasant folk,
with their embroidered waistcoats and broad-brimmed hats, had the very
atmosphere of Brittany.
[Illustration: <u>_St. Brieuc_</u>]
Leleux’s success was the signal for a throng of artists to follow in his
footsteps, and to-day their number is countless, and the very names of
even the most famous would form too long a list to catalogue here.
Among Leleux’s most celebrated canvases were “La Karolle, Danse
Bretonne” 1843; “Les Faneuses,” 1846; “Le Retour du Marché,” 1847;
“Cour de Cabaret,” 1857; “Jour de Fête en Basse Bretagne,” 1865; and
successively the “Foire Bretonne,” “Les Braconniers,” “Le Pêcheur de
Homards,” “Pèlerinage Breton,” and “Le Cri du Chouan.”
In all these works one finds the true Brittany of Rosporden and
Penmarc’h.
Fortin’s “Cahute de Mendicant dans le Finistère” (1857), “La
Bénédicité,” and “La Chaumière du Morbihan” follow Leleux as a good
second, then Trayers with “Marché Breton and “Marchande de Crepes à
Quimperlé.”
Among other noted pictures are Darjours’s “Palaudiers du Bourg de Batz”
and the “Fagotiers Bretons”; Guerard’s “Jour de Fête” and “Messe du
Matin, Ille-et-Vilaine”; Fischer’s “Chemin du Pardon” and “Auberge à
Scaër,” and Roussin’s “Famille Bretonne.”
Gustave Brion, with his “Bretons à la Porte d’une Eglise”; Yan
Dargent, with his “Sauvetage à Guisseny,” and Jules Noel, with his
“Danse Bretonne,” and various landscapes of Brest, Quimper, Auray, and
Douarnenez, are on the list of names of those who made the Breton region
famous in the mid-nineteenth century.
Since then, the followers in their footsteps have been almost too many
to number.
Most folk call to mind with very slight appreciable effort such
masterpieces as Jules Breton’s “Retraite aux Flambeaux” and “Plantation
d’un Calvaire,” now in the museum at Lille, and Charles Cottet’s
“Bateaux de Pêche à Camaret” in the Luxembourg gallery.
In addition, there have been innumerable “great pictures” painted by
English and American artists whose very names form too long a list to
catalogue here.
CHAPTER III.
THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE
One reason for the diversified interests of France and the varying
methods of life is the vastly diversified topographical features. “Great
plains as large as three Irelands,” said Hamerton, “and yet mountainous
districts quite as large as the whole of the British Isles.” This
should have served to disabuse British travellers of some false notions
regarding France, but many of them still hold to the views which are to
be gained by railway journeys across the lowlands of Gaul, forgetting
for a moment that well within the confines of France there are fifty
mountain peaks above eleven thousand feet high, and that majestic Mont
Blanc itself rises on French soil.
Then there are the two thousand miles of seacoast which introduce
another element of the population, from the dark-skinned sailor of the
Mediterranean to his brother of Finistère, who is brought into the world
chiefly to recruit the French navy. The Norman sailorman is a hardy,
intrepid navigator even to-day, but he is to a great extent of the
longshore and fishing-boat variety, whereas the true Breton is a sailor
through and through.
Before now, Brittany has been compared, disparagingly, with Provence,
and with some justness perhaps. Provence, however, does not persistently
broil under a “fierce, dry heat,” and Brittany is not by any means
“a wind and wave swept land, where nothing nourishes itself or grows
fat.” Potatoes are even fattening, and Brittany, in all conscience,
grows enough of that useful commodity to feed all France. In three
things Brittany and Provence more than a little resemble one another.
Both preserve, to a very remarkable extent, their ancient language and
their old-time manners and customs, though in all three they are quite
different one from the other.
The general topographical aspect of the coast of the whole Breton
peninsula is stern and wild, whether one encounters the dreary waste of
sand, in the midst of which sit Mont St. Michel and Tombelaine, or the
cliffs away to the westward, or the bleak and barren Belle Ile en Mer,
where Fouquet built his famous stronghold.
On the “Emerald Coast” the sea and sky are often of a true Neapolitan
clearness, and, indeed, the climate of the whole peninsula is, even in
winter, as mild as many a popularly fashionable Mediterranean resort;
but it is not always so bright and sunny; there is a deal of rain in
winter, and often a penetrating dampness, whose only brother is the
genuine Scotch mist.
Still, in all but four months of the year, there is a brilliancy and
softness about the climate of the coast of Brittany which encourages
violets, roses, onions, and potatoes to come to maturity at so early a
date that the Londoner has ceased to raise the question as to whether or
not they may be “best English,” when he sees these products laid out of
an early morning in his beloved Covent Garden.
To know a country or its people at its best, one should really take one
of its great men for a guide. Hear then what Chateaubriand says of “La
Terre Bretonne”:
“This long peninsula, of a wild and savage aspect, has much of
singularity about it: its narrow valleys, its non-navigable rivers
bathing the feet of its ruined castle-keeps and châteaux, its old
abbeys, its thatch-covered houses, and its cattle herded together in its
arid pastures. One valley is separated from another by forests of oak,
with holly bushes as large as beech-trees, and druidical stones around
which sea-birds are for ever circling.
“Of an imagination lively, but nevertheless melancholic, of a humour as
flexible as their character is obstinate, the Bretons are distinguished
for their piety, and none the less for their bravery, their fidelity,
their spirit of independence, and their patriotism. Proud and
susceptible, but without ambition and little suited to the affairs of
court or state, they care nothing for honours or for rank.”
The picture is not very vivid, but it is wonderfully true, and of this
one meets continual evidence in a journey around the coast, from the Bay
of St. Michel in the north to Belle Ile or Nantes in the south.
No part of France has a physiognomy more original than Bretagne; none
has been marked by nature in a more emphatic manner than this ancient
home of the Celts.
“...la terre du granit
Et de l’immense et morne lande.”
It is indeed a land of contrasts, where ancient, mystical, and weird
menhirs and dolmens, relics of prehistoric times, are mingled with
mediæval monuments and modern forts, arsenals, and viaducts.
The country is by no means unlovely, but it partakes of none of the
conventional beauties of other parts. It is not sterile, though it is
stern; it is not very fertile, but its product is ample; and it stands
as the most westerly point of the mainland of Northern Europe, open to
all the wild buffetings of the tempestuous Atlantic which has sculptured
its coast-line into such fantastic forms that a shipwrecked mariner must
think himself fallen upon the most stern and rock-bound of coasts.
The general aspect of Brittany is green and gray. It is, as the Breton
himself says, an austere heath,--the country-side half-effaced in
demi-tints, and the sea boisterous and wicked.
This, however, is only one of its moods; to-morrow it may be as
brilliantly sunlit as the Bay of Naples, and may have a sea and sky of
gold and turquoise. But this mood passes quickly, and again it settles
down to a misty softness and mildness of climate that has given its name
to one of the five great climatic divisions of France, the Armorican.
The sunsets of Brittany are always glorious. Nowhere on the rim of great
ocean’s mirror are there more splendid and grandly scenic effects to be
observed. An exceedingly realistic Frenchman once described a sunset in
the Bay of Douarnenez as a “bloody apotheosis,” the real aspect of which
is readily inferred. Of this Breton Cornouaille, Béranger sang:
“Faisons honte aux hirondelles.
Tu croiras, sur nos essieux,
Que la terre a pris des ailes
Pour passer devant les yeux.”
The country inland is as original as the coast, and both the peasant on
shore and the sailor on the sea are Breton to the core. Never has
Brittany been called charming or gracious, never lovely or sweet, but
always cold, though not so in climate, which is always terrible and
austere.
But, for all that, it is delightful, and when one has tired of the
stupid gaieties of Switzerland or the Rhine, let him rough it a bit
among the low hills and valleys of the Côtes du Nord, or the rocky
promontories and inlets of Finistère, or, on the south coast between
Quimper and Nantes, on one of those little tidal rivers such as the
Aven, and let him learn for himself that there is something new under
the sun, even on well-trodden ground.
Truth to tell, Brittany is not nearly so well known to English-speaking
folk as it should be. There is a fringe of semi-invalid, semi-society
loiterers centred around St. Malo, and enlivened in the summer months by
the advent of a little world of literary and artistic folk from Paris.
Then there is an artist colony or two in Lower Brittany, where the
visitors work hard, dress uncouthly, and live cheaply for four or five
months of the year. At Nantes there is the overflow of tourists of
convention from the châteaux district of Touraine, and up and down the
length and breadth of Brittany, from Mont St. Michel to St. Nazaire, and
from Dol to Brest, are to be found occasional wanderers on bicycles or
in motor-cars.
The great mass, however, is herded around the conventionally “gay” five
o’clock resorts of Dinard, Paramé, and St. Malo, and in by far the
greater area of the province the seeker for pleasure and true
edification is far more rare than is popularly supposed. The occasional
rather wretched hotel has hitherto kept the fastidious away, and the
terrific hobnails of the Breton wooden shoe have all but driven
travellers in motor-cars and bicycle riders to despair. Both these
deterrents, real and fancied, are disappearing, however. The hygienic
bedrooms of the Touring Club are found here and there, and the peasants,
or, at least, some of them, now wear a sort of cast-iron sole
apparently clamped or riveted to the wooden shoe; at least there are no
big, pointed, mushroom-headed tacks to drop out, point uppermost, in dry
weather.
The topographical aspect of Brittany is largely due to the two great
zones of granite formation which come together at their western
extremities,--the mountains of Alençon and the jutting rocks that come
to the surface from Poitou northward.
In general, the whole aspect of Brittany echoes the words of Brizeaux,
the Lorient poet:
“O terre de granit, recouverte de chênes.”
One would hardly call Brittany mountainous, but its elevations are
notable, nevertheless, in that they rise, for the most part, abruptly
from the dead level of the ocean. Inland, the topography takes on more
of the nature of a rolling moorland, with granite cropping out here and
there in the elevations. The following quatrain describes it exactly:
“À MON PAYS
“O ma chère Bretagne,
Que j’aime tes halliers,
Tes verdoyants graniers,
Et ta noire montagne.”
--_Corbinais._
The greatest altitudes in Brittany are: The Sillon de Bretagne (near
Savenay), eighty-nine metres; La Motte (Montagnes Noires between Quimper
and Brest), 289 metres; Menez Hom (Montagnes Noires), 330 metres; Mont
St. Michel (Montagne d’Arrée), 391 metres.
The Breton rivers are not great rivers as the waterways of the world go,
although they are important indeed to the country which they irrigate.
Chief among them are the Vilaine, navigable to Rennes, the Rance, the
Odet, the Aulne, and of course the Loire, which flanks the southern
boundary of the old province nearly up to its juncture with the Mayenne,
and continues its navigable length in Brittany up to, and a trifle
beyond, the town of the same name. The Couesnon, flowing northward
into the vast Bay of Mont St. Michel, forms the northeastern boundary
separating Brittany from Normandy.
The great length of irregular coast-line accounts for the continuation
of the generally severe and stern aspect of the interior, the sombre
granite cliffs jutting far out into the open, half-enclosing great bays
and forming promontories and headlands which are characteristically
Breton and nothing else. They might resemble those of the Greek
mainland and archipelago were they but environed with the life and
languor of the South, but, as it is, they are Breton through and
through, and their people have all their hopes and sympathies wrapped up
in the occupations of a colder clime.
The old territorial limits of the Province of Brittany embraced a small
tract south of the Loire, known as _Le Rais_, or the Retz country.
Here is Clisson, the feudal castle and estate so constantly recurring in
French history. Pornic, Paimbœuf, and the Lac de Grande Lieu also lie
southward of the Loire in this old appanage, but, in the main, Breton
history was played on the Armorican peninsula north of the Loire.
The height of the tides on the Breton coast varies considerably. All
this is caused by the flow of the North Sea and the Straits of Calais
meeting the current coming directly from the Atlantic, so that in some
instances the flood-tide rises to a height of from fifty to sixty feet
above “dead water,” as the French call it.
The immense Bay of Mont St. Michel, at low water, is a stretch of bare
sand more than three hundred square kilometres in extent, but it is
completely covered and converted into a great tranquil gulf by the
rising tide.
[Illustration: <u>_Croisic_</u>]
At Croisic, at the mouth of the Loire, there is a 5.16 metre rise of
the tide, which around the Breton coast-line varies as follows:
Port Navalo, Morbihan 4.72
Lorient 4.60
Concarneau 4.68
Douarnenez 6.16
Brest 6.42
Ouessant 6.38
Roscoff 8.22
Ile Brehat 9.90
St. Malo 11.44
Iles Chausey 11.74
Mont St. Michel 12.30
The aspect of the region round about Dol, in the north, is that of a
little Holland, with its flats and windmills and its cultivated ground
protected from the sea by a rim of downs and dikes. It is not so very
great an expanse that follows these outlines, but the likeness is one
to be remarked. To the westward lie the jutting rocks and capes, beyond
which are the isolated islands of Ouessant and its fellows, and all
around the coast extend landlocked bays and harbours sheltering the
great fishing ports of Douarnenez and Concarneau and the commercial
ports of St. Malo, Morlaix, Brest, Lorient, and Vannes.
From a military and strategic point of view the whole northwest coast of
France, from the mouth of the Loire through Brittany and Normandy, is
exceedingly well protected, with a great port and base of supplies both
at Brest in Brittany and at Cherbourg in Normandy.
Forts Minden, Ville Martin, and Penthièvre, Port Louis, Lorient, and
Brest, and the Forts du Pilier, Le Palais, Lacroix, Cezon, and Château
du Taureau, with St. Malo and Fort des Rimains, protect the whole Breton
seashore in practically unassailable fashion, though there are still the
sea fights at Ouessant, in 1778 and 1794, and The Hogue in 1692, to say
nothing of the land engagements at Quiberon in 1795, to remember.
[Illustration: Map of Bretagne]
CHAPTER IV.
TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY
Tourists are commonly supposed to belong to the pleasure-seeking
or invalid class, and so they mostly do, still one may travel for
instruction (which is pleasure, also) and be mindful of the conditions
of life around him, and profit accordingly, unless he absolutely demands
the life of the boulevards of Paris or the homœopathic excitements of
the little horses in some popular watering-place.
It is undoubtedly true that most tourists are of limited interests,
which may be pleasure, or art, or architecture, or worshipping at
historical shrines. All this is well enough in its way, but if one could
combine a modicum of each he would profit much more largely, to say
nothing of being amused and instructed, too.
The time has long since passed when travellers reviled Brittany as
a province where “husbandry was no further advanced than among the
Hurons,” as a writer of the eighteenth century said within twenty-four
hours after he had crossed the boundary between Normandy and Brittany,
at Pontorson, where the causeway road branches off to Mont St. Michel.
Evidences of husbandry are still very much to the fore, but it is more
advanced in the interior, at least; on the coast the harvest of the sea
takes its place.
Brittany, in husbandry, may not be so advanced as some other parts.
There are no such elaborate operations going on here as in the regions
where high farming is practised--in Beauce, or Normandy, or Anjou.
Neither are such numbers of mechanical farming-tools in operation,
but in spite of all this there is a very considerable and prosperous
industry born of the soil of which most strangers to Brittany, and some
who have travelled there, are entirely ignorant. All along the great
highways crossing and recrossing Brittany one sees the little roadside
farms with their attendant small flocks of live stock, sheep, cattle,
geese, ducks, and fowls, which point, at any rate, to the fact that the
peasant need not be as ill-nourished as he is generally supposed to be;
and really he is not.
The charm of journeying by road in France is indescribable, perhaps,
to its fullest degree. Natural beauties count for much, but in a land
peopled with historic castles, churches, and abbeys, as Normandy and
Brittany are, it is found doubly enjoyable even though one professes no
expert architectural knowledge, or no profound aptitude for historical
research. These, however, are but side-lights, which make the actual
pilgrimage among such shrines greatly to be cherished among one’s
personal experiences.
It is the whole which pleases, and not fragmentary and piecemeal
beauties and charms; and never was this more true than of a well-beloved
land, be it one’s own or an alien shore.
Brittany and its travel routes, whether by road or rail, offer as full a
measure of all these attractions as it is possible for one to conceive.
The great highways of Brittany have not the same favour with travellers
by road as those of other parts of France. They are equally important
and equally well cared for by a paternal government, but their inclines
are steeper--sometimes suicidal--and certainly more frequent than
elsewhere in France, and distances stretch out interminably.
[Illustration: <u>_The Main Roads of Brittany_</u>]
The great national road which stretches from Paris to Brest covers a
distance nearly equal to that from Paris to Turin, or from Paris to
Amsterdam.
There are, however, in Brittany no long stretches of unrolled road
surface, and for the most part the roadways are as smooth as can
anywhere be found. Were it not for the eternal switchbacks, and the
aforementioned hobnail, with its pointed end usually upmost, Brittany
would be a far more popular touring-ground for the automobile than it
is. The hooded cart of Normandy and Brittany, such as one meets going
to and from the market-towns, is another real dread to the man in the
motor-car.
It is not that the occupant is unwilling to hear one’s horn, but it is
almost impossible that he should against a head-wind, until you are
close upon him. It is useless to point to your ear as you whisk by and
ask him--in a shout--if he is deaf, or to say: “Well, now, you sleep
well.” He will pay little or no attention to you, and anyway, most
likely, he was _not_ asleep, as are so many of his fellows that one
meets on English roads.
In Brittany the traveller by road often meets an obstruction in the
shape of a flock of sheep slowly making its way toward one, or in the
opposite direction, or even a flock of ducks or geese, which are even
more dreadful. Sheep are stupid, hens and chickens are silly, but geese
are arrogant and obstinate.
It is very disconcerting, of course, for the motor-car driver at full
speed to have to draw in his ten, or twenty, or thirty horses in order
to avoid decapitating a whole goose and gosling family, but it lends a
charm to the travel, which a badly paved stretch of roadway--in Picardy,
for instance--wholly lacks.
Here when one does actually run into a flock of geese, such as one sees
on the high-coloured posters advertising a certain make of car, and in
the comic journals, it is one of the real humours of life. The amount of
curiosity an old goose or gander can show in a death-dealing motor-car
as it rushes by, and the chances they take of sudden death, are enough
to give an ordinarily careful driver innumerable heart-leaps.
This is about all the trouble one is likely to meet on Breton roads,
except, of course, the always present grazing cows, which here, though
they are always attended,--generally by a small boy or girl, who often
is not able to keep them in line as one would wish,--are allowed to
stray freely, and are not tethered as they are throughout Normandy.
It is not for the aforesaid reasons alone that motor-cars are scarce
in Brittany, for, after all, they form but minor troubles as compared
with the eccentricities of the machinery itself, and the tourist in
a motor-car is usually prepared for most things which are likely to
happen to him _en route_. So really if one likes a hilly country--and
it is not without its charms--Brittany offers much in the way of varied
and natural beauties that certain other provinces lack. Touraine, for
instance, delightful as it is as a touring-ground, is as proverbially
flat as a billiard-table.
There are, in the first place, not nearly so many motor-cars owned in
Brittany, and accordingly there are astonishingly few shelters and
repairers. Apparently, the Breton does not care for the new-fangled
means of locomotion, not recognizing, perhaps, that it has come to stay.
Still less does the Breton peasant’s brother, the Breton sailor or
fisherman, care for the motor-boat, which ought to have a great vogue in
such great inland seas as Morbihan, the Bay of Douarnenez, or the Goulet
or the roadstead of Brest.
The sailor of Brest or Lorient and the little fishing villages of the
west will tell you: “I like my boat better, with my sail and my arms
for motors.”
Often these great stretches of Breton roadway show an aspect of human
nature that is probably the same the world over; a peasant man or woman
is leading a cow,--always on the wrong side of the road, of course,--or
a sleepy farm-hand is drawing his cart to or from market,--still on the
wrong side of the road,--when the whirr and snort of a motor-car does
something more than awaken echoes.
The cows entangle themselves in their leading ropes, and the usually
placid horses bolt with the cart into the ditch. The native, of course,
reviles the car and its occupants, not because he hates them,--for they
are one of the mainstays of the inns of the countryside,--but merely to
display that untamable spirit of independence, which every mother’s son
of a French peasant has developed to a high degree.
In Brittany, as in most other lands,--in summer,--the traveller by road
gathers in a fine crop of wingy, stingy things, which project themselves
into one’s eyes with a formidable force when one goes at them with a
swift-moving car.
Occasionally one thinks he has come upon a vast convention of them,
so many are they in numbers and variety--flies, wasps, bees, and what
not, with a peculiar Gallic species of fly so infinitesimal that one
only stops to clear them out when he feels that his eyes are so full
of them that they may be uncomfortably crowded. The real or fabled
Jersey mosquito would go out of business with his Breton brother as a
competitor. Truly this is a new terror, and one that certainly was not
apparent, to anything like the present extent, before the advent of the
motor-car.
One comes upon a dull week in Brittany often, even in summer, when the
sky remains overcast, and great clouds roll up from out of the western
ocean. Often it is not cold, but it is bitterly damp and sticky, even
though it does not rain, but the native does not seem to mind it, at
least, he never complains.
The only objector ever met with by the writer was a Gascon who kept
a pharmacy at Quimper. He discussed it as follows: “Hideous country!
The wind blows here every day in the year, and the rest of the time it
rains,” he continued, enigmatically. “Yes, that abominable wind always
plays the same trick on me! What a country!” He was probably thinking of
his own bright and sunny home in the South, where seldom, if ever, are
conditions other than brilliantly tranquil.
There are three great highroads which cross Brittany from east to west,
the main road of Brittany from Alençon in Normandy, through Mayenne,
Fougères, Dol, Dinan, Guingamp, and Morlaix to Brest; the southern road
from Paris via Le Mans, or even following the Loire valley down from
Orleans to Nantes, and thence westward via Vannes, Lorient, and Quimper
to Brest, thus making the complete circuit of the Breton coast. A midway
course lies in almost a direct line east and west through Laval, Vitré,
Rennes, Ploërmel, Pontivy, and Carhaix.
These three highroads cover completely the itinerary of Brittany, in so
far as they follow the north and south coast and the country-side lying
between.
Cross country, from the Bay of Mont St. Michel to the mouth of the
Loire, one “route nationale” lies directly through Rennes, and another
ends at Vannes, in Morbihan.
These cover practically all the regular lines of traffic, and include
all the chief points of historical and topographical instances.
[Illustration: <u>_Travel Routes in Brittany_</u>]
Distances of themselves are not great in Brittany. From St. Malo to
Nantes is but 180 kilometres; from Laval to Brest but 337 kilometres;
and from Nantes to Brest is but 324 kilometres.
In these days of motor-cars and even bicycles, these distances are not
great, and so long as they are not taken at a rush,--which forbids
enjoyment,--they form no drawback to the pleasures of travel by road in
Brittany. One has only to add two or three hundred kilometres more, in
order to reach the starting-points of Nantes, Laval, or St. Malo from
Paris. Then the tour may seem a lengthy one; but even this is nothing
to find fault with; the intermediate country is in itself delightful,
whether one journeys down through the Orleanais, Touraine, and Anjou, or
westward through the heart of Normandy.
The railways in Brittany, except on some of the cross-country routes,
are developed to a high stage of efficiency. The great express lines of
the Western Railroad to St. Malo and to Brest run due west from Paris,
straight almost as the crow flies. Again, one may make his entry via
Nantes and the Loire valley through Touraine and Anjou by the Orleans
line, and have the satisfaction of setting out from Paris by the world’s
finest and most modern railway station, that wonderfully convenient and
artistic structure on the Quay of Orsay.
Rennes is the great railway centre of Brittany, and accordingly all
roads lead to Rennes. Here one may make up his itinerary at a price
which will include nearly every place west of that point for a matter
of _frcs._ 65 for first-class, and _frcs._ 50, second-class, and if
he tell the clerk of the booking-office at his point of departure for
Rennes that he intends doing this (and agrees with the formalities) he
will get a discount of forty per cent, on the price of first or second
class tickets up to that point. A plan of this itinerary and further
particulars are given in the appendix.
Third-class railway travel in Brittany ought to form one of the
long-remembered experiences of one’s visit to that province.
There is much amusement to be got out of a journey across Brittany from
St. Malo to Nantes, with mob-capped peasant-folk and blue-bloused and
picturesque farmers, all laden with huge baskets and bundles, and an
occasional live fowl, or perhaps a rabbit, or even a guinea-pig, though
one must not believe that Frenchmen eat guinea-pigs. The writer, at
least, never saw one being eaten, though what use they are really put to
is an open question.
Occasionally there will be a want of elbow-room in a third-class
carriage, but this is no great inconvenience, as the Breton mostly
travels short distances only, and at the next station one may be left
alone with only a drowsy Breton sailor--off on a furlough from a
man-of-war--to keep him company, with his red-knobbed tam-o’-shanter
rakishly over one ear.
Often a _foreigner_ will throw himself into one’s compartment,--an
American or an English artist, with his sketching paraphernalia, white
umbrella and all,--for artist-folk are mostly of the genus who travel
third-class. Good-naturedly enough, if his journey be a long one, he
will tell you much of the country round about, for your artist is one
who knows the byways as well as the highways--and perhaps a little
better. By this procedure, one stands a chance of gathering information
as well as being edified and amused.
CHAPTER V.
THE BRETON TONGUE AND LEGEND
The speech of Brittany, like its legend and folk-lore, has ever been a
prolific subject with many writers of many opinions.
The comparison of the speech of the Welshman with that of the Breton
has often been made, but by no one so successfully as by Henri Martin,
the historian, who, in writing of his travels in Wales, told how he had
chatted with the Celtic population there and made himself thoroughly
understood through his knowledge of Breton speech.
In its earliest phases, the Breton tongue had a literature of its own,
at least a spoken literature, coming from the mouths of its bards
and popular poets. In our own day, too, Brittany has its own songs
and verses, which, though many of them have not known the medium of
printer’s ink, have come down from past generations.
The three ancient Armorican kingdoms or states, Domnonée, Cornouaille,
and the Bro-Waroch, had their own distinct dialects.
There is and was a considerable variation in the speech throughout
Brittany, though it is and was all Breton. The dialects of Vannes,
Quimper, and Tréguier are the least known outside their own immediate
neighbourhood; the Léonais of St. Pol de Léon is the regular and common
tongue of all Bas Bretons.
The old-time limits of the Breton tongue are wavering to-day, and
from time to time have drawn appreciably toward the west, so that the
boundary-line, which once ran from the mouth of the Loire to Mont St.
Michel, now starts at the mouth of the Vilaine, and finishes at a point
on the northern coast, a little to the westward of St. Brieuc.
It was during the decadence of the Breton tongue--known to philologists
as the third period--that the monk Abelard cried out: “The Breton tongue
makes me blush with shame.”
The nearer one comes to Finistère, the less liable he is to meet the
French tongue unadulterated. The numbers knowing the Breton tongue alone
more than equal those who know French and Breton, leaving those who know
French alone vastly in the minority. The figures seem astonishing
to one who does not know the country, but they are unassailable,
nevertheless.
[Illustration: <u>_St. Pol de Léon_</u>]
Here in this department at least, and to a lesser degree in the Côtes
du Nord and the Morbihan provinces, one is likely enough to hear
lisped out, as if it were the effort of an Englishman: “_Je na sais
pas ce que vous dîtes_,” or “_Je n’entend rien_.” No great hardship or
inconvenience is inflicted upon one by all this, but now and again one
wishes he were a Welshman, for the only foreigners who can understand
the lingo are Taffy’s fellow country-men.
Breton legend is as weird and varied as that of any land. It is
astonishingly convincing, too, from the story of King Grollo and
his wicked daughter, who came from the Britain across the seas, the
Bluebeard legend, the Arthurian legend, which Bretons claim as their
own, as do Britons, to those less incredible tales of the Corsairs of
St. Malo and the exploits of Duguesclin and Surcouf.
[Illustration: _The Breton Tongue_]
There is a quaint Breton saying referring to little worries, which
runs thus: “When the wind blows up from the sea, I turn my barrel to
the north; when it blows down from the hills, I turn my barrel to the
south.” “And when it blows all four ways at once?” “Why, then I crawl
under the barrel.”
This is exactly the Breton’s attitude toward life to-day, but he finds
a deal of consolation in his legends and songs of the past, and in his
ruffled moments they serve to put him in a good humour again. This is
something more than mere superstition, it is a philosophical turn of
mind, and that is good for a man. The heroes of legend are frequently
those of history. One may cite Joan of Arc with relation to old France,
and Duguesclin in Brittany. There is a difference, of course, and it is
wide, but the comparison will serve, as there is no other character in
all the history of Brittany--unless it be that of Duguay-Trouin, the
Corsair of St. Malo--who stands out so distinctly in the popular mind as
does Duguesclin, “the real Breton.”
There is none in his own country, however illiterate he may be, and the
Breton peasant, in some parts, is notoriously illiterate, who knows
not this hero’s name and glory. Still more deeply rooted are the old
folk-lore superstitions which have come down through the ages by word of
mouth, no doubt with the accruing additions of time.
Morlaix is the very centre of a land of mystery, tradition, and
superstition. Among these superstitious legends, “Jan Gant y tan,” as it
is known by its Breton title, stands out grimly.
Jan, it seems, is a species of demon who carries by night five candles
on the five fingers of each hand, and waves them wildly about, calling
down wrath upon those who may have offended him.
Another is to the effect that hobgoblins eat the cream which rises on
milk at night.
Yet another superstition is that the call of the cuckoo announces the
year of one’s marriage or death.
Another, and perhaps the most curious of all, is that, if an infant by
any chance gets his clothes wet at certain pools or fountains, he will
die within a year, but he will live long years if he fall in, yet is
able to preserve his garments from all dampness.
When one drinks of the Fountain of De Krignac three times within the
hour, says the peasant of Plougasnou, and is not cured of the fever, let
him abandon all thoughts of a remedy and prepare for death.
There are two legends associated with Brittany which are little known.
Both relate to Bluebeard. This legend is of Eastern origin, as far as
concerns the story of the man who slew his wives by dragging them about
by the hair, ultimately decapitating them; but the French Academy of
Inscriptions and Polite Learning evolves a sort of modern parallel as
another setting for the same apocryphal story. It concerns a certain
Trophime, the daughter of a Duke of Vannes, in the sixth century. She
was married to the Lord of Gonord, whose castle was situated on Mont
Castanes, and was the eighth wife of her husband. He killed her because
she discovered the bodies of her seven predecessors; but her sister Anne
prayed to St. Gildas, who came with her two brothers to the rescue. St.
Gildas restored Trophime to life, and the Bluebeard of Gonord and his
castle were swallowed up by the earth.
The origin of the story has always been in doubt, but the generally
accepted theory is that Perrault founded the tale on the history of
Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Rais.
The Academy, however, destroys all this early conjecture in favour of
the Gilles de Laval affair. Since Gilles de Laval was a kinsman of the
Dukes of Brittany, the following is given as his claim to having played
the part, though, as the report of the Academy goes on to say, De Laval
proved himself to be but a fanatical sorcerer.
[Illustration: _Gilles de Laval, after an engraving of the fifteenth
century in the Bibliothèque Nationale._]
Gilles de Laval was born in 1404, and was a member of the family of
Laval-Montmorency. He was handsome, well born, rich, and a most valiant
soldier, and one of the warmest supporters of Joan of Arc, whom he
defended against all who spoke ill of her, constituting himself her
personal champion. He fought valiantly with the “Maid,” and was made a
marshal of France when twenty-six years of age. He was very wealthy,
and he doubled his possessions when he married at the early age of
sixteen. His extravagances, however, were greater than his riches. He
had a refined taste, and loved illuminated manuscripts, stamped Spanish
leather, Flemish tapestries, Oriental carpets, gold and silver plate,
music, and mystery plays. After peace was made, he and his wife retired
to their castles and lands in the Vendée, where Gilles soon found
himself hopelessly in debt. He had to find money somehow, for he was of
a fine, open-handed disposition, and had never denied himself anything.
It was only natural in that century that he should turn his thoughts
toward alchemy and the philosopher’s stone.
Francesco Prelati, an Italian with a reputation as a magician and a
maker of gold, was installed, with all his alchemist’s apparatus, in
Gilles’s castle; but when he was asked to make gold, he confided to
his patron that it would be necessary to summon the aid of the devil,
and that for this purpose the blood of young children was absolutely
required. The two then scoured the country round for children, whom
they murdered with horrible rites, until at last their crimes became
so notorious that they were arrested and tried at Nantes. Gilles de
Laval and his accomplice were accused of murdering no fewer than twelve
hundred children, and were tried for sorcery and found guilty. The Lord
of Laval was strangled, and his body was burned; but Francesco Prelati,
as a mere vulgar sorcerer, was burned alive.
At Saint Cast in the Côtes du Nord, one hears vague and fabulous reports
from the natives, even to-day, of a pirate ship--a veritable sister
ship to those of Duguay-Trouin of St. Malo--named the _Perillon_ and
commanded by one Besnard, known as the terror of the seas. Like other
songs of seafarers of the days gone by, that concerning the terror of
the seas is good enough to incorporate into the text of some rattling
story of pirates and corsairs, such as boys--and some grown-ups--the
world over like. Another popular Breton air was known as “Biron ha
D’Estin” (“Byron and D’Estaing”), and had to do with the war in America.
Another was the “Chant du Pilote,” and had for its subject the combat of
the _Surveillante_ and the forts at Quebec in 1780.
Of the same period was the “Corsairs’ Song,” which is very well known
throughout Upper Brittany even to-day, beginning thus:
“Le trente-un du mois d’août.”
Throughout Upper Brittany also one hears the old housewives still
mumbling the old words and air of the song current in the times of
Francis the First.
It was when the prince was treating for his release from captivity that
the words first took shape and form:
“Quand le roi départit de France,
Vive le roi!
À la male heure il départit,
Vive Louis!
À la male heure il départit (bis).
* * *
Il départit jour de dimanche.
* * *
Je ne suis pas le roi de France.
* * *
Je suis un pauvre gentilhomme
Qui va de pays en pays.
* * *
Retourne-t-en vite à Paris.”
CHAPTER VI.
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
To-day the Bretons are the most loyal of all the citizens of the great
republic of France. In reality they are a most democratic people, though
they often affect a devotion for old institutions now defunct. They may
be a superstitious race, but they are not suspicious, although they have
marked prejudices. When thoroughly understood, they are both likable and
lovable, though their aspect be one of a certain sternness and aloofness
toward the stranger. Their weapons are all in plain view, however, like
the hedgehog’s; there is nothing concealed to thwart one’s desires for
relations with them.
Their country, their climate, and their environment have much to do
with their character, manners, and customs; and environment--as some
one may have said before--is the greatest influence at work in shaping
the attitude of a people toward an outsider, and every one is still an
outsider to a Breton, be he French, English, or American.
The Breton is really a gayer person than his expression leads one to
suppose. Madame de Sévigné wrote, with some assurance, as was her wont:
“You make me prefer the gamesomeness of our Bretons to the perfumed
idleness of the Provençals.”
Certainly, to one who knows both races, the comparison was well made. It
is a case of doing mischief against doing nothing.
Brittany has not Normandy’s general air of prosperity, and indeed at
times there is a very near approach to poverty and distress, and then it
is bruited abroad in the public prints that the fisheries have proved a
failure.
The Breton farming peasant, however, is not the poverty-stricken wretch
that he has sometimes been painted. He lives humbly, and eats vast
quantities of potatoes and bread, little meat, some fish, always a
salad, and, usually, a morsel of cheese, but he eats it off a cleanly
scrubbed bare board and from clean and unchipped plates.
In his stable, such few belongings in the form of live stock as he has
are well fed and contented, and his chickens and ducks and pigs and cows
are as much a pride and profit to him as to the peasant of other parts;
but, after all, Brittany is not a land of milk and honey. The peasant
lives in the atmosphere of dogged, obstinate labour, but he draws a
competence from it, and it is mostly those who live in the seacoast
villages, and those who will huddle themselves in and about the large
towns and ports, such as Quimper and Brest, that are ever in want, and
then only because of some untoward, unexpected circumstance.
Agriculture and the business of the sea are closely allied in Brittany.
Hundreds upon hundreds of young men work in the winter upon farms far
inland, and come down to the sea with the coming of February and March,
to ship in some longshore fishing-smack, or even to go as far away as
Newfoundland, the Orkneys, or to Iceland.
This gives not only a peculiar blend of character, but also a peculiar
cast of countenance to the Breton; he is a sort of half-land and
half-sea specimen of humanity, and handy at the business of either.
In many ports, the Breton struggles continually against shifting
sand,--sand which is constantly shifting when piled in banks on the
seashore, and becomes of the nature of quicksand when lying beneath the
water where the Breton moors his lobster-pots. Between the two, he is
constantly harassed, and until the off season comes has little of that
gaiety into which he periodically relaxes. Every one will remark that
the aspect of both men and women is sombre and dark, even though their
spontaneous gaiety and dress on the feast of a patron saint or at a
great pardon gives one the impression of gladness.
One sees this when on the great holidays the Breton peasant is moved
to song, and chants such lines as the following, which more nearly
correspond in sentiment to “We won’t go home till morning” than anything
else that can be thought of.
“J’ai deux grands bœufs dans mon étable,
J’ai deux grands bœufs marqués de rouge;
Ils gagnent plus dans une semaine
Qu’ils n’en ont couté, qu’ils n’en ont couté.
J’aime Jeanne ma femme!
J’aime Jeanne ma femme!
Eh bien! j’aimerais mieux la voir mourir,
Que de voir mourir mes bœufs.”
Doubtless there is not so much hard-heartedness about the sentiment as
is expressed by the words, which, to say the least and the most, are not
wholly up to the standard of “love, cherish, and protect.”
Once in awhile one sees the type of man who is known among his fellows
as _Breton des plus Bretons_. Like his Norman brother, the Breton in
the off season works hard playing dominoes or cards in the taverns,
where one reads on a sign over the door that _Jean X donne à boire et à
manger_, that is, if the sign be not in Breton, which more often than
not it is.
The landlord does not exactly “give” his fare; he exchanges it for
copper sous, but he caters for the inner man at absurdly small prices,
and accordingly is well patronized, in spite of his refusal of credit.
Bowls is the national game of Brittany, having a greater hold upon the
simple-minded Breton, particularly in the neighbourhood of the Lannion,
than any other amusement. No respectably ambitious inn in all Brittany
is without its bowling-alley. As a distraction, it is mild and harmless,
and withal good exercise, as we all know.
The religious fervour of the Breton folk has been remarked of all who
know them howsoever slightly. It is universal, and, if it be more
apparent in one place than any other, it is in the Department of
Finistère, and it is not in the cities and towns that it reaches its
greatest height, but mostly in the country-side, or on the seacoast
among the labourers and the fisher-folk.
The religion of Brittany to-day is of the people and for the people. It
is one of the great questions of the world to-day, but from a dogmatic
point of view it shall have no discussion here. Suffice it to say that
throughout France, with the numerous great, and nearly always empty,
churches ever before one, one can but realize that the power of the
Church is not what it once was.
The churchgoers are chiefly women; seldom, if ever, except on a
great feast-day, are the churches filled with a congregation at all
representative of the population of the parish, and even in the great
cathedrals the same impression nearly always holds good.
In Brittany, the case is somewhat different, in the country districts
at least, and even at Roscoff, Quimper, Vannes, and Rennes, where
there are great cathedrals. In Brittany, in every parish church and at
every wayside shrine, is almost always to be found not only a little
knot of devoutly kneeling peasants, but, on all occasions of mark, a
congregation overflowing beyond the doors. What this all signifies, as
before said, is no concern of the writer of this book. It is simply a
recorded state of affairs, and, judging from the attitude of the people
themselves--when seen on the spot--toward the subject of religion,
the most liberal thinker would hardly consider that here in Brittany
religion was anything else than spontaneous devotion on the part of the
people.
Of religion and priests, Brittany is full, but the people are not by
any means priest-ridden, as many uncharitable and slack observers have
asserted before now. No priest bids a Breton worship at any shrine. They
do it of their own free will, and, though a churchman always officiates
at the great pardons and festivals, the worshippers themselves are as
much the performers of the ceremony as the priest.
In Brittany to-day the piece of money which passes current in most
transactions, though in numbers it is infrequently handled by the
traveller, is _la pièce_, the half-franc or ten-sous coin.
It is confusing when you are bargaining for a carriage to drive to some
wayside shrine, to be told the price will be “_deux pièces_,” when--in
Normandy--you have just formed the habit of realizing offhand that _deux
cent sous_ is the same thing as ten francs. It’s all very simple, when
one knows what they are talking about, and the Breton likes still to
think his institutions are different from those of the rest of France,
and so he goes on bargaining in _pièces_, when in other parts they are
counting in _sous_, which is even more confusing, or in _francs_.
Most of the farmhouses of Brittany are constructed of stone and wood,
with their roofs covered with a straw thatch. Of course this is a
dangerous style of building to-day, as the authorities admit. Indeed
a decree has gone forth in some parts forbidding the erection of any
new straw-thatched building, and again in other parts against using
any structure so built as a dwelling-house. The law is not absolutely
observed, but it is by no means a dead letter, and the homely and
picturesque thatched roof has now all but disappeared, except from the
open country.
To enter the Breton peasant’s farmhouse, one almost invariably descends
a step. The interior is badly lighted, and worse ventilated, but, as
it is mostly the open-air life that the peasant and his family lead,
perhaps this does not so much matter. Usually the house is composed
of but one room, with a floor of hard-trodden earth. This is the
dining-room, kitchen, and bedroom of all the family. The ceiling is
composed of great rough-hewn rafters, sometimes even of trunks left
with the bark on, and from it are hung the knives and forks and dishes,
as in a ship’s cabin.
[Illustration: YOUNG BRETONS
_B. McManus--1905_]
Furniture has been reduced to the most simple formula. Two or three
great closed and panelled beds or bunks line one side of the wall, with
perhaps a wardrobe, where the “Sunday-best” of the whole household is
kept. Beneath the great beds is a series of oaken chests, and there
the household linen is stored. These, with a long table, with a bench
and a wide passage on either side, the great, yawning fireplace,
with its crane and the inevitable highly polished pots and pans, form
the furnishings of this remarkable apartment. All this is homely and
strange, but it is comfortable enough for the occupants, if one does not
mind being crowded, and it is the typical dwelling throughout Brittany.
Everywhere in the Breton country one sees oxen, cattle, and, above
all, the horses of the indefatigable Breton race, “ready and willing
to work and full of spirit in warfare.” So said Eugene Sue, and the
same observation holds true to-day. None of the animals are so large
or so fat as in the neighbouring provinces, but this is not because of
malnutrition or because they are ill-tended. The cows of Brittany are by
no means such plump, dainty animals as the cows of the Cotentin, and the
Breton horses are certainly undersized when compared to the Norman sires
and the great-footed Percherons, but one and all possess good qualities
purely their own, and one thing above all should be noted,--Brittany is
exceedingly rich grazing country, if not agricultural.
[Illustration: _From the_ ARTIST’S SKETCH BOOK.]
Much of the local character is shown in the dress of the people, and
throughout the country-side and the seacoast villages alike both
men and women show that remarkable attention to dress which marks the
strong individuality of the race,--individuality which has come down
through the ages, and endures to this day in very nearly, if not quite
all, its original aspect. One knows this dress through photographic
reproductions, and from having occasionally seen it on the comic opera
stage, but actually to live among such picturesquely dressed folk is
like a step back into the past.
[Illustration: LA COIFFE POLKA--_The Smallest Coiffe in Brittany_
B. McM. 1905]
The costumes of Brittany are greatly varied, but all look theatrical,
and many of them are remarkably embroidered in multicoloured braid. On
all great occasions, feast-days and fairs, on Sundays and on the days
of the pardons, many ancient costumes, not modern reproductions, are
seen. Particularly is this to be noted at Pont l’Abbé, Pont Aven, and
elsewhere in the far west. The coifs of the women and the embroidered
waistcoats and velvet-ribboned hats of the men mark them as a species of
Frenchmen different from their Norman brethren; lovers of fanciful dress
and customs quite Southern in gorgeousness, and not the least like the
colder fashions of other dwellers in the same latitude.
At Quimper is an interesting Ethnological Museum, where one may study
the subject at length, and in the town one may buy fabrics and stuffs
and articles of wearing apparel fashioned in the genuine Breton manner.
The greatest activity of life in Brittany is in the coast towns, for
there the populace has for the longest time been in touch with the ideas
of an advanced civilization.
[Illustration: <u>_Ironing Coifs_</u>]
By the very geographic position of Brittany this was inevitable, as the
country was not in the direct path of any great current of commerce,
and had no great navigable river, except the Loire, which bordered it
upon the south. There had been malicious critics of things Breton before
him, but there could have been no real justification for the lament of
Paul St. Victor, who must have had an exceedingly bad dinner at his inn
when he delivered himself of the following:
“Breton dialect is full of barbarisms, and Brittany is not even a
healthy country for painters. It is a land of monasteries and dull
routine; the same types and the same costumes; no men, no women, all
Bretons, all of Brittany.”
As a race, the Breton may well be summed up as follows: They are the
descendants of the men of a primitive epoch, from whom they inherit
traits which even time has not entirely eradicated. Their intuitions are
correct, and their convictions profound; their will tenacious, and their
energies equal to all that may be demanded of them. They are proud,
truthful, courageous, intrepid, hospitable, and religious.
The manufacturing industry throughout Brittany is practically null, if
one except the work of the great arsenals and ship-building ports, and
the production of such articles of local consumption as sail-cloth.
Flax and hemp are grown in considerable quantities, but the ordinary
crops of cereals rise to nothing like the proportions of those reared
in Normandy or Perche. The Breton is strong on bee-keeping, however,
and keenly watches the busy workers of his hives as they gather their
harvest from the abundant crop of wild flowers covering the hillsides.
[Illustration: <u>_Breton Types_</u>]
The Breton communes are of vast extent compared with those of other
parts of France, but the population is scattered. Gathered around the
parish church are the dwellings of the market-towns of three, four,
or five hundred inhabitants or more. Upon the whole, Brittany is not
thinly peopled, the mean of its population exceeding that of most of
the other provinces of France. Whatever the aborigines were, whether
of Indo-Germanique type or of a species hitherto unplaced, the present
Breton population has been developed along lines close to those of
Britain. And the Bretons are not far behind, and herein undoubtedly lies
the charm of Brittany for the English-speaking traveller.
Writing of his stay at Guingamp,--which is about the dividing line
where one passes from the zone of the French tongue to that of the
Breton, where one is frequently to hear the short exclamation, “I do
not understand you,”--Arthur Young tells us of putting up at a roadside
inn “where the hangings over his bed were full of cobwebs and spiders.”
The inn-keeper remarked to him that he had “a superb English mare,” and
wished to buy it from him. “I gave him half a dozen flowers of French
eloquence for his impertinence,” said the witty traveller, “when he
thought proper to leave me and my spiders in peace.” “Apropos of the
breed of horses in Lower Brittany,” he continues, “they are capital
hunters, and yet my ordinary little English mare was much admired, while
every stable round about is filled with a pack of these little pony
stallions sufficient to perpetuate the local breed for long to come.”
To the humble inn--one of the regular posting-houses on the great
highroad from Paris to Brest--he is not so complimentary. “This
villainous hole,” said he, “which calls itself a great house, is the
best inn of the town, at which marshals of France, dukes, peers,
countesses, and so forth, must now and then, by the accidents to
which long journeys are subject, have found themselves. What are we
to think of a country that has made, in the eighteenth century, no
better provision for its travellers?” In this our author was clearly a
faultfinder, or at least he was unfortunate in not living at a later
day, for the above is certainly not true of the inns of France to-day,
though it may truthfully be said that, even to-day, the inns of Brittany
are a _little_ backward, but it is not true of the Hôtel de France at
Guingamp, which has even a dark room for the kodaker, and a _fossé_ for
the motor-car traveller.
CHAPTER VII.
THE FISHERIES
What the cider-apple crop is to Normandy, that the fisheries are to
Brittany, and more, for the fisheries turn over more money by far than
the cider of Normandy, which is grown purely for home consumption. The
Breton young person of the male sex takes to the sea in the little
pilchard-boats, the three-masters of the deep-sea fishery, or the
whalers, for the purpose of earning his livelihood, and also to secure a
prescribed term of exemption from military or naval service. With such
an object, it is no wonder that the industry employs so many hands,
and has become so important and considerable in its returns. Of course
the geographical position of the country has more than a little to do
with this, and also the stony soil of the country-side, suggesting the
harvest of the sea as a more ample crop.
In Brittany, the sea nourishes the land, though perhaps but meagrely.
[Illustration: <u>_Douarnenez_</u>]
From the mouth of the Loire, around Finistère to Lannion, thousands upon
thousands of the inhabitants live by the harvest of the sea, whereas,
if it were not for this, they might be forced to emigrate, or to hie
themselves to the large towns, there to herd in unsanitary quarters,
which is worse.
The pilchard fishery is practically at its best directly off the
Quiberon peninsula, opposite Lorient and Concarneau. It is important
also just offshore from Audierne, Douarnenez, and Camaret.
It is well to recall just what the sardine really is, inasmuch as we
mostly buy any “little fishes boiled in oil,” which a pushful grocer
may thrust upon us. The “corporal’s stripe,” or the “cavalry corporal,”
as the sardine is known in France, is quite a different species from
the “armed policeman,” or common sea-garden herring. The Atlantic, the
North Sea, the Baltic, and some parts of the Mediterranean are its
home. It winters between 50 degrees and 60 degrees north latitude, in
a zone where the temperature is constant, but from March to October it
emigrates toward the north. Sometimes the future sardines are known as
pilchards; on the coasts of Normandy and Picardy as _hareng de Bergues_;
as sardines in Brittany; as _royan_ in Charente; and as _sarda_ and
_sardinyola_ in the Pyrénées Orientales.
The best and most common method of preserving the sardine is by slightly
heating the oil before placing it with the fish in those little tin
boxes known the world over; then the boxes are soldered and put into
a double boiler and boiled for the better part of an hour, when the
exceedingly simple process is finished. So simple is it, and so readily
accomplished without a great capital investment, that the wonder is
that imitations of the “real Brittany sardines” are not more successful
elsewhere. Up to this time, however, nothing rivals the Breton product.
Each year, at the feast of St. Jean, the barques set out from the
various ports, all richly decorated, and often sped on their way by a
religious ceremony, at which a priest officiates and gives his blessing.
The profits vary considerably one year from another, as may be supposed.
The catch is by no means constant. Its ordinary receipts approximate
twelve million francs, and, when it drops below this figure, distress
is likely to ensue, particularly if a hard winter falls upon Brittany,
which in truth it seldom does.
The little fish return each year, their feeding-ground scarcely varying
thirty miles in any direction. Thus, in season, the boats with their
red sails and blue and brown nets put off for the same spots where
they took their catches last year, only to find that the habits of the
sardines have not in the least changed. Five or six men to a boat is
the average crew, and, if the wind be contrary, their speed is much the
same by means of oars. Once arrived on the ground, the skipper of the
boat throws overboard at intervals some handfuls of _rogue_ as a bait;
this is a paste composed of the roe of the cod, and the only drawback is
that its cost is great. It comes mostly from Norway, and, after passing
through many intermediate hands, finally reaches the Breton fisherman,
who pays from sixty to seventy francs per hundred kilos. When the price
rises above this figure, the ingenious skipper fabricates a substitute,
a mixture of the real article and a local vegetable product known as
_farine d’arachides_. Its results are not so good as those from the real
article, and the local fishermen have a saying which is doubtless so
true as to have become a proverb: “One must bait with fish to catch a
fish.” Moreover, the fish caught by this means do not rank as a first
quality product in the markets of the Breton fishing ports, owing to
the after-effects on the fish, which shall be undefined here. It may be
well to recall the fact, however, and, if you get a sardine which is not
what you think it ought to be, and is too much like a bad oyster, you
may depend upon it that it was caught with _farine d’arachides_.
The Breton custom is to fish with buoyed nets, disdaining the drag-net,
though occasionally the latter is used.
The buoyed nets merely scoop the surface of the water, but the drag-nets
are sunk to a depth of from forty to fifty metres. When the skipper
estimates that the net is full, or, at least, that he shall have a haul
worthy of his trouble, all hands, singing as all sailor-folk do, pull
the net inboard, and, with a clever turn, empty it of its freight of
silver-scaled fish, which are forthwith scooped up and placed in great
baskets. On the return to port, the fishermen still in harbour, the
factory hands, and all the inhabitants who are not otherwise employed,
even though they ought to be, to say nothing of curious peasant-folk
from the inland towns, and always a generous sprinkling of tourists, and
the inevitable American artist, are in waiting, curious as to the luck.
Here the dealers come and bargain for the catch. Thirty to thirty-five
francs a thousand is usually the market price, and the choicest fish
naturally sell first. Speculation comes in now and then, and a scare
as to the prospect of the catch being too abundant is as common and as
disastrous as the fear that it may not be large enough. Sometimes the
price will fall as low as a franc and a half, and then come “trials
without number for the sailors,” as an old fisherman told the writer.
Certainly, if thirty francs a thousand be only a paying wage, a franc
and a half must mean about the same as utter failure to the crew, who
generally work the boat on shares.
The pilchard fishers have not forgotten the crisis of 1903, to combat
the recurrence of which it was proposed to establish special schools
for fishermen apprentices, and to forbid the use of the drag-net, and
they are seeking a rearrangement of conditions whereby the returns
may be more equally distributed among the workers than now. At the
present time the owner--who fits out the boat--claims a third, and the
skipper a third, the hands dividing the other third. According to this
arrangement, the novice or apprentice receives an infinitesimal share.
As a Frenchman, a Breton of Quimper who was not in the sardine business,
said to us: “_Ces pauvres diables! Ils mériteraient mieux._” All of
which is true, so let all well-wishers, who are fond of the “little
fishes boiled in oil” at their picnic dinners, give a thought now and
again to the Breton fisherman.
Besides the sardine fisheries, there is a considerable traffic from
such ports as Tréguier, St. Malo, and Morlaix in the deep-sea fishery,
and elsewhere in the mackerel and herring fishery in Icelandic waters
and the North Sea, and these give a prosperity that would otherwise be
wanting.
Statistics are dry reading, and so they are not given here, but there
are some curious things with regard to the laws regulating the offshore
and deep-sea fisheries of France, just as there are with respect to
the line fishing, by which method one can legally take fish only if he
actually hold his rod or line in his hand: he may not lay it on the
ground beside him and doze until an unusually frisky gudgeon wakes him
up.
On all of the French fishing-craft, which sail to the Banks or
to Iceland for cod, French salt must be used, and all masters of
fishing-craft must keep a supplementary log or diary relating to the
takings of fish alone.
In deep-sea fishing the law prescribes that a vessel which is fitted
out for the fishing-banks must remain on the ground a certain length of
time. This is to preclude the possibility of a decreasing catch, it is
to be presumed, as many a fisherman has been known, before now, to give
up the labour with holds half-filled simply because he had come upon a
meagre feeding-ground. It seems a wise precaution, and is another of
those parental acts which the French government is always undertaking
on behalf of its children. There is still the whalebone catch to reckon
with, for the French government specializes this industry, and offers
a bonus of seventy francs a ton displacement on leaving port for all
French equipments, and fifty francs per ton displacement upon returning
after the term prescribed.
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
THE LOIRE IN BRITTANY
At Ancenis, the Loire, that mighty river which rises near the frontier
of Garde, a Mediterranean department, enters Brittany on its way to the
Atlantic. For more than nine hundred kilometres above this point, the
Loire has been navigable for such fresh-water craft as usually are found
upon great waterways, and, having passed Orleans, Blois, and Tours, and
broadened out into a great, wide, shallow stream, it is to be reckoned
as one of the world’s great rivers. Mostly its appearance is that of a
broad, tranquil, docile stream, with scarce enough depth of water to
make a respectable current, leaving its bed with its bars of sand and
pebbles bare to the sky. This lack of depth, except at occasional flood,
is the principal and obvious reason for the comparative absence of
water-borne traffic.
At the times of the great freshets there are twenty-three feet or more
registered on the huge black and white scale of the bridge at Ancenis,
and again it falls to less than a fourth of that height, and then there
is a mere rivulet of water trickling through the broad channel at
Chaumont, at Blois, or at Orleans.
In the olden time, as one passed from Anjou into Brittany, by way of
the valley of the Loire, he came to a great barrier across the road,--a
veritable frontier post, with a custom-house and examiners, as if
one were passing into a foreign country. The Revolution changed all
this, and now nothing but another of that vast family of great, white
departmental boundary-posts marks the dividing line between the Maine et
Loire and the Loire-Inférieure, the border departments between the old
province of the Counts of Anjou and that of the Breton dukes.
Just above Ancenis, one passes vineyard after vineyard, and château
after château follows rapidly in turn,--all very delightful, as Pepys
would have said. Not so the bridge at Ancenis, quite the ugliest
wire-rope affair to be seen on the Loire, and one is only too glad to
leave it behind, though it is with a real regret that he parts from
Ancenis itself.
Ancenis is one of those blessed spots possessing a château; it is
endowed with a wonderfully picturesque situation, and, moreover, is
capable of catering for the inner man in so satisfactory a manner that
one can but put it down in his books as one of the spots to be favoured.
The Barons of Ancenis were a long and picturesque line, and their local
fame has by no means perished. The old-time château, constructed in the
fifteenth century, was the masterwork of a famous Angevin architect,
Jean Lespine by name. To-day this fine building, or what is left of it,
has become an Ursuline boarding-house. Much is still left to tell the
story of its former greatness, but it is not so accessible as one would
like.
The most that can be remarked is a great doorway flanked by two towers,
with overpowering machicolations, another smaller tower,--a _tourelle_,
the French themselves would call it,--and a ruined pavilion, where, in
1468, Francis, Duke of Brittany, signed a treaty with Louis XI. On the
market-house of Ancenis is superimposed a sort of a belfry which, seen
in conjunction with the low-lying river-bank, imparts a low-country
aspect to the town. The old streets of Ancenis give shelter to many fine
mediæval houses, of which the most notable is perhaps the old “house of
the Croix de Lorraine.”
Below Ancenis, navigation is not so difficult, but the river current
is more strong. For a long distance, on the right bank, extends a
dike, carrying the roadway beside the river for a matter of a hundred
kilometres. This is one of the charms of travel by the Loire. When you
see any animation on its bosom, save an occasional fishing-punt, neither
it nor its occupant usually very animated, it is one of those great
flat-bottomed ferry-boats, with a square sail hung on a yard amidships,
such as Turner always made an accompaniment to his Loire landscapes.
Conditions of traffic thereon have not changed much since those days.
Whenever one sees a barge or a boat worthy of classification with those
on the rivers of the east or north, or of the canals, it is only about
a quarter of the usual size, so, altogether, in spite of its great
navigable length, the waterway of the Loire is more valuable as a
picturesque and healthful element of the landscape than as a commercial
artery. Below Nantes is the “section maritime,” which from Nantes to the
sea is a matter of some sixty kilometres. Here the boats increase in
number and size. They are known as lighters, barges, and tenders, and go
down with the river current and return on the incoming ebb, for here the
river is tidal.
From this one gathers that the Loire, so noble and magnificent, is the
most aristocratic river of France, and so, too, it is with respect to
its associations of the past.
It has not the grandeur of the Rhône when the spring freshets from the
Jura and the Swiss lakes have filled it to its banks; and it has not the
burning activity of the Seine, as it bears its thousands of boat-loads
of produce and merchandise to and from market; it has not the prettiness
of the Thames, or the legendary aspect of the Rhine; but, in a way, it
combines something of the features of all, and has, in addition, a tone
that is all its own, as it sweeps the horizon through its countless
miles of ample curves, and holds within its embrace all that is best
of mediæval and Renascence France, the period which built up the later
monarchy and--who shall say not?--the present prosperous nation.
The Loire is essentially a river of other days. Truly, as Mr. James has
said, “it is the very model of a generous, beneficent stream.... A wide
river which you may follow by a wide road is excellent company.” The
Frenchman himself is more flowery. “It is the noblest river of France.
Its basin is immense, magnificent.” All of which is true, too. For a
good bit of local colour of this region, one should read Chapter V. of
“The Regent’s Daughter,” by Dumas, wherein the willing Gaston, in the
midday sunshine of a winter’s day, made his way from Nantes to Paris,
“travelling slowly as far as Oudon opposite Champtoceaux.” “At Oudon he
halted and put up at the Char-Couronne, an inn with windows overlooking
the highroad.” Some stirring events took place here, but the reader is
referred to the pages of Dumas for the details.
Oudon, however, will not detain the cursory traveller of to-day, even if
he deigns to visit it at all.
Champtoceaux, on the other hand, though only a small town of thirteen
hundred inhabitants, does awaken interest. Formerly it belonged to the
Counts of Anjou, and then to the Dukes of Brittany.
Its site is most picturesque; it stands on a mound some two hundred
feet above the Loire. There are two fine mediæval churches, and an old
château, which, with the ruins of the ancient fortified castle, now
forms a part of the domain of a M. de la Touche, who will kindly permit
the visitor to inspect the details of this ancient feudal stronghold.
The dismantled old walls are covered with moss and lichens, and
their picturesqueness is of that quality that painters love to put
on canvas. The wonder is that Champtoceaux has not become a new
artists’ sketching-ground, such as are so often discovered--or
rediscovered--throughout France. Perhaps it is because of its distance
from Paris, for your artist-painter, be he French, English, or American,
dearly loves the streets of the Latin Quarter, and, as a rule, prefers
Fontainebleau and its circle of artist colonies to going farther afield.
At last one beholds what a Frenchman has called the “tumultuous vision
of Nantes.” To-day the very ancient and historic city which grew up
from the Portus Nannetum and the Condivientum of the Romans is indeed a
veritable tumult of chimneys, masts and smokestacks, and locomotives.
But all this will not detract one jot from its reputation of being
one of the most delightful of provincial capitals, and the smoke and
activity of its port only tend to accentuate the note of colour, which
in the whole itinerary of the Loire has been but pale.
The former reputation of Nantes as a little capital where gaiety and
wealth came in abundance is correct for to-day, but a comparison is
interesting. Here is a reminiscence of old stage-coaching days, when
the post took four days to make the journey from Paris:
“The neighbourhood of the theatre is magnificent, all the streets being
at right angles and of white stone. One is in doubt as to whether
the Hôtel Henri IV. is not the finest inn in Europe.” (It must have
disappeared since those days, but really its reputation still lives in
any one of the three leading hotels.) “Dessein’s” (also disappeared) “at
Calais is larger, but is not built, fitted up, or furnished like this,
which is new. It cost nearly five hundred thousand francs, and contains
sixty bedrooms. It is without comparison the first inn of France, and
very cheap withal.
“The theatre must have cost a like sum, and, when its seats are full,
holds 120 louis d’or. The ground that the inn is built upon cost nine
francs a foot, and elsewhere in the city one may pay as much as fifteen
francs. This ground value induces them to build so high as to be
destructive of beauty.” Unquestionably this last observation was quite
true then, as it is now, but Nantes nevertheless fills very nearly every
qualification of a well-laid-out and attractive city.
To some Nantes will be reminiscent of Venice, or at least some Dutch
city, for its five river branches are continually crossing and
recrossing one’s path in most bewildering fashion, and bridges confront
one at every turn.
The city’s attractions are many, from its great cathedral and its
château-fortress, enclosing a beautiful edifice wherein once lived the
Duchess Anne, to its great hotels, cafés, and shops of modern times.
Five great events of history stand forth prominent in the memory of the
very name of Nantes: the struggle of John of Montfort against Charles
of Blois for the ducal power; the affairs of the League; the famous
Edict; the Cellamare conspiracy; and the rising of the Vendeans and the
rascally Carrier’s retaliation in Revolutionary days.
Each and every one of these were vivid and bloody enough to furnish
inexhaustible material for a novelist of the Dumas school, should he
rise in the future, for the half has not yet been used. It was in
the Place of Bouffay that that execution of the Breton conspirators
took place, of which we read in the graphic pages of Dumas. Gaston,
who sought to deliver his former companions, was posting along the
road to Nantes with their reprieve safely guarded. Before the age of
steam and electricity, news travelled slowly, and Sèvres, Versailles,
Rambouillet, Chartres, Mans, and Angers were then far apart. But the
faithful Gaston travelled fast, one of the bystanders at Rambouillet
calling to him: “If you go at that pace, you will kill more than one
team between here and Nantes.”
Gradually he learned that a “courier of the minister’s” had passed
that way. This was the beginning of what Dumas called the “tragedy
of Nantes.” The event was historical, and Dumas’s account was most
dramatic, yet did not differ greatly from the facts. Gaston arrived too
late. Talhouet was dead, and the Place of Bouffay reeked with the blood
of the conspirators, who, guilty though they were, had received the
pardon of the Regent. The cry of De Conedic, as he bent his head to the
block, still echoes down through history: “See how they recompense the
services of faithful soldiers! Ye cowards of Bretagne,” he cried, as
the sword of the executioner fell upon him. Ten minutes afterward the
square was empty. One of the corpses still held a crumpled paper in his
hand,--it was the pardon of the other four, for the bearer had arrived
too late. Thus finished “the tragedy of Nantes.”
Though this part of Brittany has the reputation of being the least
illiterate of any, as late as the beginning of the last quarter of
the nineteenth century might be seen at Nantes the sign of the public
scrivener, which read:
ÉCRIVAIN PUBLIQUE
_10 centimes par lettre_
Below Nantes the Loire basin has turned the surrounding country into a
little Holland, where fisherfolk and their boats, with sails of red and
blue, form charming symphonies of dull colour. In the drinking-places
along its shores there is a strange medley of peasants, seafarers,
and fisher men and women. Not so cosmopolitan a crew as one sees in
the harbour-side drinking-places at Marseilles, or even at Havre, but
sufficiently strange to be a fascination to one who has just come down
from the headwaters.
Gray and green is the aspect at the Loire’s source, and green and gray
it still is, though of a decidedly different colour value, at St.
Nazaire, below Nantes, the real deep-water port of the Loire. By this
time the river has amplified itself into a broad estuary, and is lost in
the incoming and outgoing tides of the Bay of Biscay. From its source
the Loire has wound its way gently, broadly, and with placid grandeur
through rocky escarpments, fertile plains, populous and luxurious
towns, all historic ground, by stately châteaux and through vineyards
and fruit-orchards. Now it becomes more or less prosaic and matter of
fact, though, in a way, no less interesting, as it takes on some of the
attributes of the outside world.
Here one gives the last glance to the Loire, as an inland waterway,
for, by the time Nantes is passed, it is of the sea salty. Here the
Sèvre Nantaise comes from the Department Deux-Sèvres and numerous other
streams broaden the lower river until it meets the bay at St. Nazaire,
where coasters and deep-sea fishermen take the place of boat-haulers and
vineyard-workers as picturesque accessories to the landscape.
Jacobites and their sympathizers will take pleasure in noting that it
was in the early days of St. Nazaire’s importance as a port that the
Young Pretender set sail thence in 1745, in a frigate provided by a Mr.
Walsh of Nantes.
It is only now that one realizes to the full the gamut through which
run the varying moods of the Loire, from the hard, sterile lands around
Le Puy through the pleasant Nivernais, the Orleanais, the vineyards of
Saumur, to the Sardinières and the salt works of the marshes of Bourg
de Batz and Croisic.
It was from Croisic that Talhouet, one of the Breton conspirators of
“The Regent’s Daughter,” threatened to set sail if discovered in their
dastardly plot against the Regent.
“I shall be off to St. Nazaire,” said he, “and from thence to Croisic;
take my advice and come with me. I know a brig about to start for
Newfoundland, and the captain is a servant of mine. If the air on shore
become too bad, we will embark, set sail, and adieu to the galleys.”
“Well, I for one,” said his companion, “am a Breton, and Bretons trust
only in God.”
South of the Loire, in that small fragment of territory which formerly
belonged to the old province, is a wonderful collection of old-time and
gone-to-seed towns hardly ever visited by the general run of tourists.
Paimbœuf and Pornic and Clisson are the three places which appeal
most strongly, and this chiefly by their accessibility to Nantes. To
the southwest is the Lake of Grand Lieu, which, according to an ancient
Armorican legend, was the former site of a city “flourishing, but
dissolute,” which was submerged for its sins by the command of God.
This sounds apocryphal, but the moral is plain.
Anciently the Retz country, lying just southward of the Loire, formed a
part of the ancient Breton province, and, although before the Revolution
and the rearrangement of provinces and departments anew this member had
been shorn away, yet Paimbœuf, on the south bank of the Loire, just
beyond Nantes, is of Breton nomenclature, known in French as Tête de
Bœuf. To-day it is but a relic of a former great port, now deserted;
St. Nazaire, its younger relative, with much more ample commercial
resources, has drawn its trade away, and its quays and docks are now
unoccupied, except by coasters and fishing-boats.
Paimbœuf has already become depopulated, and the former little
fishing port of Pornic daily takes on more and more importance.
Pornic itself has a charm which Paimbœuf entirely lacks. It is a
lively little fishing village of perhaps two thousand inhabitants. The
port, the bay, and the canal which empties into the salt waters of the
Atlantic form a delightful setting for artists’ foregrounds, let the
backgrounds be what they may. At present, it has taken on somewhat of
the aspect of a watering-place, but it is safe to say that it will
never become popular as such, in spite of the fact that a casino has
already made its appearance.
[Illustration: <u>_Pornic_</u>]
In addition to the charm of its situation, the chief attraction of
Pornic is its thirteenth and fourteenth century château, with its fine
towers and machicolations. Its history, like that of most others of its
kind, has been romantic, and by no means has it always had the placid
aspect which it has to-day. It was taken from Gilles de Retz by the
Dukes of Brittany during the civil wars, and to-day belongs to a M. de
Bourquency, who has restored it admirably.
At the foot of the château is a great cross of stone, called the Croix
of the Huguenots, erected, it is said, by converted Calvinists. At the
foot of this cross are buried the bones of over two hundred Vendeans
killed at Pornic.
Clisson is a small town of something less than three thousand
inhabitants, whose very name will conjure up memories of the great
Constable Olivier de Clisson. There is much here of interest, but the
history of the town, the château, and of De Clisson himself are so
interwoven with the affairs of state and warfare of the nation that the
outline even may not be given here. The ruins of the old-time château
are a wonderfully impressive reminder of other days, other ways. As a
whole, it is a grand ruin only, although an architect or archaeologist
may build up somewhat of an approach to the former glorious fabric. The
great central tower has not even preserved its walls entire, but what
is left stands to-day as one of the most imposing examples of a great
feudal keep yet extant. Clisson has some right to be considered up to
date, in that some enterprising inhabitant has introduced an electric
light plant. In spite of this, however, the donjon is one of those
architectural splendours of the world which, like the Coliseum at Rome
and Melrose Abbey, should be seen by moonlight in order to be rightly
appreciated.
[Illustration: <u>_Donjon of Clisson_</u>]
The chapel, in which was celebrated the marriage of Duke Francis II.
and Margaret of Foix, the keep, the dungeons, the ramparts, and the
chief apartments occupied by the constable himself have been preserved,
and make Clisson well worth the half-day it will take to go there from
Nantes.
CHAPTER II.
NANTES TO VANNES
Next to Marseilles, Nantes is the finest provincial capital of France.
This may be disputed, but it is the opinion of the writer.
Perhaps it is because of the glorious part that the city played in the
past to preserve its independence, and the independence of Brittany,
succumbing only with the second marriage of Queen Anne; but, for some
reason, the links that bind it with the past have never grown rusty, nor
have modern cosmopolitan characteristics destroyed the individuality of
the Breton.
The situation doubtless has much to do with the air of geniality which
pervades the city. When the Loire glistens under the caressing rays of
the setting sun, and the roof-tops of the town are all of a reddened
gold, Nantes might indeed be even now the mediæval capital that it was
before the age of steam and electricity, which sound the only modern
notes to be heard here. At night the spectacle is far more dramatic,
with the streets and quays lit by countless lamps; the subdued murmur
of the workaday world, now all but gone to rest; for an occasional
shriek from a locomotive or a wail from the siren of some great steamer
dropping down-river with the tide is all that one hears.
There is a forest of masts of shipping, scores upon scores of great
chimney-stacks, of ship-houses, of sugar and oil refineries, and along
the quay-side streets there are yet sailors and longshoremen hanging
about and smoking a finishing pipe, or drinking a last drop of spirit
or glass of beer. But all is “drawing in,” and soon all will be hushed
in silence, and only the walls and towers of the great castle and the
cathedral will keep watch, as they have for five centuries past. This
is Nantes, the great trading port. Up in the town blaze forth the great
hotels that would do credit to Paris, and yet are so different, and
coffee-rooms as splendid and brilliant as any in the capital itself,
with the prices of the portions twenty per cent. less.
They keep late hours in this part of Nantes, and night does not
actually fall until midnight, when, one by one, up go the coffee-room
shutters,--to come down again in the same order between six and seven
in the morning. This is not bad for a climate which on the Loire
approaches almost Mediterranean mildness. It is a pity that cold and
austere England does not rise a little earlier in the morning. London,
it is true, sits up late enough, but she makes up for it by dawdling
away all the morning up to half-past ten or eleven.
In spite of all its loveliness and gaiety, Nantes is a city more ancient
than modern,--this antique Namnêtes, the capital, by preference, of the
Dukes of Brittany, and the political rival of Rennes.
The old lanes and crossways of the middle ages have disappeared in
making the spacious great streets of our own time, but there is much
left to remind one of other days in the old houses and in the ever
dominant cathedral and castle.
The Cathedral of St. Pierre is not a masterpiece of itself, but it
encloses a treasure that may well be included in that category,--the
tomb of Duke Francis II. and Margaret of Foix. The great harmony of
this composition, under the half-light of the stained-glass windows,
reveals a charm that most mausoleums altogether lack. On a tablet of
white marble lie the effigies of the duke and duchess, with two angels
kneeling at their heads, and, crouched at their feet, a greyhound,
supporting the escutcheon of Brittany. Four statues, at the corners of
the pedestal, symbolize Justice, Strength, Temperance, and Prudence.
This magnificent tomb is justly counted as Michel Colombe’s finest work.
The castle of Nantes, like that of Angers, is now an arsenal, and
accordingly is less interesting than if it were even a shattered
ruin. It was the castle of the dukes, and the great lodge, a dainty
Renaissance building, with delicately sculptured window-frames and
balconies capriciously disposed, gives an idea of the comfort and luxury
with which pervasive Duchess Anne surrounded herself in the vivid days
when she lived at Nantes. Within the walls of the castle, one might yet
see--were one allowed to ramble over it at will--the chambers where the
odious Gilles of Laval, the Maréchal de Raiz, Fouquet, the Cardinal de
Retz, and the Duchess de Berri were imprisoned during the long years
that it served as a cage for the political prisoners of France. Madame
de Sévigné sojourned here in 1675, so the sombre and yet gay castle,
besides having entertained many of the Kings of France, from Louis XI.
onward, has also somewhat of the aspect of a literary shrine.
In the courtyard is a great well with an admirably worked decorative
railing in wrought iron, quite worthy to rank with Quintin Matsys’s
famous well at Antwerp. The museums of painting and of archaeology,
abounding in rare Breton antiquities, give the town prominence among the
artistic centres of provincial France. The former contains some fine
examples of the work of Philippe de Champaigne, Lancret, Watteau, and
Théodore Rousseau among others.
The environs of Nantes are wonderfully picturesque for the artist, but
offer little for the amusement of the 125,000 inhabitants of this city
of affairs.
To the north, the Erdre winds its way through flat banks, and widens out
here and there into a veritable lake.
From Nantes to the ocean the wind blows more strongly and the horizon
widens; the great waterway of the Loire has already become practically
an arm of the sea, and one breathes its salt air. The aspect of nature
now grows more and more melancholy for the seeker after gaiety and life;
only the artist will revel in these dull brown and gray riverside and
seaside towns, which follow the coast-line from St. Nazaire to Batz,
Croisic, and Guérande. It is what the French themselves call a land of
grayish twilight, with vast stretches of marsh-land and pebble-strewn
sands.
At the extremity of the north bank of the Loire, at the apex of a bend
of the coast-line, is the Bay of Croisic and the Batz country.
Like a needle pricking the horizon, the tip of the tower of Croisic
marks the location of this sleepy little port in the flat and saline
marsh-land round about. South lie the lighthouse and the tower of the
ruined church of Bourg de Batz, that little Breton village all but
isolated from the mainland itself.
It is the true borderland or frontier between the sea and the land, the
one almost imperceptibly mingling with the other. Of it Jean Richepin
sang:
“Mirage! Sahara! les Bédouins! Un Émir
Est venu planter là ses innombrables tentes
Dont les cônes dressés en blancheurs éclatantes
Resplendissent parmi les tons bariolés
De tapis d’Orient sur le sol étalés;
Ses cônes dont les tas de sel sur les ladures,
Et ses riches tapis aux brillantes bordures
Ne sont que les Gabiers, les Fares, les Œillets.
On l’évaporement laisse de gros feuillets
Métalliques, moirés flottant d’or et de soir.
Par l’étier et le tour qu’un paludier fossoil
La mer entre, s’épand, s’éparpille en circuits,
Puis arrive aux bassins....”
“The sea sells cheap” say the natives, who are mostly engaged in the
salt industry, as one would infer from the foregoing. Competition
has cut considerably into the industry of recovering salt from the
sea-water, but it is still kept up, and these little Breton coast
villages depend upon it, and on fishing, for their sustenance.
St. Nazaire, where the sea first meets the waters of the Loire, is
quite new, created but yesterday by the march of progress. Tradition
connects the site of this busy port--the seventh in rank among the ports
of France--with the ancient Gallo-Roman port of Corbilon. No trace of
its former appellation exists since the sixth century, when Gregory of
Tours, in the first history of France, mentions the settlement as having
been pillaged by a Breton chief, and refers to it as Vic-Saint-Nazaire,
which nearly approaches its present name.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the market-town was called
Port Nazaire, and was defended by a castle erected by the Dukes of
Brittany.
[Illustration: <u>_St. Nazaire_</u>]
Modern navigation has replaced the old sailing-vessels, and to-day, with
its coastwise and foreign trade and its great shipyards, St. Nazaire
is a busy, bustling town. The blemish it has, in the eyes of most, will
be its general aspect of modernity and its uncompromising, right-angled,
straight streets, laid out on a plan which suggests that of Chicago,
if one make an allowance for the difference in magnitude. St. Nazaire
surpasses Chicago, however, in having a sea front, instead of a lake
front, and its hotels are better and cost less. What more should a
passing traveller want of a modern city?
Between Nantes and St. Nazaire, on the granite flank of Sillon de
Bretagne, sits Savenay, as if its houses were ranged around the steps
of an amphitheatre. It has fallen considerably from its proud position
of having been the flourishing capital of the district. It still is the
largest town, but none of the honours go with its size; decay has fallen
upon it, and the hotels are dull, sad places, and even the omnibus from
the railway has stopped its journeys.
The town was the site of a terrific conflict in the Vendean wars,
and was well-nigh destroyed, and its inhabitants were massacred. Now
vineyards grow upon the very soil that a hundred or more years ago
covered thousands of corpses. Altogether it is a gruesome memory which
Savenay conjures up, if one dare even to think of it.
Between Savenay and Guérande, at an equal distance between the two,
are the peat-bogs of Grand Brière. They are the great resources of the
country. Would you see them worked? Then come in August, when you are
making your way to some seacoast resort of Lower Brittany. For nine
days only in the year do the authorities permit the sods to be cut, but
everybody takes part therein, you will be told; and enough peat will be
gathered, and dried, and pressed into “loaves,” as the Brièrons call
them, to warm Nantes for a year.
Guérande is a capital not quite so dead and alive as Savenay; it is
the possessor of a past of a most momentous and vivid character in
its relation to the history of Brittany and of France. To-day, as in
other days, the town is avowedly Breton, as characteristically so as
any of its size in the province. Much has been sacrificed to the god
of progress, but enough of the ancient aspect of the place remains to
recall its features of the time of Duguesclin and Clisson, and the
Counts of Montfort and of Blois, who proclaimed peace here in 1365. The
enormous Saint Michael Gate is a great fortress-gateway, flanked with
two cylindrical and conical roofed towers of the time when feudalism
ruled Brittany.
[Illustration: <u>_Ancient Fortifications of Guérande_</u>]
“Guérande,” says a Frenchman, “has not unlaced its corselet of stone
since the fifteenth century.” To-day, even, it is surrounded by its
mediæval ramparts in a manner like no other northern city in France,
reminding one of those great walled cities of Aigues Mortes and
Carcassonne in Southern Gaul.
This proud belt of machicolated ramparts, ten towers, and four great
gates, and its deep, though now herbage-grown, moat is indeed one of
the few monuments of the middle ages that remain to us in all their
undisturbed splendour.
Guérande is not exactly a deserted village, but its streets are, at
midday, as lone and silent as though its population had not been in
residence for many months. This is a notable feature in many small
French towns during the hour and a half of the midday meal, but nowhere
else is it more to be remarked.
The old parish Church of St. Aubin of Guérande has a collection of
strangely carved capitals depicting horrible chimerical beasts, and
the Chapel of Notre Dame de la Blanche--a fine work of the thirteenth
century--is occasionally the scene of a marriage wherein the
participants dress themselves in the old-time resplendent costumes. Such
an occasion is rare, but should one be fortunate enough to meet with it,
he will carry away still another memory of the mediæval flavour still
lingering about this somnolent little Breton city.
Seaward beyond Guérande are only Bourg de Batz and Croisic, a gay
little maritime city with a fine Gothic church of the highly ornamented
species, and many old, high-gabled houses of the variety which one sees
frequently in stage settings. There are the local watering-places,
too, of the Nantais, Ste. Marguerite and Baule, which have nothing of
interest, however, for the traveller who seeks to improve his mind and
amuse himself simultaneously. They are undoubtedly of great healthful
and economic value to Nantes and St. Nazaire, however, and they do not
differ greatly from others of their class elsewhere.
Again returning to the highroad, if one be travelling by road, “_Vous
prenez le chemin de Vennes” (Vannes) “par la Roche Bernard qui est aussy
celuy de Rhennes et de Rhedon_,” wrote a sixteenth-century chronicler,
and the direct road to-day lies the same way. It is known as “National
Road” No. 165.
Straight as the crow flies, but now up and now down, like all Breton
roadways, this highway runs from Nantes to Quimper, 232 kilometres.
The aspect of the country changes perceptibly as one leaves Savenay on
the way to the real Brittany. One crosses the Vilaine by the suspension
bridge of La Roche-Bernard, hung so perilously high that the great
three-masted coasters may pass beneath. It is unlovely, but convenient,
and saves a round of fifty kilometres on the journey, as one goes from
Nantes to Vannes, so it may be pardoned.
[Illustration: <u>_Châteaubriant_</u>]
Northward lies the very ancient town of Châteaubriant, once the centre
and life of Breton warfare and political strife. It was an ancient
barony of the county of Nantes, and owes its name to the compounding
of the word château with that of its original lord, who was named Brient.
The ancient feudal fortress is now a ruin, but the castle built by
John of Laval, governor of Brittany under Francis I., still serves
the gendarmerie and the sous-préfecture offices. Above the portal of
the colonnade one reads this inscription, which gives the date of the
completion of the new castle:
DE MAL EN BIEN, DE BIEN MYCVLX
POUR LACHEVER IE DEVINS VIEVLX
1538
Each is most interesting, and so abundantly supplied with the lore of
romance and reality, that one can only get his fill of studying it on
the spot.
The Church of St. Jean de Béré is a historical monument of almost the
first rank, and the remains of the ancient Benedictine convent of St.
Saveur date originally from a foundation of Brient I.
On the thirteenth and fourteenth of September of each year, on the plain
behind the town, is held the celebrated fair of Béré, one of those
great combinations of marketing and merrymaking for which old France
was noted, and which have so largely disappeared that to be a part and
parcel of one is to have a most agreeable experience. Guibray, near
Falaise, in Normandy, the “horse-fair” at Bernay, and the Fair de Béré
are the most celebrated in these parts.
It was in the neighbouring forest, as Pontcalec recites in the pages of
“The Regent’s Daughter” of Dumas, that he met his adventure with the
“sorceress of Savenay.”
“I saw an enormous faggot walking along,” said Pontcalec to his three
Breton friends. “This did not surprise me, for our peasants carry such
enormous faggots that they quite disappear under their load, but this
faggot appeared from behind to move alone.”
A very good description this of what one may see even to-day, not only
in this particular forest, but in any other in France. French frugality
burns small sticks and twigs that in other lands would be made into
a brushwood fire, and who shall not say that this trait, along with
many others, does not contribute to the contentment of the French
peasant? for he is content, if not amply endowed with this world’s
goods; marvellously so as compared with his English, Irish, or Italian
brethren. There may be other reasons, but his thrift is the principal
one.
Any one seeking change and rest will certainly find what he is looking
for at Châteaubriant. It is somnolently dull all through the week and
doubly so on Sundays, but, in spite of all this, it is delightful, and
a romantic novelist--or even a writer of romantic novels--could hardly
find a more inspiring background than the country round about.
There is a legend, too, in connection with the old château that might be
worked up into a first-class romance, either for the stage or as a sword
and cloak novel. After all, it is not exactly legend either, though it
is almost too horrible to appear true. The reader may judge for himself,
for here it is:
In the old château lived for a time that unfortunate Frances de Foix
whom Francis I. had created Countess de Châteaubriant. To-day much of
the luxury with which this mistress of the royal lover had surrounded
herself has disappeared, though enough remains, through restoration
and preservation, to suggest the very splendid appointments of a
former time. The young Frances de Foix, herself of the house that once
possessed the crown of Navarre, married the old Count of Laval, who
soon brooded himself into a passion of jealousy over the affair of
his wife and her princely lover, particularly as it was said that she
had gone to visit Francis while he was in prison after his capture at
Pavia. “The countess found the king’s prison very dismal,” said the
chroniclers of the time. This last act proved too much for the elderly
spouse, who speedily “shut up his young wife in a darkened and padded
cell, and finally had her cut into pieces by two surgeons,” as the story
goes. After this horrible event the murderer fled the country, as might
have been expected, in order, say the chroniclers again, “to escape the
vengeance of the king.”
Redon, just to the north, is an unattractive place. Most folk know it
only as the railway official calls out: “Forty-five minutes’ stop for
luncheon, refreshments, and all the rest.”
Very amusing are these railway lunch-rooms seen throughout France. But
withal they are most excellently appointed, although the passengers,
like their kind the world over, eat as though they had not a minute
to lose, and have a good fifteen left on their hands when they have
finished their repast.
The meals are usually divided into three categories: the public table at
a set price, the table for the aristocracy at three francs, the table
with set portions, the frugal repast at half as much, and the service
“to order,” which is the most costly of all.
[Illustration]
Nothing is of an inferior quality, however, and, as all is served
from the same kitchen, it is merely a question as to whether one will
have more or less, or whether he will eat it off linen napery, with
a napkin to tuck under his right ear,--as is the French commercial
traveller’s custom,--or whether he will be satisfied with an oilcloth
table-covering. The difference is more apparent than real, for the
“frugal repast” at a franc and a half is the three franc meal shorn of
its trimmings; you get the same dishes and the same service.
As if to ease the process, a stentorian railway hand puts his head in
the door and shouts: “Ten minutes before the Vannes express starts!”
and returns again at the end of the allotted time to give a final call:
“Into the carriages, gentlemen!” It is much the same the world over, of
course, but they are more polite in France, and the food is better of
its kind, and much better served, two very appreciable differences.
Redon itself and its great open square, on which are the railway
station, the hotels, and the gaunt, lone, dismembered tower of the
Church of St. Sauveur, is by no means attractive. The square is bare of
trees, and in the summer the sun beats down upon the frequenters of the
terrace coffee-rooms of the hotels in a manner which makes one wonder
why they do not move off and seek a shady spot elsewhere.
The indifference shown by the natives of certain localities for the
pelting sunlight, which makes some of us think of cabbage leaves for
our hats and “gin rickeys” for our stomachs, is curious. The Neapolitan
prefers to loll about in the blazing Italian sun, and says that no one
but an Englishman or a dog ever seeks the shade. The citizen of Redon is
like him, and does not care who knows it, and his sunlight, though it
comes to earth some hundreds of miles farther north, appears to be of
the same caloric value.
Redon was an old monastic foundation of St. Convoïon’s, of the Vannes
church. He built the Abbey of St. Sauveur, of which the present church
and its lone tower are later additions. The main body of the present
edifice dates in part from the time of the foundation, though its fabric
was frequently added to and restored up to the twelfth century, from
which period it may really be said to date. The central tower of this
church is said to be the only Romanesque feature of its class in all
Brittany, and is certainly one of the most sturdy anywhere to be seen.
Another remarkable feature is a chapel, the walls loopholed and
machicolated, and built by the Abbé Yves in the fifteenth century;
to-day it serves as the sacristy.
The high altar, a rich and imposing affair, was the gift of the great
Richelieu when he was in possession of the revenues of the abbey. The
city was surrounded by a fortification or wall by the Abbot John of
Treal in 1364, and in 1422 John V., Count of Brittany, established a
mint here.
Questembert, westward toward Vannes, is a town of four thousand or so
inhabitants, and has many interesting old houses, but otherwise is
devoid of attractions either for the lover of architectural monuments or
for worshippers at religious or other shrines. It is, however, the place
for holding many local fairs or markets of considerable magnitude, where
one may make practically his first acquaintance with the Breton peasant,
becoiffed and beribboned as he, or she, only is on native heath.
Rochefort-en-Terre is also a chief place; as its population numbers
less than seven hundred souls, it cannot be considered as even a
local metropolis. Its situation and its fine, though not stupendously
remarkable, architectural glories make up for what it lacks in the way
of population. It sits high on a hillside dominating the little river
Arz, a confluent of the Vilaine. Its name is due to the founder of
a château built here in the thirteenth century and destroyed by the
Catholic Leaguers in 1594, though it was afterwards rebuilt and again
destroyed, this time by Revolutionary firebrands, in 1793. The ruins of
this château are to-day very satisfactory indeed as ruins, though they
include few or none of the architectural details with which the work
must once have been endowed. The lower courses of the walls are there,
remains of five towers, and an ancient well, with a curb of sculptured
granite.
The ancient collegiate Church of Notre Dame de la Tronchaye
is an ecclesiastical monument of high rank, for a town like
Rochefort-en-Terre, and is an altogether lovable old shrine, with
admirable sculptures in stone and some curious wooden statues, in the
interior, said originally to have been those of Claude of Rieux and
Suzanne of Bourbon, Lord and Lady de Rochefort. These statues are now
converted into a St. Joseph and a Virgin. This may or may not have been
a sacrilege; it certainly was a desecration. The ancient city gates
remain, and there are numerous fifteenth and sixteenth century houses.
The country round about Rochefort-en-Terre was brought into vogue by
the landscape-painter, Pelouze, some years ago, and other artists have
followed in his wake, making an over growing artist colony in the
summer-time. Studies and sketches decorate the dining-room of the Hôtel
Lecadre in a surprising number; at least surprising to one who comes
upon this unassuming little town and its excellent, before named, little
hotel while journeying to Finistère.
Still going toward Vannes one passes Elven, near which is the Manoir of
Kerlean, the family estate of _the_ Descartes. The birth certificate of
the Descartes is in the records in the mayor’s office.
Three kilometres to the north are the remains of the ancient fortress
of Largoet, whose tower, known as the Tour d’Elven, dates from the
fifteenth century. This tower has been called the most beautiful castle
keep in all Brittany, and so it is if one take into consideration
its moss-and-ivy-grown walls and its general eerie aspect heightened
perceptibly if seen by moonlight. This high, majestic tower of a feudal
castle, whose other members have practically disappeared, is also a
literary shrine of high rank, inasmuch as Octave Feuillet has placed
here some of the most moving scenes in his “Story of a Poor Young Man.”
Perhaps this true romance is not so well known to the present generation
as to a former, but it should be, and accordingly the clue is here
given, and it should have a double significance so far as travellers in
Brittany are concerned.
[Illustration: <u>_Tour d’Elven_</u>]
One enters Vannes, if it be a holiday or a Sunday, amid a gaiety and
uproar that is apparently inexplicable. To be sure Vannes is the
metropolis of the Morbihan, but one does not look for such continuous
gaiety on the part of a people supposed to be wholly devout and not very
rich, as possessors of this world’s goods count their gains. Devoutness
need not necessarily mean glumness, and so as it all seems, around
Vannes at least, to be for the general good, one is not sorry to have
his first introduction to a great Breton town in a way so pleasant.
Really it is a sort of small gaiety, and strictly local, which goes on
here. There is nothing of the riotous order, but it is all very gay,
nevertheless.
The simple folk of the Morbihan, who have crowded into Vannes for the
day, are as interested and amused with a hurdy-gurdy Punch and Judy
show, a travelling circus, or a merry-go-round as if they were the
latest distractions of Paris. Meanwhile one seeks his hotel, and there
comes another surprise.
CHAPTER III.
THE MORBIHAN--VANNES AND THE “GOLFE”
The “Golfe” or Bay of Morbihan is one of those great landlocked havens
in which the whole Breton coast abounds; its islands are as many as the
days of the year, as the natives have it.
Morbihan itself is as much sea as land. The tides rise to a great height
along this whole southern coast of Brittany, and in the Bay of Morbihan
they have full play.
The metropolis of Lower Morbihan is Vannes, which the railway porters
shout out at you, as you descend from the train, as Va-a-a-nnes.
Leaving the station, one threads his way through whole batteries of
laundresses, their gull-winged head-dress nodding in rhythm with the
beating of their paddles, a most picturesque sight, but a process which
works disaster to one’s clothes, destroying pearl buttons, and causing
mysterious small holes to appear in the most inconvenient places. An
accompaniment of song always goes with these shattering and battering
exercises. At Vannes, according to Theodore Botrel, it runs like this:
“Pan! pan! pan!
Ma Doué!
Comme la langue maudite
Marche bien au vieux lavoit.
Pan! pan! pan!
Vite! vite!
Plus vite que le battoir!”
It is the day of the local fair, the chief article of commerce being,
it would seem, pigs, as at Limerick. At any rate, there are hundreds,
if not thousands, of little porkers, who have just put foot to earth,
as their venders tell one; their own voices, too, strident and high
pitched, announce the same thing.
Vannes, truth to tell, is not much of a capital, but it is a highly
interesting and picturesque old town, with manners and customs quite
different from those of any of its neighbours.
The chief characteristics of the place seem to be pointed roofs of red
and moss-grown tiles and walls of blue granite. One can almost imagine
that Botrel chose it as the scene of the stanza:
“Qui donc chante sous nos fenêtres
Ces mystérieuses chansons?
Ce sont les âmes des ancêtres
Qui reconnaissent leurs maisons!”
[Illustration: <u>_Market-woman, Vannes_</u>]
There is a blending of the seashore and the open country here which is
scarcely found in any other part of France. In some respects it is like
Holland, and again it is not, for it lacks the web of canals with which
that country is interwoven.
The whole bay--“Le Golfe”--forms a dooryard for Vannes, and a yacht or a
boat is as much an appendage of the Vannes household of the better class
as a dog or cat.
[Illustration: <u>_The Country near Vannes_</u>]
Vannes, the capital of the Morbihan, is a city of 23,000 souls, and has
two great modern, up-to-date hotels. Choose one, and you will “like the
other best,” as Rubinstein said to the young pianist, who was to play
two of his compositions to the master. He said this, be it recalled,
after he had heard only the first one. Not that Vannes hotels are really
bad. Oh, no. Truth to tell, they are excellent in their way, but they
are unconvincing.
When one is here, in the midst of a new, strange set of conditions
of life, he looks for something characteristic about his inn. If he
find it, he is content; if he do not, all the smugness and propriety
of imported manners and customs in the dinner service will not make
him so. The true traveller prefers taking his chances with the native
dishes to trifling with Paris culinary fashions at the hands of a Breton
peasant-chef,--if that is the exact classification one ought to give the
cooks of Vannes.
To enter Vannes by road, one has come down a precipitous descent to
the sea-level, and accordingly rises again to an equal height when he
leaves, for Vannes is the great tidewater port for the whole of the
south coast of Brittany between Lorient and St. Nazaire. The traffic of
the bays of Morbihan and Quiberon is considerable, and the ceaseless
coming and going of many small steamers and sailing-craft is unlike
traffic elsewhere.
The great bay is an inland sea almost surrounded by the jutting
peninsulas which terminate on either side of the narrow channel in
Pointe de Kerpenhir and Port Navalo. The name is compounded of two
Breton words, _mor_ (sea) and _bihan_ (little). The flat tree-grown
islands of this little sea make vistas and groups of a unique character,
and to learn the bay well by a voyage among them in a flat-bottomed
skimming-dish of a craft, or by the more facile motor-launch, is a
thoroughly agreeable experience.
The chief of the islands are the Monks Isle and the Ile d’Arz, but the
enfolding shores of the mainland, with its little seaside-farmyard
villages, have the same characteristics.
On the little passenger steamers, which ply between the islands and the
mainland, one meets a queer company of peasant-folk in coifs and round
velvet or straw caps, fowls, sheep, goats, and an occasional overgrown
calf.
Such of the islands of the bay as are populated, and many of them
are, were colonized from the neighbouring country, and the women in
particular are physically admirable. They still wear the distinctive
costume of the country in a spirit uncontaminated by the electric lights
and railways of Vannes. Custom in these isles allows the young women
to demand the hand of a likely swain in marriage, and the plan seems
to work well. The population seems generally happy, prosperous, and
contented. What better is expected as the outcome of marriage?
The climate of all the Morbihan shore is mild and tranquil at all
seasons of the year, and one may sit beside the open window of his hotel
dining-room throughout the year. The mimosa flowers in winter, and
palms, rose-trees, camellias, and fig-trees prosper exceedingly in the
open air.
Vannes was the ancient capital of the Veneti, a strong coast tribe of
other days which resisted the invasion of Cæsar and triumphed against
his fleet a half-century or more before the Christian era.
When finally the Romans came, they made Vannes the centre of six
great highways which radiated to Corseul, to Angers, to Hennebont, to
Locmariaquer, to Rennes, and to Nantes. From this its importance may be
inferred.
Christianity came to Vannes in 465, when St. Perpetus, Metropolitan of
Tours, consecrated St. Patern as first bishop. By the sixth century it
had become an independent county, but was joined again to the duchy
of Brittany in 990. John IV. established his habitual residence at
Vannes, and constructed the celebrated Château de l’Hermine, with its
constable’s tower so famous in the history of Brittany as the place in
which he imprisoned Clisson, releasing him only after the payment of a
heavy ransom.
The history of Vannes and the Morbihan is too long and stormy to be even
outlined here, but there are still many remains and memories which will
serve as a foundation upon which to build the fabric anew.
[Illustration: <u>_Ancient City Walls, Vannes_</u>]
The port is most interesting, with its varied traffic and its great
ships of nearly a thousand tons which thread their way up through the
islands of the gulf, bringing lumber, coals, and all the small cargoes
of a great coasting port.
At Vannes one may see a huge parti-coloured handkerchief of the
_bandanna_ variety waving before a narrow doorway. It is the “shawl,”
the sign of the hair-cutter, who will exchange its fellow for your
hair, if you be a Breton girl with dark brown tresses, or even an
elderly person whose hair is iron-gray. In Lower Brittany, on summer
fair-days, the dealer in hair makes a round exceedingly profitable to
his establishment, though at each stopping-place it leaves a hundred
or more young girls shorn of their crowning glory,--a loss which they
successfully cover with their daintily ironed head-dress.
The chief of the sights and shrines of the neighbourhood of Vannes are
St. Gildas de Rhuis and the Château of Suscino. The former is revered
for its sixth-century monastic foundation of St. Gildas, called the
wise, and for some time in the twelfth century governed by the famous
Abelard. The ancient abbatial church is now the parish church. It dates
from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, and is an unusual work in
many respects, and rising to a height of grandeur seldom seen outside
the larger Breton cities and towns.
[Illustration: <u>_Château of Suscino_</u>]
The castle of Suscino--or more properly the ruin--is a wonderful
thirteenth-century structure on the water’s edge, built by John the
Red-haired. It follows the best Gothic traditions of its time, and
its crenelated walls and towers, the latter now unroofed, are perfect
of their kind. It was captured by Charles of Blois, and retaken by his
Montfort rival in 1364. An English garrison occupied it in 1373. Finally
it was given by Anne of Brittany to John of Chalons, Prince of Orange,
from whom it was taken by Francis I., and he presented it to Frances of
Foix, Lady of Châteaubriant, as she then was. The rest of its history is
equally varied, and as important as becomes so magnificent a mediæval
fortress.
[Illustration]
In form the château is an irregular pentagon, perhaps modified from
its original plan in 1420. Its orchid machicolations are remarkable
both for their beauty and their utility. Seven towers, of which six
remain, originally flanked its gates and walls. The new tower is a fine
cylindrical keep of the fifteenth century. Over the entrance one still
reads a tablet inscription as follows:
ICI EST NÉ
LE DUC ARTHUR III.
LE 24 AOÛT, 1393
North of Vannes are Ploërmel and Josselin, two places which no one
should leave out of the itinerary of Brittany. Neither is easily
accessible by rail, but both are conveniently reached by road.
Ploërmel has a railway connection with the line to Brest by way of
Rennes, and another with the line to Brest by way of Vannes, but
Josselin is off the beaten track, and one makes his way from Ploërmel by
omnibus or in a carriage.
Ploërmel and its “pardon” have inspired an opera, one of Meyerbeer’s
most celebrated scores, known to English music lovers as “Dinorah,” but
in French called “The Pardon of Ploërmel.” The town owes its name to an
anchorite who, in the sixth century, retired here to a hermitage.
The history of Ploërmel during the middle ages was stormy. It was here
that the edict expelling the Jews from Brittany was issued in 1240. In
1273 the Comte de Richemont--upon his return from the Crusades--founded
at Ploërmel the first Carmelite convent known to France. This ancient
convent, situated without the walls, escaped from the disasters which
caused the city to be burned in 1347. The Calvinists came in time to
have a temple here, in which they held two synods of their church.
To-day Ploërmel is a sleepy, old-world town, with two good inns, and
not much except the fragmentary reminders of old walls and buildings to
remind one of the parts played in other days.
The Church of St. Armel, a reconstruction of 1511-1602, is in parts
highly decorated with stone sculptures and strange images, recalling,
says an ingenious, but profane, Frenchman, the “pleasantries of
Rabelais.” Of course he refers to the players on the bagpipes, the man
sewing up the mouth of his wife, and the wife tearing off her husband’s
cap. Certainly these quaint figures are not born of religious symbolism,
unless, by chance, that the symbolism of the religious builders of
Ploërmel differs greatly from that of others elsewhere.
There are still remains of Ploërmel’s old city walls dating from the
fifteenth century, and also a fragment of a tower.
Near by, on the road to Josselin, is a simple granite shaft perpetuating
the famous “Battle of the Thirty,” celebrated in history.
According to Froissart, Robert of Beaumanoir, chatelain of Josselin,
one day provoked an English captain--Bromborough--who was encamped at
Ploërmel, and challenged him to battle; thirty of his men against thirty
Frenchmen. At the first attack four Frenchmen and two English fell.
Then the combat began again with swords, battle-axes, and lances. Eight
English only finally remained, including Bromborough himself; all the
others were killed or taken prisoners and led away to the dungeons of
the Château de Josselin.
Froissart writes elsewhere of this same engagement: “Twenty-two years
after the battle of the thirty, I saw at the table of King Charles of
France one of the combatants, a knight called Yvain Charnel. His face
showed that the battle had been hot, for it was scarred all over.”
This wayside column or pyramid just off the route bears the following
inscription:
[Illustration: <u>_Ploërmel_</u>]
À LA MEMOIRE PERPETUELLE
DE LA BATAILLE DES TRANTE
QUE MGR LE MARÉCHAL DE BEAU MANOIR
A GAIGNÉE DANS CE LIEU L’AN 1530
Josselin is now chief town of a commune of 2,500 inhabitants; it has a
fine mediæval château yet inhabitable, two ecclesiastical monuments of
more than unusual excellence, and a rather shaky and ill-situated inn
(Hôtel de France), which makes up in the abundance and excellence of its
fare for what it lacks in the way of electric lights and modern sanitary
arrangements.
The first houses of Josselin were grouped around a miraculous effigy
of the Virgin, known as Notre Dame du Roncier, because it was found
beneath a blackberry-bush. To-day Notre Dame du Roncier, the church and
the chapel and its statue of the Virgin, are venerated highly by the
faithful who make the pilgrimage to the shrine on the Monday and Tuesday
of Pentecost and on the eighth of September, the birthday of the Virgin,
when the remains of her ancient statue are shown. This effigy was broken
and burned in the Revolutionary fury of 1793, but a modern replica was
crowned, in the Chapel Notre Dame du Roncier, in 1868. The settlement
which grew up around the shrine was surrounded by a protecting wall by
the Count of Guéthénoc in 1008, and in 1030 it was given the name of
Josselin, after his son.
[Illustration: <u>_Shrine of St. Etienne, Josselin_</u>]
In the thirteenth century, the county of Porhoet, in which Josselin was
situated, passed to the house of Fougères, and its affairs were varied
and involved until Peter of Valois, Count of Alençon, sold it to the
Constable Oliver of Clisson, whose daughter brought it in marriage to
the Rohans, to whose descendants it still belongs.
In the Church of Our Lady of the Blackberry-bush is a remarkable tomb
placed in the Chapel of St. Marguerite--the former oratory of the
constable--to Oliver of Clisson and Marguerite of Rohan.
The castle rests on a rocky foundation beside the river Oust, and its
front is most imposing. Three towers with conical roofs flank the
riverside, and are an expression of the best fortress-château building
of its era (twelfth century), severe and gaunt in every line, and yet
beautifully planned. The interior court takes on quite a different
aspect, that of the “_architecture civile_” of the third ogival period,
when Renaissance forms and details had crept in, almost destroying
Gothic lines.
The window openings of the two stories have an admirable decorative
effect, as beautiful as those of Blois and very nearly equalling those
of Chambord.
An open gallery above the windows is a charming additional
interpolation, and between each window is carved “A Plus,” the device
of the distinguished family of the Rohans, who built this part of the
structure. A keep and some later walls and parapets were added by
Clisson somewhere about the year 1400, but most of them disappeared in
1629, when the château ceased to be a stronghold of the League.
In the main it is a twelfth and thirteenth century structure which is
so admirably preserved to-day. One may visit the interior, through the
courtesy of the family in residence, and, though it may be somewhat
disconcerting to walk through these historic apartments of another
day and see such modern innovations as electric bells and other
appurtenances of a late civilization, the experience is, after all,
a peep behind the curtain, and this the up-to-date motor-car tourist
always appreciates highly.
The great hall, the library, with its magnificent chimneypiece and
its cipher, “A Plus,” carved in stone, and the dining-room ornamented
with a modern equestrian statue of Clisson, by Fremiet, are the chief
apartments shown.
[Illustration: <u>_Château de Josselin_</u>]
In the court within the walls is an ancient well surrounded by an
elaborate forged iron railing.
One takes the road again, by the way of Locminé and Baud, for Auray, the
most dainty and charming of all Breton market-towns, passing through a
delightfully picturesque country of rolling hills and deep valleys and
fir forests, studded here and there with lakelets.
Locminé, which derives its name from _Locmenec’h_ (monk’s cell), was the
site of a monastery founded in the sixth century by St. Colomban. It was
burned by the Normans in the ninth century, after the pleasant custom of
these invaders, and reëstablished in 1006 by Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany,
as a priory attached to the Abbey of St. Gildas of Rhuis.
In the present church of Locminé is a chapel dedicated to St. Colomban,
containing a painting representing scenes from the life of the saint;
others are carried out in the coloured glass of the windows.
One reads the following,--a supplication on behalf of the dangerous
madmen who at one time occupied two cells beneath the pavement:
“St. Colomban, patron of Locminé, pray for us!
St. Colomban, help of idiots, pray for us!”
Behind the church is an elaborate ossuary dating from Renaissance times,
when these adjuncts to burial-grounds were so plentifully scattered
over Brittany.
Baud has an enormous parish church of the time of Louis XIV., with a
fine Gothic arcade and a great crucifix standing beside the outer wall.
Aside from this, there is not much else here to attract one, unless he
be a pilgrim affected with disease of the eye. If he be, and if he bathe
in the “Fontaine de la clarté,” and the fates be propitious, and he be
not too far gone otherwise, and everything else be as it should, he will
be cured forthwith--perhaps.
It is unkind to scoff at these miraculous fountains scattered here and
there over the world, of course, but one has seen so many individual
cases that were not benefited, and heard of so many that were, that one
may be justified in a little skepticism.
To Auray is twenty kilometres by a road which gently rolls down a matter
of 150 metres of elevation until it reaches sea-level at the little
market-town seaport known in Breton as Alre.
CHAPTER IV.
AURAY AND THE MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS OF MORBIHAN
Auray is the real centre from which to make the round of the vast
collection of relics of the long lost civilization of Morbihan.
Many have attempted to explain the significance of these rude stone
monuments. Some have said that the famous avenues of Carnac were the
streets of one of Cæsar’s camps, its roofs having fallen and mouldered
away, and that the famous “Merchants’ Table” at Locmariaquer was an
ancient druidical altar, to which the helpless were led to be sacrificed.
All this and much more is for the antiquary alone, and a nodding
acquaintance with the history of these curious stone formations or
erections is about all for which most travellers will care.
He who arrives at Auray on a market-day will seem to himself to come
into a region where every one speaks the Breton tongue. Not all, of
course, for French is now compulsory with the school-children, but the
frequency of it here in the booths and stalls in and around Auray’s
lovely old timbered market-house is greatly to be remarked.
It is a question if this same market-house be not quite the most
theatrical-looking thing of its kind in all France. It is for all
the world like a successful piece of stage carpentry, with a great
spectacular stairway running up into its garret above, quite in the
manner that one has seen upon the stage over and over again, when the
heroine or the villain--it does not much matter which--escapes from his,
or her, pursuers. Low built, heavily raftered, and with a leaky roof
allowing rays of sunlight to dribble through into the gloom within in a
most entrancing manner, this old market-house is the centre of the life
and activity of the place for fifty-two Mondays in each year.
Within and without the walls of the market-house is gathered the most
varied conglomeration of wares imaginable. Beside the draper’s counter
are baskets of vegetables, eggs, or fish. A poor little calf, tied by
the legs and lying at full length on the ground, keeps company with his
former farmyard neighbours, the ducks and geese, but on either side is a
second-hand collection of ironmongery and old shoes, and it should be
the envy of the provident, for two sous buy anything in the collection.
[Illustration: <u>_Interior of Market-house, Auray_</u>]
The country-side Breton peasant who comes to Auray on a market-day is
the glass of fashion of his race, his jacket embroidered in braid of gay
colours, and velvet bands on his sleeves and collar. His shirt is high
and stiffly starched, and his felt hat or cap heavily hung with velvet
ribbons. The womenfolk are clad in equally spectacular fashion, with
high white caps and full-sleeved bodices, each with a black velvet band
around the sleeve, and full gathered skirts, spoiling all symmetry of
form as nature made it.
The history of Auray, from the days when it belonged to John of Auray,
grand huntsman of Brittany, has left its mark in the annals of the
country in no indefinite manner. John of Montfort, the Counts of Blois,
Duguesclin, and many others stalk through its pages of history until
finally, in the wars of religions, it was held by the Catholic army
and the Spaniards in turn. Its old château, whose foundations now form
the fine Promenade du Loc, dates from the eleventh century; and it was
reconstructed and enlarged two centuries later, finally to disappear,
as the result of an order for its demolition given by the castle
destroyer, Henry II., in 1558.
[Illustration: <u>_Shrine of St. Roch, Auray_</u>]
The port of Auray is more daintily and charmingly environed than most
seaports. As it lies between the wooded, deep-cut banks of the little
river, its intermingling of ships and salt water, and country-side, and
sailor lads and rustic maidens, and all the motley population of the
little town, is a marvellous thing to see.
The smack of antiquity is about it all, and the historic legend of its
shrine of St. Anne--which lives as vividly to-day as ever it lived--most
touchingly connects the present with the past.
One of the most celebrated, and certainly the most largely attended,
of all the “pardons” of Brittany is that held at St. Anne of Auray,
though Auray itself is something more than a mere place of religious
pilgrimage, and a good deal more than a wayside station on the railway
line where one leaves the train and hires a carriage for Carnac and
Quiberon, though apparently not many tourists know it. In the first
place, it is one of the largest and most characteristic of all the
little Breton market-towns, is a deep-water port of a considerable size,
and has a hotel which supplies one with the most ample and delightful
meals that the traveller will find westward of Nantes.
This may be a mundane standard by which to judge of an old-world town’s
appeal to interest, but it is all-sufficient, and the most marvellous
attractions the world may have to offer will hardly be appreciated by
a travel-worn and hungry traveller, and such should plan to arrive in
town for the Monday dinner at the Golden Lion; also he should not hurry
through the town merely for the sake of visiting the shrine of St. Anne,
which is tawdry enough in its general aspect, except when it is thronged
on the great days of the “pardon,” March seventh and July twenty-fifth.
The great festival of the Pardon of St. Anne of Auray is held in July,
on the birthday of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Its origin
dates back to 1623, when a peasant of the country-side, one Yves
Nicolazic, was commanded by St. Anne, who appeared to him in a vision,
to found a chapel in her honour in the fields of Bocenno, where, she
said, an ancient shrine had existed nearly a thousand years earlier.
Guided by explicit directions and a mysterious star, Yves found a
precious image, which ultimately was transported and set up anew in
the church built at Auray. This miraculous statue was lost during
the Revolution, but a fragment was preserved and is included in the
present shrine, which is surrounded by a modern edifice dating from the
mid-nineteenth century.
Near by is the miraculous fountain, which, like others of its kind
elsewhere, is exceedingly erratic as to the miracles it performs. It
was beside this fountain, then but a humble little rock-gushing spring,
but now neatly set about with a concrete basin, that St. Anne first
appeared to Yves.
Each year, by train, by boat, by country cart, and on foot, pilgrims
come from miles around, many of them camping out the night by the
roadside, all, in spite of the solemn purport of their pilgrimage, in
the gayest spirits. There is always a certain amount of discord to be
encountered at all these great festivals,--beggars, deformed or ill
with incurable disease, crippled or what not, all expectant of reaping
a thriving harvest from the simple-minded frequenters of the shrine.
Whether deserving or not, all of them appear to receive liberal alms,
for the custom of giving alms is as much a component part of the
event as any of the other observances, nor is it ever frowned upon or
curtailed by the religious or civic authorities.
The order of the day includes the massing of the pilgrims at open-air
services, the placing of candles before the shrine, the inspection of
the relics of the saint, the drinking of, or bathing in, the miraculous
fountain, and sermons and admonitions uncounted, all in the Breton
tongue, incomprehensible to outsiders, but to be taken as salutary. The
great feature is the procession of priests and pilgrims, the former
in their brilliant vestments, many of the latter bearing tall, gaudily
coloured candles and gay silken banners. Grouped around each banner
will be found the Breton men and women from a particular section, each
group differently clad from those of other sections, but all gay with
brilliant colouring.
“Saint Anne, pray for us!” is the cry one would hear were it in English,
or “_Sainte Anne, priez pour nous_” in French; in Breton, its sadness is
indescribable, more like the wail of a _banshee_ than anything else.
Usually the Bishop of Vannes delivers an exhortation, in the Breton
tongue, of course, from the top of the Holy Steps, after which the
throng--or, at least, such as are truly and sincerely devout--climb to
the top on their knees. According to the printed notice at the foot,
each step mounted on the bended knee, accompanied of course by a prayer,
is good for a nine years’ absolution of a soul in purgatory. In the
cloister behind the church is a great crucifix, in which the peasant
pilgrims stick pins, each recording a prayer said or a vow made.
On the night of July twenty-sixth, St. Anne’s Day, a grand torchlight
procession marches. The “Marche aux Flambeaux,” a celebrated painting
by Jules Breton, now owned in America, well shows the effect of one of
these great demonstrations, except that it lacks the weirdness of the
sombre background of night itself.
This ends the great days of the pardon, but throughout the year pilgrims
make their way to the shrine to say a prayer, or to drink or bathe in
the waters of the fountain, or perhaps to carry a jugful home to some
bedridden member of their families.
Among the offerings in fulfilment of vows made at the shrine of Ste.
Anne d’Auray are a number of very ancient inscriptions, such as the
following best illustrate:
“William Genin, bitten by a mad dog, vowed himself to St. Anne and
obtained a perfect cure in 1631.”
“Helen Sausse, abandoned by her mother, vomited a two-headed snake and
recovered her health.”
On the way from Auray to Plouharnel, Carnac, Quiberon, and Locmariaquer
are worth one day or three, accordingly as one may feel inclined. The
distance is not great; a dozen kilometres will cover the journey out,
and a little more circuitous return route will take in a half-dozen or
more old centres of a civilization of which all knowledge is lost in
the night of time.
Whatsoever the great megalithic monuments of Carnac may mean, certain it
is that they tell--or could tell if one could feel sure he understood
it correctly--a story quite out of keeping with the manners and customs
of to-day. Like the tall, gaunt windmills plentifully besprinkled
hereabouts, these great stones rear their heads skyward in fashion most
strange. Long rows of them, like files of soldiers, or like the trees of
the forest, stand to-day for the curious to marvel at, as they stood so
long ago that their origin is not to be definitely traced.
[Illustration: <u>_The Lines of Carnac_</u>]
[Illustration: <u>_The Lines of Carnac_</u>]
Of the Lines of Carnac, as the strange population of
tombstone-looking monoliths is known, much has been written by
antiquaries, archæologists, and geologists ever since the tide of travel
set this way. What these stones actually mean--some thousands of them
in all, set out in regular rows--only a vain, presumptuous person could
answer. They offer a prospect of a strange grandeur, for they really
are grand, if not stupendous, and, as they stretch away in long, silent
lines almost to the horizon, they are as phantoms looming to-day out of
the mysterious past to which they belong.
There are three great companies of these menhirs here. Those of Ménec,
composed of 1,169 members in eleven ranks; of Kermario, 1,120 members
in ten rows; and of Kerlescan, thirteen rows made up of 579 individual
stones.
Carnac has another ancient monument in the tumulus of Mont St. Michel,
which, like other elevations bearing the same name, is a sky-nearing
little peak of land which supposedly formed a firm earthly foothold for
the archangel.
The parish church of Carnac is dedicated to St. Cornély, who, according
to legend, lived in the neighbourhood and was many times saved from
an untimely death by the oxen of the region. Just how this was
accomplished no one seems to know, but enough of the tradition still
lives to inspire a grand celebration on the saint’s day, the thirteenth
of September, when many animals are offered up to him, as one learns
from the kindly, tall-coifed guardian of the church.
[Illustration: <u>_Map of Carnac and the Surrounding Country_</u>]
The painted ceilings of the Church of St. Cornély are remarkable works
of art, if not for their excellence, at least for their ingenuity. The
north porch is an astonishing Renaissance addition, which, from its
curves and curls, would seem to be the precursor of “_l’art nouveau_.”
To the westward of Carnac, at the shore-end of the peninsula of
Quiberon, is Plouharnel, another centre around which are grouped many
curious stone monuments.
The Chapel of Our Lady of the Flowers is a singularly beautiful small
church built of the granite of the country. It contains a notable
bas-relief in alabaster in the form of what is known in ecclesiastical
art as a “Jesse Tree.”
Just why the promoters of a railway had the temerity to push it to the
very end of the snake-like peninsula of Quiberon is a problem which will
ever remain unsolved so far as the general public is concerned. Stendhal
has written some gloomy views of scenes enacted at Fort Penthièvre,
half-way down the peninsula, and Victor Hugo wrote of the same times
(now a hundred years ago):
“_Mourir plus d’un soldat à son prince fidèle, un prêtre fidèle à son
Dieu._”
The aspect of this long, narrow peninsula is everywhere the same, from
its juncture with the mainland to the sandy point fifteen kilometres
away, from which one sees the flash of the twinkling light on Belle Ile.
Quiberon has what may almost be called an ideal hotel, except that it
is unworldly and not the least new. A travelling salesman, whom we met
at Auray, told us that it was kept by an old cook, one of the Vatels
of the stove. Simple and modest, but clean withal as the proverbial
door-step of Holland, it is one of those inns that the traveller loves
out of sheer inability to find fault with it.
Quiberon has two ports, Port Haliguen and Port Maria, both in danger
of becoming popular seaside resorts, for the guide-books are already
describing them as places where the sojourn will be agreeable for
persons of simple habits.
The fish-market of Quiberon is one, if not the chief, of its sights for
the student of manners and customs. “_Cinq lubines pour douze francs
et deux cent quarante maquereaux pour trente-un francs_” was the way
the market ran on the occasion of the visit of the author, all of which
argues that Quiberon is a good place for the fish to come.
[Illustration: <u>_Quiberon_</u>]
The lobsters, too, are a great feature of the trade here, and are sold
by their length, measuring from the eye up to the first scale of their
tails. An average price is rather over four sous, and Paris takes the
best of the lot. They travel first-class and by express, the lobsters
of Quiberon, when they take their first and last voyage to the “shining
city,” and there are plenty of friends awaiting them at the station.
They invariably arrive at the fish-market for the earliest sales, and at
noon the epicure may eat them at Marguery’s, which sounds like a French
version of the “Alice in Wonderland” tale.
One hour from Quiberon, by a tiny steamboat, and one finds himself
skirting the cliff walls surrounding and sheltering the little port and
town of Palais on Belle Ile, overlooked by the powerful citadel built by
Vauban, who, as the fortress-builder of France, stood in his profession
where Napoleon did in his.
This “_plus belle île de l’ocean_” has forty-eight kilometres of
coast-line, and every one of them has been so cut and serrated by
the action of the waves that the island would form a veritable ocean
graveyard were it situated on the direct line of travel by sea.
For the most part, visitors content themselves with making an excursion
to the northerly end of the island, a visit to the apothecary’s grotto,
and another to the lantern of the great lighthouse, which at night sends
its electric rays far out to sea.
What tourists may not do is to roam over the old citadel now occupied
as a national fort, and this is a pity, for there they might conjure up
a reminder of other days that would be like a chapter out of Dumas.
The citadel was built by Marshal de Retz in 1572, and was the refuge of
the cardinal of the same name when he fled from Nantes in 1653. Not far
away is the Château Fouquet. Nicholas Fouquet, Marquis of Belle Ile,
was Superintendent of Finance under the regency of Anne of Austria,
and continued the important office after the accession of Louis XIV.
The consensus of opinion is that Fouquet was insinuating, specious,
hypocritical, and sensual. It was at the great fête given by Fouquet at
Vaux that the king planned his arrest, “fearing he would escape to Belle
Ile,” then thought to be an impregnable fortress. Both in the pages of
the historians and in the romances of Dumas one may read the story.
Belle-Ile-en-Mer, also, was made the home of Aramis after Dumas had
given him episcopal rank. The minute details given in “Le Vicomte de
Bragelonne” would form an admirable supplement to any guide-book.
The great Sara Bernhardt has of recent years made her home on this
barren and desolate isle. It is not altogether desolate, however, for
there are hotels at Palais and Sauzon, and tourists, solitary and in
droves, are continually making excursions thither in the season from the
neighbouring Breton coast, from Vannes, Quiberon, or Lorient.
Although Belle Ile is only a pin-head on most maps of France, it has a
considerable population. Palais is a town of five thousand souls, and
Sauzon counts something over sixteen hundred, and so Belle Ile, being
only about 21,000 acres in extent, is a very thickly populated part of
the globe.
Returning to the mainland, a call at Locmariaquer is inevitable, if one
be a true and genuine traveller, even if it be “out of the world,” which
virtually it is, being at the tip end of another peninsula like that of
Quiberon.
The town itself owns to fifteen hundred or more souls, and all of them
look prosperous and contented. Where all of them get their livelihood,
it is difficult to see, for there is not much intercourse with the
outside world.
Locmariaquer has not even a railway, as Quiberon has, but lies twenty
kilometres or so south of Auray, almost at the mouth of Morbihan Bay.
The church of Locmariaquer is a fine twelfth-century work, but the
foundation of the little town lies much farther back in antiquity than
this. It was the ancient Doriorigum of the Romans.
The Chapel of St. Michel is built up from the Roman remains of a
structure known as _er c’hastel_.
The great celebrities of Locmariaquer are, however, those members
of the great family of menhirs, dolmens, and cromlechs with which
this part of Morbihan is so thickly strewn. The chief of these are
the dolmen known as Mané-Lud, Mountain of Ashes, of vast dimensions
and having a grotto beneath it. Not far off is a tumulus and another
dolmen known as Dol-er-Groh, an enormous stone table or altar. Another
is known as Mané-er-H’roeck, the stone of the fairies; it is quite
seventy feet long, or was, for it now lies full length on the ground
broken into four pieces. The finest and best preserved of all is the
Dol-ar-Marc’hadouiren, the Merchants’ Table. It is hard to see just the
significance of the name given to these three huge stones, but they form
a wonderfully impressive monument of days gone by, nevertheless.
The most beautiful dolmen known, whatever that description may really
mean (the local renter of boats calls it such: “_le plus beau dolmen
connu_”), can be visited only by boat. It is on an island in the gulf,
and is known as the Gavr’inis.
La Trinité, “a little village on the very edge of the sea”! This is a
description which exactly fits what the natives and the railway powers
like to think is a watering-place. It is something like one, to be sure,
but the influx of strangers during the summer months has never been so
great as to obliterate or even to deaden the local colour. Its little
harbour is lively with fishing-boats, and occasionally gay, when the
boats are “dressed” for some great festival, but nothing of blatant
bands and riotous crowds mars the quietness and sweetness of La Trinité,
and accordingly it is a place to be remembered.
Sometimes the sterility of the soil round about causes real distress
among the small farming peasants; “one cannot live on fish alone,” they
say.
There is a local benefactress who, when crops are poor and meagre, gives
the whole of her own harvest gathered from an unusually ample holding
to her more distressed neighbours. This is a true and practical charity
that does not smack of smugness or pretence as do many acts questionably
classed under that head. It is a singularly expressive exemplification
of what the French know as “good socialism,” and one hears much of it at
La Trinité and in its neighbourhood.
Taking to the road again, on the way to Auray, one passes another of
those curious granitic formations. This time it comes down more near
our own day, and is called the “St. Tiviro’s hat.” It does not look the
least like the saint’s hat, any more than the “devil’s seats” and the
“old men of the mountains,” scattered about the world, look like what
they are called--but let that pass. Legend connects this rock with a
certain St. Tiviro, who one day lost his hat, which ultimately turned to
stone. It does not seem plausible, and it is a pointless story indeed,
but it gives a small child the opportunity to point it out for a penny,
which most folk will not grudge.
CHAPTER V.
MORBIHAN--LORIENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD
Three towns of Morbihan little known, still less visited by travellers
in Brittany, lie within a comparatively small area just north of the
coast, and their names are Lorient, Hennebont, and Pont Scorff.
The very name Lorient will appeal to many. It suggests the great
trade with the East, in full swing in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, when the town grew up as a necessary part of a vast commerce.
Some of the old-time romantic picturesqueness of the shipping has
disappeared, and the Hotels “Royal Sword” and “White Horse” have given
way to the Hotels “Modern” and “of France,” with electric lights and
sheds for motor-cars, but there is still a distinguishing excellence to
be remarked which makes Lorient a place well worth visiting.
It was in the seventeenth century that an association of Breton
merchants, who were carrying on the trade with the East Indies,
first built their warehouses here. The traffic grew to proportions so
considerable that Louis XIV. ultimately gave letters patent for the
foundation of a new and grander East India Company.
The company erected ship-houses here, and the name Lorient was given to
the settlement, which was fast growing to a prime importance among the
ports of France. An English fleet, under Admiral Lestock, landed some
six or seven thousand men in the bay of Poldu, at twelve kilometres west
of Lorient, and marched upon the town as a revenge for certain attacks
upon British interests in the East.
The English met with no great triumph here, but Louis XV. was
indifferent enough to allow many of the French settlements in the Indies
to be taken, and this led to the rapid decadence of the great East India
Company and its port. Napoleon resuscitated it, as he did many another
decaying institution in France, and developed the industry of the port
to such an extent that Lorient became one of the principal maritime
towns of France. Its past history sounds romantic enough, but there is
little of romance about the life of its streets and wharves to-day;
instead, there is activity not admitting even the thought of romance.
Jangling gongs of tram-cars, the puffing of locomotives, and the
shrieks of the sirens, to say nothing of the accompaniment of belching
chimney-stacks and the sound of the riveting hammers in the great
shipyards, all testify that Lorient is living in the age of progress.
Local sights, outside this marvellous exposition of modern spirit, are
few. There is a municipal museum, containing some good modern pictures,
many of them of Breton subjects, but there are no ecclesiastical or
architectural monuments worthy of remark. The commercial harbour and the
dockyard are decidedly the most interesting features. Within the walls
of the latter is the parade-ground, which serves as a fine promenade
for the population of Lorient when the military band plays on summer
evenings.
The roadstead of Lorient is a great deep-water harbour, which can
shelter the largest ships afloat. It is guarded by six great lights,
one of them in the cupola of the Church of St. Louis. This is one of
the very few instances where a great city church is a mariner’s beacon,
besides performing its other functions on behalf of lost souls.
Opposite Lorient is Port Louis, founded a century before its bigger
sister. Anciently it was known as Blavet, but took its present name in
honour of Louis XIII. Its walls were begun in 1652.
In the immediate neighbourhood of Lorient and Port Louis are many
delightful little seaside places, hardly popular resorts in any sense
of the word, but all the better for that, where one may get such views
of sea and shore and shipping of all ranks as is hardly to be found
elsewhere on the Breton coast.
Up the little river Blavet, at the head of deep-sea navigation, is
Hennebont, a most delightfully disposed little place, which has been
called the pearl of the Blavet. Like most of the tidal rivers of France,
the Blavet, on its lower reaches, offers about the most paintable of all
landscapes imaginable. This, with the Auray, the Aven, the Scorff, and
the Elle, would prove a sketching-ground quite inexhaustible, in the
variety of its moods, to the artist of an average length of life.
[Illustration
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