Transcriber's Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

CAVALIERS AND ROUNDHEAD.

(See page [108])

Breton Folk
AN ARTISTIC TOUR IN BRITTANY

BY

HENRY BLACKBURN.

WITH ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY

R. CALDECOTT.

BOSTON.

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY

1881.

PREFACE.

The following notes were made during three summer tours in Brittany, in two of which the Author was accompanied by the Artist.

Breton Folk is not a description of the antiquities of Brittany, nor even a book of folk-lore. It is a series of sketches of a “black-and-white country” under its summer aspect; of a sombre land shrouded with white clouds, peopled with peasants in dark costumes, wide white collars and caps, black and white cattle and magpies.

The illustrations, one hundred and seventy in number, have been drawn by the Artist from sketches made on the spot, and, apart from their artistic qualities, have the curious merit of truth. They have been engraved with the utmost care by Mr. J. D. Cooper.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

BRETON FOLK:

AN ARTISTIC TOUR IN BRITTANY.

CHAPTER I.
The Western Wing.

In an old-fashioned country-house there is often to be found a room built out from the rest of the structure, forming, as it were, the extreme western wing. It has windows looking to the west, its door of communication with the great house, and, in summer-time, a southern exterior wall laden with fruit and fragrant with clematis, honeysuckle, or jasmine. The interior differs from the rest of the mansion both in its furnishing and in the habits of its occupants. It is a room in which there is an absence of bright colours, where everything is quiet in tone and more or less harmonious in aspect; where solid woodwork takes the place of gilding, where furniture is made simply and solidly for use and ease, where decoration is the work of the hand—holding a needle, a chisel, or a hammer. The prevailing colours in this quaint old room, which give a sense of repose on coming from more highly decorated saloons, are blue, grey, and green—the blue of old china, the grey of a landscape by Millet or Corot, the green that we may see sometimes in the works of Paul Veronese.

This “western wing” is haunted, and full of mysteries and legends; its furniture is antique, and has seldom been dusted or put in order. Nearly every object is a curiosity in some way, and was designed in a past age; on the high wooden shelves over the open fireplace there are objects in wrought metal work, antique-shaped pots and jars. About the room are fragments of Druidical monuments, menhirs and dolmens of almost fabulous antiquity, ancient stone crosses, calvaries, and carvings, piled together in disorderly fashion, with odd-shaped pipes, snuffboxes, fishing-rods, guns, and the like; on the walls are small, elaborate, paintings of mediæval saints in roughly carved gilt frames, and a few low-toned landscapes by painters of France; on shelves and in niches are large brown volumes with antique clasps, and perhaps a model in clay of an old woman in a high cap, a priest, or a child in sabots.

The room is a snuggery, well furnished with pipes and tobacco, and hitherto evidently not much visited by ladies; but the door is open wide to the rest of the mansion, through which the strains of Meyerbeer’s opera of Dinorah may sometimes be heard. The lady visitor is welcome to this out-of-the-way corner, but she must not be surprised to find herself greeted on entering in a language which, with all her knowledge of French, she can scarcely understand; to be asked, perhaps, to take a pinch of snuff, and to conform in other homely ways to the habits of the inhabitants.

Such a quiet, unobtrusive corner—pleasant with its open windows to the summer air, but much blown and rained upon by winter storms—is Brittany, the “western wing” of France, holding much the same position geographically and socially to the rest of the country, as the room we have pictured in the great house, to the rest of the mansion.

The Brittany described in these pages is comprised principally of the three departments of Côtes-du-Nord, Finistère, and Morbihan, the inhabitants of these districts standing apart, as it were, from the rest of France, preserving their own customs and traditions, speaking their own language, singing their own songs, and dancing their own dances in the streets in 1879. In these three departments is comprehended nearly all that is most characteristic of the Bretons, and the district forms itself naturally into a convenient summer tour of three or four weeks.

Brittany is essentially the land of the painter. It would be strange indeed if a country sprinkled with white caps, and set thickly in summer with the brightest blossoms of the fields, should not attract artists in search of picturesque costume and scenes of pastoral life. Rougher and wilder than Normandy, more thinly populated, and less visited by the tourists, Brittany offers better opportunities for outdoor study, and more suggestive scenes for the painter. Nowhere in France are there finer peasantry; nowhere do we see more dignity of aspect in field labour, more nobility of feature amongst men and women; nowhere more picturesque ruins; nowhere such primitive habitations and, it must be added, such dirt. Brittany is still behindhand in civilisation, the land is only half cultivated and divided into small holdings, and the fields are strewn with Druidical stones. From the dark recesses of the Montagnes Noires the streams come down between deep ravines as wild and bare of cultivation as the moors of Scotland, but the hillsides are clothed thickly in summer with ferns, broom, and heather. Follow one of these streams in its windings towards the sea, where the troubled waters rest in the shade of overhanging trees, by pastures and cultivated lands, and we may see the Breton peasants at their “gathering-in,” reaping and carrying their small harvest of corn and rye, oats and buckwheat; the women with white caps and wide collars, short dark skirts, and heavy wooden sabots, the men in white woollen jackets, breeks (bragous bras), and black gaiters, broad-brimmed hats and long hair streaming in the wind—leading oxen yoked to heavy carts painted blue. Here we are reminded at once of the French painters of pastoral life, of Jules Breton, Millet, Troyon, and Rosa Bonheur; and as we see the dark brown harvest fields, with the white clouds lying low on the horizon, and the strong, erect figures and grand faces of the peasants lighted by the evening sun, we understand why Brittany is a chosen land for the painter of paysages. Low in tone as the landscape is, sombre as are the costumes of the people, cloudy and fitful in light and shade as is all this wind-blown land, there is yet a clearness in the atmosphere which brings out the features of the country with great distinctness, and impresses them upon the mind.

To the antiquary who knows the country, and is perchance on the track of a newly discovered menhir, long buried in the sands; to the poet who would seek out and see that mystic island of Avilion,

“Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,

Nor ever wind blows loudly”;

to the historian who would add yet other links in the chain of facts in the strange eventful history of Brittany; to the resident Englishman and sportsman, who knows the corners of the trout streams and the best covers for game, scanty though they be, the tour suggested in these pages will have little interest; but to the English traveller who would see what is most characteristic and beautiful in Brittany in a short time, we should say—

Enter by the port of St. Malo from Southampton (or by Dol, if coming from France), and take the following route, diverging from it into the country districts as time and opportunity will permit. From St. Malo to Dinan by water; from Dinan to Lamballe by diligence (or railway), thence to St. Brieuc, Guingamp, Lannion, Morlaix, Brest, Quimper, Quimperlé, Hennebont, Auray, Vannes, and Rennes.

Thus, then, having set the modern tourist on his way, and provided for the exigencies of rapid holiday-making, let us recommend him to diverge from the beaten track as much as possible, striking out in every direction from the main line of route, both inland and to the coast, travelling by road as much as possible, and seeing the people, as they are only to be seen, “off the line.”

In Breton Folk the reader will be troubled little with the history of Brittany, with the wars of the Plantagenets, or with the merits of various styles of architecture, but some general impression of the country may be gathered from its pages, and especially of the people as they are to be seen to-day.

CHAPTER II.
St. Malo—St. Servan—Dinard—Dinan.

On a bright summer’s morning in July the ballon captif, which we may use in imagination in these pages—our French friends having taught us its use in peace as well as in war—floats over the blue water-gate of Brittany like a golden ball. The sun is high, and the tide is flowing fast round the dark rock islands that lie at our feet, pouring into the harbour of St. Malo, floating the vessels and fishing-boats innumerable that line the quays inside the narrow neck of land called Le Sillon, which connects the city with the mainland, and driving gay parties of bathers up the sands of the beautiful Baie d’Écluse at Dinard.

On the map on the opposite page, we see the relative positions of St. Malo, St. Servan, and Dinard, also the mouth of the river Rance, which flows southward, wide and strong, into innumerable bays, until it winds under the walls and towers of Dinan. Looking down upon the city, now alive with the life which the rising tide gives to every sea-port; seeing the strength of its position seaward, and the protection from without to the little forests of masts, whose leaves are the bright trade banners of many nations, it is easy to understand how centuries ago St. Malo and St. Servan were chosen as military strongholds,[^[1]] and how in these later times St. Malo has a maritime importance apparently out of proportion to its trade, and to its population of not more than 14,000 inhabitants.

[1]. St. Servan is built on the site of Aleth, one of the six capitals of ancient Armorica; there was a monastery here in the sixth century.

From a bird’s-eye point of view we may obtain a clearer idea of St. Malo and its neighbourhood than many who have actually visited these places, and can judge for ourselves of its probable attractions for a summer visit. It seems unusually bright and pleasant this morning, for the light west wind has cleared the air, and carried the odours of St. Malo landward. There is to be a regatta in the afternoon, the principal course being across, and across, the mouth of the Rance, between St. Malo and Dinard, and already little white sails may be seen spread in various directions, darting in and out between the rock islands outside the bay. On one of these islands, Grand Bé, marked with a cross on the map, is the tomb of the illustrious Châteaubriand, a plain granite slab, surmounted by a cross, and railed in with a very ordinary-looking iron railing. This gravestone, which stands upon an eminence, and is conspicuous rather than solitary, is described by a French writer as a romantic resting-place for the departed diplomatist, characteristic and sublime—“ni arbres, ni fleurs, ni inscription—le roc, la mer et l’immensité”; but as a matter of fact it is anything but solitary in summer-time, and it is more visited by tourists than sea-gulls. The waves are beating round it now, but at low water there will be a line of pedestrians crossing the sands; some to bathe and some to place immortelles on the tomb.

The sands of Le Sillon are covered with bathers and holiday crowds in dazzling costumes, the rising tide driving them up closer to the rocks every minute. Everywhere there is life and movement; the narrow, winding streets of St. Malo pour out their contents on the seashore; little steamers pass to and from Dinard continually, fishing and pilot boats come and go, and yachts are fluttering their white sails far out at sea. Everything looks gay, for the sun is bright, and it is the day of the regatta.

Looking landward, the eye ranges over a district of flat, marshy land, that once was sea, and we may discern in the direction of Dol an island rock in the midst of a marshy plain, at least three miles from the sea. On the summit of this rock is a chapel to Notre Dame de l’Espérance, and near it, standing alone on the plain, is a column of grey granite nearly thirty feet high, one of the “menhirs” or “Druid stones” that we shall see often in Brittany. Eastward there is the beautiful bay of Cancale, famous for its oyster-fisheries; the village built on the heights is glistening in the sunlight, and the blue bay stretches away east and north as far as Granville. Cancale is also crowded this morning, for it is the fashion to come from St. Malo on fête days, to eat oysters, and to pay for them. A summer correspondent, who followed the fashion, writes: “The people of Cancale are amongst the most able and industrious fishermen in Brittany, and the oysters from the parcs of Cancale are famous even in the Parisian restaurants; but in the cabarets of Cancale the charges resemble those of Paris.” We mention this by the way because travellers who have taken up their quarters at the principal hotels at St. Malo, finding the charges higher than they expected, might, without a caution, take wing to Cancale. They may be attracted thither, for the day at least, to see the fishing operations, to study costume, to explore the coast by boat, or to visit the island monastery of St. Michel. The water is smooth in the shallow bay of Cancale, and the view extending over miles of blue sea to the green hills beyond Avranches makes a charming picture.

The aspect of St. Malo from the sea is that of a crowd of grey houses with high-pitched roofs, surrounded with stone walls and sixteenth-century towers, and with one church spire conspicuous in the centre. At high-water the waves beat up against the granite rocks and battlements, and St. Malo seems an island; at low water it stands high on a pediment of granite, surrounded by little island rocks and wide plains of sand; the spring tides rising nearly forty feet above low-water mark.

But the chief interest of St. Malo is undoubtedly outside of it. In the narrow, tortuous streets, shut in by high walls, we experience something of the sensation of dwellers in modern Gothic villas; we have insufficient light and air, we are cramped for space, but we know at the same time that, outwardly, we are extremely picturesque. “Rien de triste et de provinciale comme la ville de Saint-Malo, où tout le monde est couché à 9 h. du soir; rues noires et tortueuses; pas de soleil, ni de mouvement; enfin une ville morte.” Such is the popular French view of it in the height of the season, when prices at the hotels are nearly as high as in Paris.

The fortifications and towers of St. Malo are interesting as examples of military architecture of the sixteenth century; the castle with its four round towers was erected, it is said, by Queen-Duchess Anne to assert her power over the bishops of St. Malo, who had held it from the time when it was an island monastery. From the ramparts and quays we can best see many of the old houses and residences of the wealthy traders of the last century, now dilapidated or turned into barracks or public offices; and we may also note here and there, in narrow streets, remnants of carved timber beams and wooden pillars which formed the frontage of some of the oldest houses. We can walk upon the ramparts all round the town, from which there are extensive views over sea and land; and we can inhale, on the western side, the fresh breezes of the sea, and, on the other, the odours rising from innumerable unwashed streets and alleys. The church, the spire of which was completed by order of Napoléon III., has little architectural interest. The structure dates from the twelfth century, but its present aspect is modern and tawdry, with a huge high-altar, candlesticks, gilt furniture, relics, and artificial flowers. The most noteworthy objects are some carved woodwork in the chancel, and a stained-glass window.

The principal streets of St. Malo are modernised, and the shops are full of wares from Paris and Rennes. The appearance and manners of the people are French rather than Breton, and—although the strange patterns of the white caps worn by the peasants and fisherwomen, and the curiously uncouth intonation of voices which already greets our ears, remind us that we are very far from the capital of France—there is little here of distinctive Breton costume.

St. Malo from its position is an important maritime station. It is busy, and busier every year, with shipbuilding, for it has a large fishing population and an export trade with all parts of the world. Brittany is a food-producing land, and St. Malo is its principal northern port; but its manufactures are comparatively unimportant, and its retail trade is largely dependent on the influx of visitors.

In the suburb of St. Servan, where a few English people live quietly, there is less appearance of commercial activity than in St. Malo. It is in fact a faubourg, comparatively unprotected by walls, and undisturbed by much traffic. Its population of 12,000 have their principal business in St. Malo, and there is a constant stream of pedestrians passing to and fro, crossing on a movable bridge worked by steam, the supports of which are on rails under water. The principal street of St. Servan is wider than Wardour Street in London, but it resembles it somewhat in dinginess, and in the fact that its shops are full of tempting baits for the bric-à-brac hunter; old wood carvings, pots, and stones, which should be purchased with caution.

The Bretons, both in St. Malo and St. Servan, are a little demoralised in summer, and wish to be “fine.” To-day being a fête day, they are en grande toilette, and the wonderful white caps worn by some of the women are trimmed with real old lace. In the shops and on the promenades the majority of women are dressed as in Paris, and they wear kid gloves “like their betters”; the country people and the fishing and poorer class of Malouins, only, wearing any distinctive costume. The fishermen of Cancale make money and save it, and send their children to school by train to Rennes, and the fisherman’s daughter comes back in a costume that makes her neighbours envious. Every year more white caps are thrown aside, for Mathilde will not be outdone by Louise; and so the change goes on, and each year the markets of St. Malo and St. Servan have less individuality of costume.

Nevertheless, groups such as are sketched are to be seen to-day in St. Malo, St. Servan, and Dinard: the women in white caps, dark stuff gowns, and neatly made shoes; the men in blue serge and sabots. The women’s caps vary in pattern according to their district. They generally wear a close-fitting under cap, with a small high-crimped crown, and a wide lappet pinned on the top of the head. In St. Malo we may see Normandy as well as Brittany caps, and it is not until we get farther into the interior that the costume of the district is strongly marked.[^[2]]

[2]. The caps peculiar to different parts of Brittany are indicated at the head of each chapter.

Dinard—once a little fishing-village, now a fashionable watering-place—the position of which we see on the map on page [7], is a delightful residence in summer, and nearly as dear as Trouville, in Normandy; but the air is bracing and exceptionally good, the walks in the neighbourhood shady and delightful, and the bathing in the sheltered Baie d’Écluse as good as any in France. In Dinard there are about 800 houses and villas in pleasant gardens, most of which are let for a short summer season of three months. There is a well managed “Établissement des Bains” and casino, and several good hotels. Dinard is the starting-point to reach Dinan by road; also for the little fishing-villages of St. Briac and St. Jacut, on the coast, westward. At St. Briac the visitor who does not care to be fashionable will find an inn, good bathing, and summer quarters of a rougher kind than at Dinard; and at St. Jacut there is a convent standing almost out at sea, where the nuns take boarders in summer for a very small sum. At Dinard you play at croquet on the sands; at St. Briac you scramble over granite rocks, and fish in the pools under their shadows; at St. Jacut you wander over the sands with a shrimp-net, and in the evening help the nuns to draw water from the convent well.

But we have come to Brittany to sketch and to note what is most characteristic and picturesque. So far, on the threshold as it were, what have we seen? Coming from England, and sailing southward into its blue bay on a summer morning, there was an impression of brightness and colour unusual on our own shores. In St. Malo itself three pictures remain upon the memory. The first is the sunset between the islands and across the sands, near the bathing-place of Le Sillon; the second the moonlight view of its cathedral tower at the end of a narrow street, filling it and towering above it with a grandeur of effect almost equal to that of St. Stephen’s at Vienna; the third picture is in the small courtyard of the Hôtel de France. This house, or part of it, belonged to the family of the Vicomte de Châteaubriand, and it was here, in a room facing the sea, that the celebrated author and diplomatist was born. In the hotel the family arms (the peacock’s plume) are emblazoned, and just outside its gates, in the little dusty square called “La Place de Châteaubriand,” a new bronze statue, bright and shining, has lately been erected to his memory. Travellers imprisoned between the narrow streets and dingy walls of St. Malo, fortified and barricaded against the fresh breezes of the sea, may perchance seek the cool courtyard of the Hôtel de France as a place of refuge during the heat of the day, and, if not quite tired of hearing of Châteaubriand, may dwell in imagination upon the historic associations of this house. In a corner of the courtyard, now used as a café, there is an old stone staircase leading to the first étage, such as we may see in the courtyard of many a French château, and upon it there lingers this afternoon an English girl in the costume most affected by society in 1878. She wears a rich, dark, close-fitting dress in simple folds, spreading where it trails upon the rough granite steps with the stealthy grandeur of a peacock’s tail upon a ruined wall. As she turns her head and leans over between the pillars of the covered balcony, her “Rubens hat” and fair hair are framed in antique carved stone. The effect is accidental, but the harmonious combination of costume and architecture brings out suddenly the beauties of each, and gives us a glimpse, not to be forgotten, of the graces of a past age.

The Rance.

The tide is now flowing fast up the Rance, filling its numerous bays and inlets, floating odd-shaped little boats and rafts that are moored off the villages on its banks, running up here and there inland between rocks and trees and forming miniature lakes, which will disappear as the tide goes down. The little steamer for Dinan starts from the Quai Napoléon, and goes up on the flood in about three hours, having just time to reach Dinan and return to St. Malo before the water has subsided. The foredeck is crowded with market-women and small merchandise, and on the afterdeck, which is but a few yards square, there are some French and English tourists under a canvas awning, which is useful alike for shelter from sun, rain, or cinders. Steering south-east by south, we steam gently up the Rance, getting a fine view of St. Servan in passing (a view which we should have missed altogether by the land route to Dinan); a river that, near its mouth, seems to have no boundaries or banks, that flows in and out amongst cultivated fields, then suddenly through narrow defiles of rocks and under the shadow of forest trees that might be Switzerland. Once or twice we sail, as it were, in an inland lake, or, as the French call it, “une petite Mediterranée”; we can neither see where we entered nor any outlet on our route. There are fishing and market boats, lying in quiet corners, and one or two pleasure yachts with flags flying, moored in the prettiest spots near modern summer châlets, the slate roofs of which appear above the trees. We pass one considerable village, St. Suliac, on the east bank, behind which is the ancient fort of Châteauneuf; and, on the west, the grey walls of more than one old château are visible. The water is blue and tidal until we arrive at a lock a few miles from Dinan, when the little steamer ploughs through a narrow canal-like stream, and sends the water flowing over the banks, washing the stems of the poplar trees.

Fruit Stall at Dinan.

We are entering Brittany now, and are far out of hearing of the waves that beat upon St. Malo, and of the band of the casino on its sands. On either side the valleys are rich with verdure and with orchards of fruit. There are farmhouses and villas dotted about, and peasants at work in the fields. We pass close to the banks during the last mile, and are shut in by rocks and trees; but all at once the view enlarges, and there rises before us a scene so grand and, at the same time, so familiar that we feel delighted and rewarded at having approached Dinan by water. The prevailing tone of landscape during the last few miles has been sombre, and the valleys in shadow with their dark granite rocks and gloom of firs have contrasted picturesquely with the sunshine on distant fields. As we reach Dinan in the afternoon, the valley of the Rance is in shadow, whilst above and before us, crowning a hill, are the old roofs, towers, and spires of Dinan shining in the sun. The sides of the valley here are almost precipitous, and across it, high above our heads, is a plain modern viaduct, reaching to the suburb of Lanvallay. Dinan is on the west or left bank of the Rance; and near the bridge where we land the steep streets of the old town reach to the water’s edge. Above our heads are feudal towers, and parts of old walls, and the grey roofs of houses between the trees, and away southward the valley of the Rance winding out of sight. We said it was a familiar picture, for the approach to Dinan by water and the view from the hills on the opposite bank of the Rance, seen under summer suns, have been perpetuated in brightness by many an English artist. It is well to see Dinan thus, en couleur de rose, and to remember it in its most bright and attractive aspect, for on a nearer and longer acquaintance our impressions may change. Dinan—situated on the summit and slopes of wooded hills, their dark granite sides appearing here and there through the trees, its mediæval towers and terraces, and its old grey houses with pointed roofs, and its handsome white modern houses—forms a good background to the market-women, with their stalls of fruit and vegetables, peasants in blue blouses, and the usual summer crowd of tourists, including Parisians in suits of white, with broad straw hats and blue umbrellas, thronging on the quay waiting for our little steamer. There are several hundred English residents in Dinan, and the voices in the streets have a familiar sound, neither French nor Breton. But the population, including English, scarcely exceeds 10,000 even in summer; and the inhabitants, who are not given up to trading with visitors, are principally occupied in agriculture, or working in their dark dwellings at hand looms.

As we climb up a steep, dirty street, leading from the quay, called the Rue de Jersual, and under a Gothic gateway—past old houses, with high-pitched roofs and leaning timbers, rising one above another in irregular steps—we hear the sound of the loom in the darkness on either side, and the inhabitants come out to stare as usual; shining red faces, under white caps, lean out from little latticed windows and from doorways, and in the gutters many a little pair of sabots stuffed with hay is rattling on the stones. It is a ladder of cobblestones and dirt, cool and slippery, sheltered by projecting eaves from the afternoon sun; the principal approach from the river a century ago, up which a stream of pilgrims files into the upper town. They pause to take breath at the top, and then disperse on the Place, where, in front of dusty rows of trees, the omnibuses and carts, which have come round by the broad, circuitous road, are setting down travellers. The entrance to the inn is blocked by a loaded hay cart, stuck fast in the archway of the house, as in the sketch. We have ascended at least 300 feet to the Place, and take up our quarters in one of the hotels in the wide open square, looking as dusty and uncared for as usual in French provincial towns, and commanding, as usual also, no view of the country round.

In a few minutes the bustle caused by the arrival of travellers has ceased, and the principal square of Dinan resumes its ordinary aspect on a summer’s day. Nurses, in white caps, sit knitting under the shadows of stunted trees, while the children play in the dust; cavalry officers of all grades play at cards and drink absinthe at little tables half hidden by trees planted in boxes at the hotel doors; ladies and children, a priest, a workman in blue blouse dragging a load of stones, a woman coming from market, and an Englishman or two, on pleasure intent, with draggled beard and grey knickerbockers, as is the fashion of the time. Above the trees, the houses across the square rise in irregular lines, their steep roofs, old and sun-stained, are full of variety and colour; behind them tree tops wave, and great masses of white clouds drive northward to the sea.

Dinan is full of interest both for the artist and the antiquary. The cathedral of St. Sauveur, with its fine carved doorway and Romanesque architecture, the old clock-tower in the Rue de l’Horloge, the mediæval gateways, and the old houses in the narrow streets, form a succession of pictures worthy of study. It is well to examine the castle, once occupied by the Queen-Duchess Anne and now a prison, and to ascend the tower, from which there is a magnificent view. In the museum at the Mairie there are several interesting monuments and ecclesiastical relics. And yet perhaps the chief interest of Dinan is in the variety and beauty of its environs; on every side will be found charming wooded walks and valleys, from which we can see its position, set high on green hills, the sky-line a fringe of trees and towers. The walks on the ramparts, with their lines of poplars and the views across the deep fosse below will give an idea of the military architecture of the middle ages, and especially of the natural strength and importance of Dinan as a fortified city when besieged by the Duke of Lancaster in 1359 and defended by the brave Du Guesclin. In St. Malo, Châteaubriand was the hero; in Dinan it is Du Guesclin, constable of France in the fourteenth century. In the cathedral of St. Sauveur they have burned candles before the jewelled casket containing his heart, for centuries, and on the Place there is a poor statue of him in plaster; but the more lasting monuments are the records of his deeds and the songs of the people, which we shall hear often on our travels.

Whichever way we turn in Dinan, we find some new view and point of interest, and the inhabitants are so accustomed to the incursion of strangers, and reap so many benefits by their coming, that we are allowed to sketch almost undisturbed. There is an old woman with deformed hands and feet, who sits knitting on the Place, whose familiar figure will be recalled by the sketch on page [21].

The ramparts are comparatively deserted by day, and form a promenade by moonlight worth coming far to see. If ever there was a spot on earth prepared for lovers, it is surely the broad walk on the southern ramparts of Dinan, where the moon shines upon the path between tall waving poplars and silvers the distant trees, where there is scarcely a sound to break the stillness, where there is room for every Romeo out of hearing of his neighbour, and where the sounds of the city are hushed behind granite walls. It is naturally romantic and beautiful, and, with the associations which cling around its towers, has a charm which is almost unique; but we must tell the truth. There are clusters of white roses clinging to the old masonry above, which have scattered their full-blown leaves at our feet, and below, in the deep dell which formed the ancient fosse, there is honeysuckle in the straggling garden; but the odours that rise on the evening air are not of roses nor of honeysuckle, nor from the broad champaign around. There surely was never a beautiful spot so defiled. As a picture, the general aspect of Dinan will remain in memory—a picture not to be effaced by the erection of large new barracks, or by the railway now constructing in the valley—stately Dinan with its ancient groves and terraces, its hanging gardens, and sylvan views.

We must not linger in such a well-known part of Brittany, or we would take the reader in imagination to one or two of the old houses in the neighbourhood, like the one sketched below; also, a little way up the river, to the picturesque ruins of the abbey of Lehon. This last is a spot especially to be visited, and where, if we are wise and have time, we should take apartments for a week in summer. Another favourite walk is on the opposite side of Dinan, leaving the town by the ramparts towards the north. Here in the midst of a tangle of briars and bushes, hemmed in on every side, run over with ivy and every variety of creeper, shut off entirely from some points of view by an orchard laden to the ground with fruit and by a garden of flowers, is the one tower left of the famous château of La Garaye The grey octagonal turret, with its crumbling Renaissance ornament, stands high above the surrounding trees, and catches the evening sunlight long after the avenue of beeches by which it is approached is in gloom. The place is as solemn and quiet, at the end of a long avenue, as any poet could desire; but as we approach the gates of the château of “the lady with the liberal hand,” whom Mrs. Norton has immortalised in her poem, there are the usual signs of demoralisation. There are pigs about, and tourists; and the show is charged for in the usual way. We pay our money and take away some souvenir of the place. Americans who have read (and recited often in their own homes) “The Lady of La Garaye” sometimes make Dinan the extreme western point of their tour in Europe, and have trodden the ground into a deep track to the château with their pilgrim feet; but the position is inconvenient for tourists who have much to see, and so, it is understood, they are going to buy the turret and take it home. The idea is not as absurd as it may sound; it is a very pretty ruin as it stands, but it will fall soon if not cared for, and the low wall on either side of the turret will disappear behind the fruitful orchard. The old hospital is now used as a farm-shed, but wants repairing to be habitable; and the ancient cider-press, with its massive wooden beams, lies rotting in the sun. The farm children are gathering blackberries from the bushes which grow between the hearthstones of the old banquet-hall, poultry swarm in my lady’s boudoir, and there is a hum of bees and insects about the ruin.

We have said nothing of the English colony and church at Dinan, of the convent of the Ursulines and their good works, or of the people to be seen on market-days, because Dinan is well known to travellers, and there is very little to distinguish it from other French towns. To see the people, and sketch the Bretons in their most picturesque aspects, we must go farther afield.

As we leave Dinan by diligence with much cracking of whips and jingling of bells, through the wide square tenanted as usual by white-capped nurses and idlers; rolling in the high banquette down past the old gateways, out into the country road towards the west, we see the last of Dinan and its towers. Whether in its autumn beauty with rich surrounding woods, or with its winter curtain folded softly, with tassels and fringes of frost, Dinan leaves a brilliant impression upon the mind. We forget the modern incursion of tourists, and the demoralisation amongst the poorer inhabitants caused by the scattering of sous, we forgive its dingy, neglected streets, its ill-kept boulevards and squares, and its slow, unenterprising ways; we remember only its grandeur and picturesqueness.

As we pass out by the Porte de Brest, we meet a Breton propriétaire and his wife in a cart, whom we must not take for peasants because of the black stuff gown and white cap of the bright-faced woman, and the broad-brimmed hat and blouse of the man.

We drive through a straggling suburb of houses, where the peasants stare at us from their dark dwellings; we stop at wayside inns—unnecessarily, it would seem—and are surrounded by beggars of all ages and sizes. Here is one who comes suddenly to earth at the sound of wheels, and peers from the darkness of her home underground with the brightness and vivacity of a weasel; her black eyes glisten with astonishment and with the instinct of animal nature scenting food; she transforms herself in an instant from the buoyant youth and almost cherub-like beauty in the sketch to a cringing, whining mendicant. “Quelque chose, quelque chose pour l’amour de Dieu,” in good, clear French, nearly all the words that her parents would have her learn, in the intervals of playing and road-scraping—the latter her only serious business in life. But the schoolmaster is abroad in Brittany; the edict has gone forth that every child of France shall henceforth learn the French tongue; and this little creature will be caught and tamed, and civilised into ways that her parents never knew.

One more picture on the road, an incident common enough, but characteristic and worth recording. It is a sultry afternoon, with a deep blue sky and a burning sun. So fierce is the heat that it has silenced for a time the barking of dogs and the arguments of some of our passengers. Just outside a village the straight road, unsheltered even by poplars, is fringed with low brushwood and long grasses withering under a curtain of dust. There is nothing stirring but a little yellowhammer and a magpie on the road, a cantonnière in wide straw hat, chipping at a heap of stones, and the lumbering diligence in which we travel; no shelter but in a wood hard by.

Presently we come to a halt in a narrow part of the road, for M. Achille Dufaure’s cart of charcoal stops the way. It is a suggestive picture, which we may call “The Hour of Repose.” In the foreground, in the burning road, is a tall white charger, encumbered, now in his old age, with a great wooden collar and clumsy harness, chained to a dark blue cart with dirt-encrusted wheels, half smothered on this summer’s day with a blue woolsack over his shoulders, foaming at the mouth, and streaming with the wounds of flies and other injuries, but pricking his ears as of old at the sound of approaching wheels. In the background, but a few yards off, is a cool wood of beech and elm, dark in its shadows, green in its depth with ivy and fern, and fringed against the sky with tops of waving poplars. This broad mass of green, which comes between the brightness of sky and the burning road, with its foreground of dry grasses, is relieved on one spot by a cool ripple of blue—it is Achille lying on his face asleep, his blouse just lifted by a breeze; he will repose for two or three hours, whilst his horse stands in the sun, and the hot shadows lengthen from his heels. No amount of shouting on the part of our driver will waken the sleeper; blessings and curses, cracking of whips and blowing of horns, are all tried in vain, and the monotony of our journey is relieved by the diligence being dragged, as it might have been at first, over the field at the roadside, and we resume our way.

As we travel westward, the aspect of the land becomes suddenly changed; it is clouded over and rained upon, and is a sombre contrast to the former brightness. After the glare of the sun the senses are grateful for quiet tones; but the sight is strange, almost mournful. The district is only a few miles from busy towns and sea-ports, and on the main line of railway from Paris to Brest, but it is out of the world, and seems, under its cloudy aspect, farther than ever removed from civilisation; we pass substantial-looking farmhouses, but the dwellings of the peasants are generally hovels, with tumble-down mud walls and immovable windows; in their gardens are dungheaps and stagnant pools of water. We see women at work in the fields, girls tending cattle, and the men, generally, looking on.

The distance from Dinan to Lamballe by road is twenty-five miles, a slow and sleepy journey of about five hours by the direct route; a journey seldom taken by travellers since the completion of the railway westward. Everything we pass on the road looks comparatively untidy, rough, and poor, with the poverty of ignorance and neglect rather than of means, for the soil, as we approach Lamballe, is rich, and yields well. The country is really fruitful, but an acre of land is often divided into twenty different lots, in each of which there are separate crops of hemp, buckwheat, or potatoes, or they are filled with gorse for winter fodder for cattle. The hedges are made of mud-banks, gorse, and ferns, and the gates between them are formed of felled trees, the stem forming the upper bar, the roots being left as a counterpoise to lift the gate on its rough, wooden latch.

The rain ceases as we approach Lamballe; the air is fresh with the wind coming from the bay of St. Brieuc, and as the sky clears, we obtain, at intervals on the undulating road, views over finely wooded valleys, with high hedgerows, banked up and planted with elms and oaks. The chestnut trees, wet with the rain, are rich in colour, and the fields of buckwheat lighten the landscape again. Another turn in the road, and we are in evening light, there is open pasture land, and the cattle are winding home; at another, a farmer is meditating on his stock in the corner of a field. Thus we pass from one picture to another, quaint and idyllic, the last reminding us more of Troyon than of Rosa Bonheur.

CHAPTER III.
Lamballe—St. Brieuc—Guingamp.

It is half past five o’clock on a summer’s morning at Lamballe, and the deep-toned bell of Notre Dame resounds through the valley of The Gouessan. The sun is up, and gleams upon the roof tops, and upon the heads of the old women who are sitting thus early in the market-place, surrounded with flowers, taking their morning meal of potage. It is market morning, and the open square in the centre of the town is filling fast with arrivals from the country. Everything is fresh from the late rains, and the air is laden with the scent of flowers, butter, and milk. On every side carts are unloading, and itinerant vendors are fitting up stalls for the sale of provisions and goods. There are rows of stalls for the sale of cloth stuffs, shoes, and wooden sabots, for pots and pans, and for innumerable trinkets of small value to tempt the peasantry. The shops are opening one by one, displaying less fashionable, if more useful, wares than we have seen at St. Malo and Dinan; agricultural implements, and all articles for the use and temptation of the country people who come from far to make purchases, bargaining in a rather uncouth tongue, but with a certain dignity and determination of manner which we shall find peculiar to the Bretons. Both buyers and sellers speak in a language apparently half French and half Welsh, and the majority dress in plain, dark, home-spun stuffs, the men with their blouses, the women with their caps, all put on clean for the day. This market-place at Lamballe is a sight, if only to see the fowls and the flowers. It is full of the killed and wounded, bright plumage and delicate leaves; beauty led captive by vigorous hands, hustled out of the market-place by rosy, unsentimental housekeepers; carried heads downwards, both fowls and flowers!

The noise and chattering of a market morning have begun in earnest, but the great bell of Notre Dame resounds above all; two other churches soon join in the concert, and the clatter of sabots over the rough cobblestones up to the church doors adds to the clamour. It is time to follow the people up the streets, almost too steep for wheels, which lead to the great church of Notre Dame, built oh the site of the ancient castle of the counts of Penthièvre.

Travellers, especially summer tourists coming from Dinan or Rennes, on their way westward by railway, seeing the beautiful position of this town, with its church above the valley, pause sometimes to consider “whether Lamballe is worth stopping at for a night.” As we are writing for all, we may tell them, as we pause to take breath on the ladder of stones which leads to Notre Dame, that the Gothic pile which crowns the hill before them, whose granite walls almost overhang a precipice, and from the rocks of which its pillars and arches seem to spring, is not only full of historic interest, but has a grandeur of effect in the interior which we shall seldom find equalled in Brittany. The original structure was a castle chapel, built early in the sixteenth century, but the present building does not present many special architectural features of interest, excepting the remains of an ancient rood-loft and some stained glass. The building has undergone several periods of restoration down to the present time, when workmen are busy repairing its outer walls. But the interior, on Sundays and fête days, is a picture to be remembered, and is especially full of human interest. The nave is less obstructed with modern ornaments than usual, and there is a quietness about the services which we do not find in larger towns. There are the usual wooden cabinets set against the side wall with green curtains in place of doors; in the centre compartment there is a dark object concealed, and on one side the skirt of a woman’s dress peeps from under the curtain; it is only Marie in a new gown telling some of her sins. There are several women kneeling on chairs, dressed in dark green or brown shawls, stuff dresses, and neat strong shoes; all heads turn one way as we enter, the old women, especially, scanning us from head to foot and mentally taking our measure as they pray. Here, on this summer morning, crowded with men, women, and children on their knees, their figures just distinguishable in the subdued light, the proportions of the lancet arches supported by clustering pillars, and the stained-glass windows, have a fine effect.

Before leaving Lamballe, a sketch should be made, from the valley, of the church of Notre Dame, with its surrounding houses, walls and rocks in evening light. The drawing, if accurate, will be considered exaggerated, on account of the extraordinarily picturesque and commanding site. The views from the terraces and old ramparts of Lamballe form an almost complete panorama of the country round. It is a view of rich cultivated land, covered with crops of cereals, and cattle grazing in the valleys. Over all this land the great bell of Lamballe makes itself heard in company with the whistle of the locomotive which hurries travellers on to St. Brieuc, a distance of twelve miles westward.

In St. Brieuc we find ourselves in a busy city of 15,000 inhabitants, apparently too much occupied with trade and agriculture to think about beautifying their houses and streets. There are many narrow, irregular streets, in which the old houses have been replaced by others generally modern and mean; “une vraie ville de rentiers qui aurait besoin d’être ‘hausmannisée.’” There is a large square Place for the military, and a market-place near the cathedral, where the old women congregate. St. Brieuc, as will be seen on the map, is the principal town in the department; it carries on a large export trade in the produce of the country, especially in butter and vegetables, for the English and European markets. Cattle are exported largely from Légué, the actual port, about two miles off, in the centre of the bay of Brieuc, hidden from the town by intervening hills.

In the country round and on the hills overlooking the sea, there are men and women at work in the fields, girls carrying milk on their heads from the neighbouring farms, and others busy in the farmyards. The buckwheat harvest has commenced, and the fields are being robbed of their rich colour; but the scene is bright with fresh green and yellow mustard, and rich here and there with clover. The sombre figures are the peasantry with their dark costumes. Here we feel inclined, for the first time, to stay and sketch, wandering along the coast to the fishing villages on the western shore of the wide-spreading bay of St. Brieuc, visiting the farms and homesteads, and making studies of the interiors of dwellings. The rough, wasteful method of husbandry, the old farmhouses with their one living-room with massive furniture and mud floors, and the simple manners of the peasants, remind us irresistibly of Ireland, whilst the names of people and places and the intonation of voices are altogether Welsh.

Everyone is at work near St. Brieuc in the summer months, every man, woman, and child, in the fields, on the roads, or on the shore; a bright, quick-witted population, accustomed to the inroads of strangers. The inhabitants are superintended in their occupations by some officers of the line, whose regiments are quartered near the town. The soldiers are sprinkled over the streets, and dot the hillsides with colour. The rattle of drums and the smoke of innumerable bad cigars make a lasting impression in this city.

St. Brieuc, or St. Brioc, is the site of a very ancient bishopric, whose chapter was loyal and powerful to the last. Its history is told best in the strength of its cathedral walls, and especially in the ruins of the tower of Cesson, a castle once commanding the entrance to the bay and the approach to St. Brieuc from the sea. There is little that is remarkable in the churches, and, unless it be some old overhanging houses near the cathedral, little to sketch in the town that we shall not find of a better type elsewhere. The business of nearly everyone at St. Brieuc is to prepare ox hides, tallow, hemp, and flax, to sell stores for the ships that fit out here for the Newfoundland cod-fisheries, and generally to provide the agricultural population with the necessaries of civilisation. The town is as noisy as any French market-town where soldiers are quartered. In the evening come the carts from the country, and the clatter of sabots over the stones; at sundown the regimental drums, at midnight the evacuation of the cafés, and the songs of warriors going to their rest; at dawn a market generally begins under our windows. When do these people find rest? The answer comes laconically from the femme de chambre at our inn. “There is the winter for rest”; and there is the French saying, applicable enough in this land of noises, that we have “l’éternité pour nous reposer.”

In the neighbourhood of St. Brieuc is a picturesque château, part of which is shown in the sketch; on the sky-line fringing the roof are metal figures of horses, men, and dogs, typical of the chase.

There are modern innovations of high white houses, factories, steam ploughs, plate-glass windows, and smooth pavements to walk on, and the majority of people one meets in St. Brieuc are dressed in modern fashion, but there are odd corners, and very odd old men and women in the by-streets. There is an old woman who sits in the market-place surrounded by earthenware pots, rather disconsolately, for trade is bad; but who, facing the last rays of the setting sun, unconsciously makes a picture which for colour is a delight to the eye; a comfortable old woman in dark blue dress, with dazzling white cap, bronzed hands and wrinkled face, all aglow under its snowy awning; a background of brown and blue earthenware piled in straw, a distance of dark shadows, and half defined leaning eaves.

St. Brieuc is much visited in the summer for sea bathing. The large buildings near the sea, surrounded by high walls and gardens, are convents or seminaries, where several hundred children are boarded and educated for about £20 a year. In the summer the children give place to adult pensionnaires, who come from all parts of France for the bathing season, and the convents are turned into lodging-houses, reaping a good harvest in spite of the apparently moderate terms of five or six francs a day. These pensionnaires spread over the cliffs and sands like summer flies, to be discerned sometimes in the distance as in the sketch.

Winnowing near St. Brieuc.

It is at a village on the cliff near Fort Rosalier that we first see men and women winnowing, their arms extended in the breeze, a bright and characteristic scene recorded exactly in the sketch; a picture soon to vanish before patent winnowing-machines and other improvements. Mathurine, one of the party—who has pinned a clean white band of linen over her flowing hair and under-cap, and put on a dark brown embroidered shawl—takes the opportunity, during the midday meal of potage, to stand for her portrait.

About midway between St. Brieuc and Guingamp, on the north side of the railway, is the quiet little town of Châtelaudren. It is washed and watered by the Leff, the “river of tears,” which, coming from the mountains that we see to the south, winds its way through rich valleys, seaward. In its course, and in its time, the Leff has done much havoc in this peaceful valley, inundating and destroying Châtelaudren in 1773, and still occasionally overflowing its banks. To-day it is to the angler a capital trout stream, if he will follow its course southward to the mountains; to the artistic eye it is a sparkling river of light, set in a landscape of green and grey. In the town of Châtelaudren, with its one wide and rather dreary-looking street, there is not much to detain the visitor, but it is a good starting-point from which to explore the country and the Montagnes Noires. The land is thickly cultivated, and well grown with crops almost down to the sea; and on every side in this autumn time there are signs of industry. From the fields we hear voices of women at work; in the farmyards there is the dull thud of the flail and the burr of the winnowing-machine. Across the sloping fields from the sea come sounds of singing and laughter, disconnected and weird sometimes, from being caught up by the wind, then dropped and taken up again.

Eight miles from Châtelaudren, in a green valley watered by the river Trieux, is the quiet old town of Guingamp. Its past history, like that of nearly every town in Brittany, has been so eventful that its present normal state may well be calm; but once a year its inhabitants neither work nor repose. In the month of September they hold their annual Fête de St. Loup, and pilgrims come from all parts of Brittany by excursion trains to the famous “Pardon” of Guingamp.

These religious festivals which are held once a year in nearly every town in Brittany, and are generally combined with dancing, fireworks, and other festivities, are the occasion of a great gathering of the people from remote parts of the country; excursion trains bring tourists and pilgrims from all parts of France, and during the week of the fête it is difficult to find a resting-place in Guingamp. The three principal Pardons are generally held at Ste. Anne d’Auray in Morbihan, in July, at Ste. Anne de la Palue in Finistère, in August, and at Guingamp, in September. The Pardon at Guingamp is held on Sunday and Monday, when processions are formed to the shrine of a saint a mile and a half outside the town, indulgences are granted, relics and crosses are distributed, trinkets are blessed, and sermons preached by the bishop of the diocese to the people assembled in the open air. After the services there is a fête in the town, of which the programme on the next page will give the best idea.

Programme of the Fête at Guingamp at the Time of the “Pardon.”

The religious aspect of these Pardons, and the gathering of the pilgrims, is sketched in Chapter XII.; we will therefore speak of Guingamp as it is seen every day. Whether it be from the interest attaching to the great annual fête, or from reports of the miraculous cures that have been effected by the patron saint, Guingamp has always attracted travellers, and has been written of in terms of rapture which may astonish a visitor when he sees it for the first time. It is a town of not more than 8000 inhabitants, with one principal street, which winds irregularly down like a stream, spreading and overflowing its banks at one point, in triangular fashion, in what is called the market-place, then narrowing again, and working its way through a suburb of small houses into the great high-road to Morlaix. It has two monuments—the church of Notre Dame, and a bronze fountain in the market-place. The timbered houses are old, and many of their gables lean; the cobblestones in the streets are rough, and the public square of dust, with withering trees, built on the old ramparts, looks as dreary as any we shall see on our travels. But it is surrounded by green landscape, and the view from the walks on the ramparts, seen through the tops of poplars, is of a green valley with trees and grey roof-tops, between which winds the river Trieux, slowly turning water-wheels.

The church was built between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, and represents several styles of architecture—Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance. It was originally founded as a castle chapel, and part of the structure is as early as the thirteenth century. It has three towers, the centre one having a spire. The interior is impressive, on account of the simplicity of arrangement for services and the comparatively uninterrupted view of the nave and aisles; an effect more like that on entering a cathedral in Spain than in France.

Brittany is a land of lasting monuments; and of its buildings it has been well said, “ce que la Normandie modelait dans le tuf, la Basse-Bretagne le ciselait en granit”; but remembering the magnificent churches we have seen in Normandy, we need not detain the reader long in Notre Dame de Guingamp. If we were asked by tourists if the church of Notre Dame at Guingamp was worth going very far to see, we should answer, No. It is only as a picture that it attracts us much. We shall see finer buildings in other parts of Brittany, but nowhere a more characteristic assembly. The most curious feature is a chapel forming the north porch, which is open and close to the street, lighted at night for services, and separated only from the road by a grille. This portail, as it is called, forms the chapel of Notre Dame de Halgoet, and is the sacred shrine to which all come at the fête of Guingamp. It is ornamented by rich stone carving and grotesque gurgoyles. The people of Guingamp love the chapel of Notre Dame de Halgoet; it is a retreat for them by day and by night, a place of meeting for old and young, with a perpetual beggars’ mart at the door. This north porch with its open grille is a house of call for rich and poor of both sexes, and placed as it is in the centre of the town, abutting upon the principal street, it forms part of their everyday life to go in and out as they pass by. It is one of the many welcome retreats in France; in a land of perpetual noises and glare, of shrill, uncouth voices and latch-less doors, it is the church that gives us peace and shade.

In the centre of Guingamp is its market-place, and in the centre of the market-place is a fountain, consisting of a circular granite basin with a wrought-iron railing. There is a second basin of bronze, supported by four sea-horses with conventional wings, and a third by four naiads; the central figure is the Virgin, her feet resting on a crescent. This fountain was constructed by an Italian artist, and its waters played for the first time on the night of the annual Pardon, in 1745. The history of Guingamp is not complete without recounting the story of the construction of this fountain; but regarded from a picturesque point of view, the smooth green bronze with its Renaissance ornamentation harmonises neither with the surrounding houses, with their high-pitched roofs and pointed turrets, nor with the towers of Notre Dame. We are more interested with the living groups which furnish the wide market-place in the morning sun.

A few yards from the cathedral, on the opposite side of the street, is the old Hôtel de l’Ouest, where travellers are entertained in rather rough but bountiful fashion.

“Take a little trout or salmon, caught this morning in the Trieux, a little beef, a little mutton, a little veal, some tongue, some omelettes, some pheasant, some fish salad, some sweets, some coffee, and then—stir gently,” is the prescription for travellers who stay at the Hôtel de l’Ouest. As this is an average hotel, it may be worth while to state that the bill presented (by the young lady in the sketch) to three English travellers, who spent a night and part of a day there, was 12 fr. 80 c.

Excepting at the time of fêtes, Guingamp is almost as quiet and primitive in its ways as in the days of the Black Prince. Our notes of days spent in this city in different years are the most uneventful in our records. On one summer’s morning we hear an unusual sound from the great bell of Notre Dame, and find a procession of priests and choristers winding up the principal street, followed by hundreds of the inhabitants. What is the occasion? “The mother of the Maire is dead; she was a bountiful lady, beloved by all, and we are to bury her this morning.” And so the inhabitants turn out en masse, and march with slow steps, for about half a mile, to the cemetery. It is a dark, silent stream of people, filling the street, and carrying everything slowly before it; the only sounds being the chanting of the choir, and the repetition of prayers. We follow to the cemetery, which is crowded with graves, each headed by little iron or wooden crosses, hung with immortelles. The procession divides and disperses down the narrow paths, a few only of the friends of the deceased standing near the grave.

At one corner of the cemetery is a shabby little wooden building, like a gardener’s tool-house, which seems to excite much interest. A girl, with shining bronzed face, in a snow-white cap, holding a little child by the hand, is coming out of the door; we venture to ask the reason of her visit. “Just to see my father for a minute,” is the ready answer.

In a little wooden box, about the size of a small dog kennel, is her father’s skull or chef, as it is called; he is tumbling over with his friends in other boxes exactly as in the sketch, which, rough as it is, has the grim merit of accuracy. The sight is a common one in Brittany, but it is startling and takes us by surprise at first, to see at least fifty of these shabby boxes, some on shelves in rows, but generally piled up in disorder and neglect. The lady who is being buried so solemnly this morning will some day be unearthed, and her chef, in a box duly labelled and decorated with immortelles, will take its place in the ossuary of Guingamp.

From the high ground near the cemetery, and especially from a hill a little farther from the town in a north-easterly direction, we obtain a good view of Guingamp and of the country round. There is a mound, covered with smooth grass, clumps of gorse, and tall fir trees, through which the wind moans on the calmest day; a spot much favoured on summer evenings by the youth of Guingamp. Looking round over the thickly wooded but rather sombre landscape, and on the old grey roofs of the town, one is a little at a loss to account for the rapturous descriptions which nearly all travellers give of Guingamp. On a fine summer’s morning the landscape is seen to perfection; but to tell the truth about it, the scene is not very striking either for beauty or for colour. Guingamp has been described as “a diamond set in emeralds,” and we read of its landscape “riant,” and so on. “Guingamp m’a pris le cœur,” says another traveller; but their interest is in the past, they people it with memories, and with the events of past years.

Our business is with the present aspect of Brittany, and we are bound to record that Guingamp, excepting at the time of the Pardon, is a very ordinary place indeed. The artist and the angler may linger in its valleys, and make it headquarters for many an excursion. If we might suggest one walk to them, we should say—

Go out of the town in a south-easterly direction, following the course of the river Trieux on its right bank for half an hour, and you will come to a suburban village, with a rough wooden cross (like the one sketched on page [89]) raised aloft in the centre of the street, and the bright and trim new stone spire of a chapel conspicuous amongst its irregular roof-tops.

Turn round to the right hand, just by the cross, and enter a large farmyard; the women are busy winnowing, not with hands upraised in the wind, as we have seen them at St. Brieuc, but twirling by hand a new patent blue-painted rotatory winnowing-machine with a burring sound, in a cloud of choking dust. They are storing their harvest in a large barn, the remains of an ancient Gothic church, the abbey of Ste. Croix, with its choir window piled up with straw. Immediately in front are the farm buildings, part of a round tower and a corner turret standing, and much of the old woodwork and massive interior fittings is still preserved. The garden reaches to the river, where ancient and historic trout disregard the angler of to-day. The farm and its surroundings are as picturesque as any painter could desire.

The inhabitants of this suburb have a real grievance; they had lived for generations in familiar sight and sound of the cathedral of Guingamp; they saw its spire and towers at evening, standing out sharp and clear against the western sky, and were in feeling living almost in the town itself, when suddenly the engineers of the “Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest” threw up a mountain of earth in their midst, and shut out the town and the sunset light from them, and from their children, for evermore.

CHAPTER IV.
Lanleff—Paimpol—Lannion—Perros-Guirec.

Twelve miles north-east of Guingamp is Lanleff—“the land of tears,” celebrated for one of the most curious architectural monuments in Brittany, the circular temple of Lanleff. Leaving Guingamp, we pass through a solitary wooded country, the undulating road soon rising high above the valley of the Trieux. The air is fresh and invigorating, and the views from the summits of the hills extend over a wide range of land. At Gommenech we enter the valley of the Leff that we passed at Châtelaudren. There is no prettier river, or one that should more truly delight an artist’s eye, than the Leff in its long, winding journey from the mountains to the sea.

Sheltered by woods, shut in here and there by granite walls, with ruins crowning the heights, between green banks and through sloping fields, it is one of those picturesque rivers which are peculiar to Brittany of which we seldom hear mention, but which many an English angler knows well. The view of Gommenech is to be remembered as we cross the valley on our way to the temple of Lanleff; the temple is in ruins, and partially unroofed, but enough remains of the original nave supported by pillars, and its outer circle of aisles, to give us a perfect idea of the structure, which resembles closely and has, doubtless, the same origin as the round churches in England built by the Crusaders on their return from the Holy Land. The diameter of the church to the walls of the outer aisles is not more than 20 feet; in the inner circle, or nave, the twelve arches are round and Romanesque in style, with rude carvings on the capitals. A chancel was afterwards built into the original structure, so that the unroofed walls of the temple formed, as it were, a vestibule to the parish church, and in this circular open porch, under the shadow of a yew-tree, the congregations used to kneel. But the people now assemble in the new parish church on the hillside, and the temple is kept for show. The “holy well with its blood-stained stone” is pointed out to visitors; the pieces of oolite, that encircle the well, show shining red spots when wetted, to mark the place where, according to tradition, “an avaricious priest received money from a father who sold his child to the Evil One.”

We listen to the story gravely, and certainly no sign of doubt, or of levity, passes over the grave face of the Breton woman who tells it; we are in a land of historic monuments and traditions of the past, and the people who live at Lanleff are too wise even to smile at the interest travellers take in these things. The story has been handed down from father to son, from mother to daughter, and is now passed on to tourists who can master a little of the Breton tongue.

Continuing our journey northward, we soon arrive at the summit of a hill overlooking the bay of Paimpol and the thickly wooded country round; we have passed good country-houses on the route, with flower-gardens skirted by hanging woods; and as we approach Paimpol, there are houses scattered in sheltered bays, with fishing and pleasure boats aground; an old church surrounded closely by houses, a little Place, a custom house, a quay, boatmen, and fisherwomen; but—where is the water? It has retreated for more than a mile, and the long bay or estuary and the port of Paimpol are a desolate waste of mud. Paimpol is a small but busy fishing village, much frequented in summer by the French for bathing. It is not fashionable, but the inns are comfortable, and the country is full of attractions for the summer visitor. The houses on the Place and in the narrow streets are old and weather-worn; some are dark and mysterious-looking, and have that peculiar smuggling aspect with which we soon become familiar on this coast.

In a corner of the quiet churchyard of Paimpol there reposes at full length, in stone, “L’Abbé Jean Vincent Moy,” many years curé of this place and honorary canon of St. Brieuc; and round about him, placed thickly in rows, the former inhabitants of Paimpol rest under black wooden crosses. The curé is carved in dark green stone, from which time has taken the sharpness of the chiselling; but the expression is life-like, representing him in the popular act of blessing. There is a cup of holy water at his feet, supplied by an old woman who kneels before the tomb on the damp ground. It is her pious office to guard the tomb of her pastor, and brush off the leaves which fall thickly from the grove of elms overhead. They move slowly and die leisurely at Paimpol; this old woman’s time is not yet, for she “has only eighty years.” In four newly made graves there repose Eugénie, Marie, Mathilde, and Hortense, and their respective ages are eighty-two, eighty-four, eighty-eight, and eighty-nine!

At Paimpol in summer every one seems to take life easily, the French visitors driving about, bathing, boating, and living perpetually in the fresh, pure air; the native inhabitants getting up boat-races, and dancing the “gavotte” at night, in streets lighted by paper lanterns in old Breton fashion, as we see sketched at Châteauneuf du Faou. There is unusual brightness on this sombre, storm-washed shore; there is the dazzle of a crimson pennant, and the flashing of a snow-white sail; there are green banks, in contrast to water of the deepest blue, for in these little inlets of the sea the summer sun clothes everything with brightness in a moment. Perhaps we have seen Paimpol en couleur de rose, for there has been blue sky overhead nearly every day for a fortnight, and the sun is so hot at midday that the market-women put up their red umbrellas, and the men descend into cool cellars for shelter and refreshment.

There is a favourite walk, of about a mile, to a promontory on the south side of the port, by a pathway skirting fields of corn and buckwheat, which brings us to high ground and a shady plantation of firs, where we lose sight of Paimpol itself, but obtain the best idea of the surrounding scenery. We choose this walk a little before sunset on a day when there is a high tide. At our feet, on the left hand, is a steep bank with tree-tops below, their dark foliage contrasting with the blue of the water and the orange stems of weather-worn firs. Looking far away northward and eastward across the water, dotted with white sails coming in with the tide, the island rocks light up brilliantly in the setting sun. The air is so clear seaward that we can distinguish little houses on the island which guards the port, and on more distant rocks far out to sea, all glittering in the sun. Turning southward, to the real bay of Paimpol, which we cannot see from the town, the opposite banks are in shadow, and the foliage which reaches to the water’s edge takes a rich purple tinge. The outlines are soft and indistinct, excepting on a tongue of land in the middle of the bay, where in the midst of a garden of fruit-trees, and surrounded by ivy-grown walls, we can just trace the Gothic lines of the abbey of Beauport.

It is a shaded walk of about a mile and a half from Paimpol to Beauport. The road and the by-paths are shut in by high banks, so that we come upon it rather suddenly, looking down upon the ruins, through the bare windows of which we can see the sea. The Gothic chapel is a complete ruin, but part of the abbey building is in good preservation, and inhabited. One room is turned into a school-house, and a great roofless hall, once the refectory, is used as a threshing-floor. The romantic aspect of the ruins of Beauport, with its surrounding scenery, has been described in every book on Brittany, and the view of it by moonlight over the bay of Paimpol is as famous as that of “fair Melrose.” To this ancient abbey come pilgrims of the nineteenth century to study and wonder at the art of life shown by the monks of the thirteenth. If ever there was a spot where nature and art seem combined for man’s special enjoyment, it must have been at Beauport. Here the fruitful land meets the bountiful sea, and there is no arid line of demarcation; the corn waves at the water’s edge, and the flowers bloom and shed their leaves into the water. The soil is rich, and the air is soft, and in this autumn time the harvest seems everywhere ready to man’s hand—a harvest of fruit and grain on land, a harvest of fish and rich seaweed spread at every tide upon the shore.

The abbey of Beauport is considered by M. Merrimée to be “the most perfect example of the monastic architecture of the thirteenth century”—in fact, the most important and beautiful ruin in Brittany.

“It lies

Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard-lawns

And bowery hollows, crown’d with summer sea.”

As we wander round the gardens and through the avenues of trees that line the raised walks on the breakwater, or under the shadow of high brick walls, laden with old fruit-trees, it is easy to realise in our minds the lives of its former occupants. The picturesqueness of Beauport, especially the view, from the eastern side, of the chapter-house and other dwellings, should attract artists. This afternoon there is one large white umbrella planted firmly in the gravel of its deserted walks, and one canvas spread with a green landscape in which old, grey, mullioned windows, and the stems of weather-beaten trees, form prominent features.

From Paimpol to Lannion is twenty miles by the road, crossing the river Trieux by a lofty suspension bridge at Lézardrieux, and halting at the ancient cathedral town of Tréguier by the way.

Tréguier, as will be seen on the map, is well situated for exploring the coast and for visiting a variety of places of interest in the neighbourhood; and it is a town in which the artist and the antiquary would desire to stay. The cathedral with its graceful spire, “percée au jour,” and its old market-place, with the streets leading from it, form pictures more characteristic and interesting than anything we have seen in Dinan or Guingamp. Tréguier, which was one of the four original bishoprics of Brittany, abounds in historical associations. Everywhere we hear of “St. Ives,” or “St. Yves” (the lawyers’ patron saint), who lived here in the thirteenth century, and who is buried in the cathedral by the side of Duke John V. From Tréguier to the sea there is a wide estuary, capable of floating, at high tide, vessels of large tonnage; and it was here that the famous expedition against England by “Constable Clisson” in the fourteenth century was to have embarked. The shipbuilding which is carried on at Tréguier and the views on the banks of the estuary are not the least picturesque points to notice. The cathedral is in a variety of styles; it has a north porch of Norman work, and a square tower, “the tower of Hastings,” of the eleventh or twelfth century, and some beautiful cloisters of the fifteenth. It might be worth while to stay at Tréguier if only to examine and sketch the interior of an old Breton farmhouse in the neighbourhood, containing the bed of “St. Ives,” and other relics of the patron saint; here too we are within easy reach of the remains of the castle of “La Roche Derrien,” with its fine views northward over the sea.

It is near Tréguier that we make the discovery of a watering-place, Perros-Guirec, where we can live in the height of the summer season for five francs a day, and where it is difficult to spend more. The bay of Perros-Guirec is just sufficiently off the track of tourists to make it delightful in summer. There are two small inns on the shore, one at either extremity; but the actual village of Perros-Guirec is situated amongst the trees which crown the northern promontory of the bay; there are a few summer-houses and gardens, an old church, and near it a convent, where in July and August strangers may board for a small sum.

It seems hard to break up the peace of this retreat by printing a description of it, but here, we are bound to record, is a spot where we can spend our summer days with the greatest delight. We can live as we like, dress as we like, bathe in the water at our feet, sit and sketch in the shade of woods, through the branches of which we see the shining sea. The air, so fresh and bracing, sweet with the breath of pines, is more grateful in the hot summer months than at Dinard or Trouville, and the sights and sounds are certainly more healthful and restful.

It is evening as we return from a walk by the sea north of Perros-Guirec; before us is a wide and beautiful bay, extending for nearly half a mile in a noble curve of shore; it is shut off from the land by sloping hills, and bounded at either extremity by rocks. The tide is nearly out, and the sand is as pure, smooth, and untrodden, as on Robinson Crusoe’s island. There are no projecting rocks or stones on this wide plain, nothing to be seen on its surface but our long dark shadows and two little crabs, behind their time, making hard for the retreating water. We cross the bay leisurely, treading lightly on the carpet of sand, and watching the sunset light on the rocks and on the little islands which make this coast such a terror to navigators. They are smiling this evening in that roseate hue which storm-washed red granite rocks put forth on gala days, and their purple reflections in the water are as deep and glowing as from the steep walls of the Lago di Garda under an October sun.

The two crabs soon disappear in the water, but as we cross the bay, two other little spots appear at some distance on the sand. The sight is so unusual here that the thought of Crusoe on his island occurs again, and we approach cautiously. The objects are larger and farther off than at first appeared, in fact nearly a quarter of a mile; they consist of two neat little bundles of clothing, one of which appears to be a silk dress surmounted by a white straw hat! There is nothing near them but sand, no sign of human creature; but, presently looking seaward, the mystery is explained by two heads appearing suddenly on the surface of the sea, one with long hair floating from it. We beat a retreat and learn afterwards that an evening walk in “ce pays ici” is often supplemented by an evening bath. Thus Monsieur and Madame, strolling together on the sands, make a diversion without ceremony or “machines,” and without the slightest “mauvaise honte.”

A little to the north of Perros-Guirec is the village of Ploumanach, almost built out into the sea. It is a place to be visited above all others on this coast for its wildness, and to see the hardy fishing population, living amongst a loose mass of rocks, nearly surrounded by water. Looking northward, on a clear day, we may see a group of islands that form, as it were, outworks of granite protecting the land from the waves that break upon this shore. One of these islands, the abode of innumerable wild-fowl, is said, with doubtful authority, to be the Island of Avalon, or Avilion, where King Arthur was buried.

All round these rocky promontories the inhabitants live more on the sea than on the land; they look to the sea for their harvest, and glean on the shore rather than in the fields. The children of this seafaring community, when tired of the earth, take to the water naturally, and it is not an uncommon thing to see the mother of a family rush from her cottage, lift up her skirts deftly, and jump into the sea to the rescue.

The principal town in this neighbourhood is Lannion; it is a natural commercial centre for the surrounding districts, collecting and dispersing the produce of the sea and of the shore, and busy also in providing and fitting out vessels for the mackerel-fisheries. It is a busy town, with a fixed population of about 7000, but apparently with accommodation, and occupation in the busy seasons of spring and autumn, for a much larger number. Lannion dates from the twelfth century. It is picturesquely situated on the steep slope of hills above the river Guier. The market-place in the centre of the town, from which steep streets descend to the river, is remarkable for its curious old houses, but nearly all traces of local costume have vanished. So, too, has vanished the antique tapestry representing the story of Coriolanus, and “a staircase up which a regiment of grenadiers could march in double columns,” which used to be shown at the Hôtel de l’Europe. In their stead we find plate-glass shop fronts, good pavements, and little children seated on dirty doorsteps dressed à la parisienne. On market-days the country people come in wearing their old costumes, and a few well-to-do farmers and their wives, who put up at the best inns, are dressed in the old homely fashion of the Bretons of the Côtes-du-Nord.

Lannion, at the time of writing, may be said to be one of the outposts of French tourist civilisation in the Côtes-du-Nord. Hither come in summer-time a few Parisians, and families from the interior, for the bathing; driving to and from Perros-Guirec and other places on the coast daily, but seldom actually staying on the seashore. In their train come the latest fashions, both in manners and in dress, and it is here we may notice, especially on Sundays and fêtes, the strange contrasts in costume between the Bretons and “the French,” as the natives persist in calling their visitors.

It is on their way down to the Jardin Anglais one Sunday morning that a gay Parisian and his wife walk through the market-place and down one of the old steep streets; behind them come nurse and bébé, all “en grande toilette de l’été.” The lady wears a white dress, which trails over the cobblestones; the gentleman is in brown holland, with white shoes, white tie, and a new straw hat shaped like a Prussian helmet and decorated with a crimson band; the baby is decorated in as much of the fashion of the day as its size will permit; the nurse, the neatest of the party, wears a spotless white cap and dark short dress. An old dame, seated at her doorstep, taking a bountiful pinch of snuff, emits a harsh sound, more like “Jah!” or “Yah!” than the customary approving “Jolie!” which comes so trippingly on every French tongue. The Breton woman, in her old-fashioned gown, black stockings, and neat stout shoes, who owns the house she lives in, and perhaps half a dozen others, regards the fashionable visitors with anything but pleasure, and resists the advance of fashion into Lannion as an evil almost equal to an inroad of Prussians.

In Lannion the most interesting buildings will be found in the neighbourhood of the Grande Place, where some curious slated “hoods,” and projecting roofs, break up the perpendicular lines of the modern buildings; enough remaining even now to account for the frequent descriptions of its picturesqueness. The church of St. Jean, with its high terrace overlooking the valley, is interesting principally from its commanding position above the town. From its terraces and between the stems of its dusty trees there is a pretty sight on Sunday morning when the people crowd to the neighbouring church of Brélévenez.

Looking northwards across a deep ravine—through which a once clear, rapid stream rushes full of soap into the river Guier—we see that in course of time it has worn its way through rocks, washed the slight covering of earth from the roots of trees that grow on its steep sides, that it has been utilised to turn water-wheels, dashing in and out of holes in wooden houses built over its banks. It has “washed” for Lannion for hundreds of years, and every summer’s evening down by the bridge, the women, old and young, may be seen on their knees at work on wet boards. On the opposite side of the ravine the houses rise one above the other in a series of steps to the church of Brélévenez with its fine spire cresting the hill; and it is up and down these steps that on Sundays and fête days the people crowd in a dark procession all day. The ascent is steep indeed, and the young have to help the old to make the pilgrimage.

If we follow the crowd across the ravine and up this narrow way, we find that it has been selected by suffering and poverty-stricken humanity as a public mart. The path is so narrow and steep that there is no escape from the beggars that line the way. In the churchyard at the top it is a pretty sight to see the country people meeting and chatting together under the trees, standing in groups waiting for the service. They are evidently accustomed to the beggars; but it seems hard upon Marie and Mathilde, coming on a summer’s morning through the fields to church, to have to run the gauntlet of so much misery and disease, to have hideous deformities thrust upon their sight, and curses hurled at them if they do not give. A stranger is of course fair game—he is Dives, and Lazarus is waiting for him at the gate; but all are importuned alike, and every hideous artifice is used to extract alms under the protection of the church. The women and children push their way bravely, slipping over the stone stiles modestly one by one, their neat short skirts being suited to the work. The air is fresh and sweet, blowing through the churchyard; but inside the church the crowd is great, and the heat almost insufferable. The beggars do not go in, at least not many of them, but they lie in wait and line the descent of this ladder of life, sunning themselves in corners until the pilgrims pass down.

Before leaving Lannion, a word should be said about the inn accommodation, because it is exceptionally good. They may be small matters to record in print, but it will be useful to travellers to know that in Lannion they will find at the principal inn the comforts of civilisation, including an excellent cup of tea. After a few days’ stay at the Hôtel de l’Europe the illusion will be dispelled that in travelling in Brittany, away from railways, it is necessary to “rough it,” as the saying is. In all the principal towns on our route the hotels will be found as good as in Normandy and other parts of western France; and throughout Brittany we get abundance of good meat, bread, butter, milk, and wine. At the Hôtel de l’Europe at Lannion, English families come to stay, it being quieter and less crowded than Dinan, as well as a convenient centre for visiting some of the most interesting spots in Brittany; interesting to English people especially for their historical and romantic associations.

Everyone makes a short stay at Lannion, in order to visit the thirteenth-century castle of Tonquédec, in a lovely valley about eight miles south of the town. It is easy to reach it by taking one of the diligences on the road to Guingamp to a point about five miles from Lannion, or by taking a carriage direct. At the time of writing, this castle is one of the best preserved specimens of military architecture in all France, and it is to our mind one of the beauty spots in Brittany. Time has covered its towers and walls with thick and luxuriant foliage, graceful in line, and altogether picturesque from its untrimmed aspect; in autumn time it is as rich in colour as a pheasant’s wing, and the lines of the landscape which surround it are as varied as the waves of the sea.

The castle of Tonquédec was one of the ancient strongholds of Brittany; the present structure is in great part the restoration of Henry IV., and the ruin the work of Cardinal Richelieu; time and ivy having done the rest. It is rare to find, as at Tonquédec, so “complete a ruin,” if we may use the word, showing the plan and structure of its different courts, its fortifications, and surrounding dwellings, as used in the thirteenth century. We must not dwell upon architectural details, but we may mention the views that are to be obtained from its windows and towers, the adjoining park and avenues of old trees, and the lake with its ancient carp asleep under the banks, who—according to the women in charge of the castle—“have lived so long that their tails are worn out”!

At Lannion and Tonquédec we are on the border-land which divides the departments of the Côtes-du-Nord and Finistère. The little river Douron, which takes its source in the Monts d’Arrée, and falls into a bay between Plestin and Lanmeur, marks the boundary of the departments and also of the ancient bishoprics of Tréguier and St. Pol de Léon. There is a natural division between the two departments in the general aspect of the country and demeanour of the people. From the hanging gardens of Beauport and the sleepy orchards and cornfields which surround Lannion and Tonquédec we shall shortly pass to a wilder and sterner part of the coast, dominated by the cathedral spires of St. Pol and Le Folgoet.

CHAPTER V.
Carhaix—Huelgoet.

Thus far we have spoken of the northern coast, where the busy inhabitants of the Côtes-du-Nord come most in contact with French traders, and travellers of different nations. Let us now turn towards the mountains, where the country is less fertile, the people are more isolated, and there is more character and local costume to be seen.

If we leave the Western Railway at Guingamp or Belle-Isle-en-Terre, we may follow the course of the streams which take their rise in the Monts d’Arrée, and, passing through Callac, reach Carhaix the same evening. We cross the purple mountains where the solitary shepherd in goat’s-skin coat (sketched on page [68]) tends his flocks on poor pastures, and where the, almost equally solitary, Englishman is busy with a fly-rod. At Callac, where comfortable quarters are to be obtained, many Englishmen stay for the fishing and shooting seasons; the streams are well stocked with fish, and there is little difficulty in getting permission for fishing.

The game laws are very strict in France, as is well known; the opening and closing of the shooting season varies every year, the prefect deciding the day in September when shooting may begin. The chasse courant, which includes hunting the wolf and the wild-boar, commences about a month later. The seasons close at the end of January, and whenever snow is on the ground. Altogether there is more attraction for the angler than for the sportsman in Brittany, and there is no better centre for the angler than Callac.

The aspect of the people and their dwellings in this neighbourhood is more simple and primitive than we have yet seen; and the features of the peasants are more strongly marked with the privations of generations. It is the same dull round of life, labour, and hardship, with a few gleams of sunshine in summer; and a Pardon and a blessing from the priest at the annual fête. There is the same story everywhere. “We move slowly; we do as our fathers did, and live contentedly as they lived.”

How did they live sixty years ago? An Englishman who spent some time in Brittany in 1818 says of the peasants:—“They are rude, uncivilised, simple, and dirty in their habits; they live literally like pigs, lying upon the ground and eating chestnuts boiled in milk as their principal food. Their houses are generally built of mud, without order or convenience, and it is a common thing in Brittany for men, women, children, and animals to sleep together in the same apartment, upon no resting-place but the earth covered with straw.”[^[3]] This was written sixty years ago, but the mud houses are before us, and the description holds good to-day. Forty years later a writer in an English newspaper is sent to report upon the state of the agricultural labourer in Brittany; what does he find? “The Breton peasant,” he says,[^[4]] “is still isolated from the towns by his language. He has kept himself apart, and mistrusts the outer world. His fare is black bread, made of buckwheat, or rye, oats or barley, boiled with milk. If he have a change in his diet, it is in the shape of potatoes. His life is an unbroken monotony. He never changes his manners, his habits, or his dress. He is a stranger in the large towns, where even his language is not understood, save by a few people who deal with him. He is as patient and quiet as a beast of burden; his daily hard labour seems to subdue even his affections, it leaves him no time for grief, no hours for the indulgence of remorse, no moment for despair.”

[3]. Stothard’s Brittany, 1820.

[4]. Blanchard Jerrold’s Letters to the Morning Post, 1853-60.

Twenty years later, what do we find? Excepting in a few districts, such as that near Lannion, where there is a considerable advance in agriculture, and where the peasant’s position is better, we find the same figure wearing the same coat, standing just where he did; his life the same weary round of labour by day, and rest in an old mud hovel at sundown. The problem of a life of labour and monotony is yet unsolved; he is just where he was in 1850, and where his father was in 1820. The great Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest, that was to do so much for the owners of the land and the tillers of the fruitful soil of Brittany, which has been driven through the heart of the country, with its enormous viaducts and its trains of cattle trucks; which has thrown up embankments of earth that shut him off from the rest of the world, appear to have done little good. A train rushes past his patch of land several times a day, and perhaps his priest is in it, on his way to Paris or Rennes; it no longer startles his children or his pigs, for it has passed now for years; but “traffic,” or what is generally understood by the term, scarcely exists, and passengers, excepting in summer, are few and far between.

A step higher than the peasant, and we find the farm people, all working on in the old grooves, and, excepting in the matter of sending their children by train to be educated (which to a certain extent is compulsory), and in the gradual use of modern agricultural implements, showing little signs of change. Nearly all the farms are worked on a small scale, and with the least employment of capital. “Thrift, thrift!” is the watchword with them all; early and late they labour, man, woman, and child, and year by year gain a little on the past; a piece more land, a few hundred francs put by; but they live on in the same humble, penurious way, with little care or trouble about the outer world, and knowing little of its movements. Their very charities are an investment by the teaching of their own church: a sou is given to a beggar without grudging, for shall it not be repaid? Thus on the one side we may contemplate a life of work and thrift, which is admirable, and a conservatism which keeps the soil in the hands of the labourer; but on the other, the view is of a race behindhand in civilisation, wanting in knowledge and in sympathy with the rest of mankind.

We descend the hills from Callac, following the course of the river Aven to Carhaix, the ancient capital of a province and the centre of a large agricultural district, owing its present importance to its cattle fairs. At ordinary times life is peaceful enough at Carhaix; in the principal square is the Hôtel de la Tour d’Auvergne, where visitors can live as comfortably as in any country town in France, and where the days resemble one another very closely. Every afternoon the people sit and sun themselves in the principal square, as in the sketch below, and pigs lie down undisturbed in the middle of the street; every evening the inhabitants walk under the trees on the dingy Place, with its avenues of limes, where there is a fine view over the country, and where is Marochetti’s bronze statue of La Tour d’Auvergne, “le premier grenadier de France.”

Between two and three o’clock in the afternoon there is the only communication with the outer world, when, with much cracking of whips and rattling over stones, a crazy vehicle called “the courier,” with its lame and battered horse, covered with dust and foam, comes lumbering in. It brings a packet of newspapers, chiefly local; for Carhaix cares little for the doings of the world beyond that of which it is the centre. But we must now speak of the fair.

Six roads converge upon Carhaix, and upon these roads, and across the open land, on a summer’s morning, comes a stream of horses, cattle, pigs, and people. It is the day of the cattle fair, a day for meeting and marketing for all the country round; a day of rejoicing, bargaining, and of cruelty to animals scarcely to be paralleled elsewhere; the day and the place to see the Breton farmers and cattle-dealers, to study the costumes and the ways of the peasants from some of the most primitive districts of Brittany.

ON THE ROAD TO MARKET.

It is only four o’clock in the morning, but the sounds of shouting (in strong Breton tones, which seem to Englishmen a perpetual echo from the Welsh hills), the lowing of cattle, the shrieking of pigs, and the heavy thud of sabots resound upon the roads. On the rising ground just outside Carhaix, on the western road, we can see them through an avenue of trees coming across the country in narrow defile, like the commissariat train of an army on the march; the men leading cattle, the women on horseback and on foot, laden with provisions; and others in holiday attire, arriving in country carts.

The sun shines full on the wrinkled faces of the men, and on the white caps of the women, and lights up the group with unwonted brilliancy; even the sober costumes of the people with their blue and brown stuffs, and the black, and white and fawn-coloured, cattle which they lead, would, if recorded faithfully by a painter, stand out in high accents of colour against the low-toned land; a rustic picture so fitful and vanishing that only the rapid artist, who has presented Brittany to us in these pages (as it has never been pictured before), could depict. It is the sunny side of Brittany in all its quaintness, the pastoral aspect of life which those who dwell in cities seldom see. There is nothing to mar the beauty of the morning, for the noise of the market is as yet a distant sound, mingled with the bells of Carhaix for early mass; there is nothing to suggest a change but the gathering of the clouds towards the west, and the stout umbrellas and cloaks carried by the women.

Let us follow them, later in the day, to a large square where the fair is held, and where there are wonderful sights and sounds; under the trees a crowd of men and women, in the dust and heat, horses, cattle, and pigs, in perpetual movement, with much drinking and shouting at the booths which line one side of the enclosure. There are a great many horses for sale, which do not find buyers, although the government agents are here from the neighbouring haras at Callac, and horse-dealers have come from all parts. The cattle market is overstocked, and the little black and white cattle, a cross between Alderneys and Bretons, go for very small sums to reluctant purchasers. The pig market is more active, as every Breton peasant likes to possess a pig, and the noises proceeding from this part of the square are deafening. The gentleman farmer in blue blouse to keep off the dust is the portrait of a prominent figure moving amongst the crowd.

CATTLE FAIR AT CARHAIX.

The meetings of the country people, and the groups sitting under the trees to rest, are as suggestive pictures as we have seen, and the costumes are full of variety and interest; the whole forms a scene of which the full-page sketch gives an accurate idea. These markets are held several times a year, and for a few hours disturb the quiet of the sleepy town of Carhaix.

We could well stay at Carhaix, for the scenery is varied and interesting, and there is much to observe in the farmhouses in the neighbourhood; old furniture, old carved bedsteads, cabinets, and clocks; old brass-work, old lace and embroideries.

Pictures come to us at every turn, pictures of domestic happiness and content, only to be seen in byways far removed from cities and their troubles; family groups, in which our presence seems sometimes an intrusion. Brittany, like Spain, is a country that should be travelled through cautiously; the inhabitants live out of doors in summer-time, and perform various domestic operations in the roads, regardless of traffic. Turn a corner suddenly and you may come upon a scene of family discord, or affection, where you are of necessity de trop; take a walk in the evening in the outskirts of a town, and the mute aspect of the people, one and all, is that the road belongs to them, that the dirt and the dunghills of the poorest are heirlooms which no invading sanitary inspector shall reform.

In the farmhouses in the neighbourhood we shall often find but one living and sleeping room—kitchen, sitting-room, bedroom, all in one; the bedstead of carved oak, the cupboards and chests with brass handles and bosses, the copper cooking utensils bright and shining, the floor at the same time being of bare earth. There is often a dungheap outside, and a shed for cows opening into the living room, which is common alike to pigs, fowls, and children. We see the women coming out of their dark, unhealthy dwellings on fête-days, looking bright and clean, with old lace in their caps, embroidered shawls, and the neatest of shoes. We see them thrashing corn and scattering the grain wastefully on the ground, and farming on a small scale in primitive fashion. But the Bretons who live thus are nearly all prosperous and thrifty in their own way; they own most of the land they farm, paying rent, for a portion perhaps, at the rate of twenty or twenty-five francs an acre, but adding to the extent of their ownership year by year. Nearly everyone we meet at Carhaix is engaged in agriculture, and the majority are well-to-do. The land yields well, and there is the Canal de Brest passing through the town to take the produce to the coast.

Waiting for Dinner, Huelgoet.

Turning northwards towards Morlaix, we pass through somewhat dreary scenery, until we come to a gorge near Huelgoet, which, with its rocks and rushing streams, will remind us of Switzerland; here are some ancient lead and silver mines, which were a source of considerable wealth in the fifteenth century.

There is a silent and deserted air about the streets of Huelgoet, seldom disturbed by the sound of wheels; at the inn where we rest our dinner is cooked in the salle à manger at the open fireplace, and from the manner of the people it is evident strangers are rare, even in summer. We are asked by the taciturn landlord to take up our abode here “for the sake of the fishing,” and a book is shown containing the names of visitors who have staid at the inn.

The road between Huelgoet and Morlaix, passing over a spur of the Monts d’Arrée, is again wild and desolate; we see flocks scattered over barren pastures, and men and women at work on open ground far away from habitations. It is a suggestive part of Brittany for the landscape painter, a dark lonely land of rugged outline, full of poetry and mystery.

CHAPTER VI.
Morlaix—St. Pol—Lesneven—Le Folgoet.

From the quiet of Carhaix and the solemn landscape which surrounds Huelgoet to the bustle of Morlaix, only sixteen miles to the north, seems a rapid transition. If we arrive at Morlaix by railway, we cross a lofty viaduct over a deep ravine, and, far below, see clusters of grey roofs, white houses, rocks and trees, church towers, and factory chimneys. Descending to the town, we find ourselves in the centre of more commercial activity than we have seen since leaving St. Malo. Morlaix is a prosperous town, containing about 15,000 inhabitants, busily engaged in trade. It is built at the confluence of two streams, the Jarlot and the Queffleut, which meet in the centre of the city, and (arched over for some distance in their course) wind down the valley to the sea, six miles away. On either side of this canal-like stream are quays, and rows of houses, old and new, strangely intermixed.

The commercial traveller, the shipper of native products, and the importer of foreign goods is ever busy at Morlaix. But its aspect is still essentially old; its outward characteristics are primitive: weather-worn gables with carved beams, steep streets and rough pavements with open gutters, and, in the centre of the city, a dingy river, with washerwomen on its banks. The sketch gives an exact idea of the scene as enacted every day in the principal street; but the old architecture of Morlaix is best indicated on page [72]. A few demolitions take place every year, but, visiting Morlaix for the third time in 1878, we find the most interesting buildings standing and leaning against each other as of old. Tradition is strong in this city, and many new shops preserve over their doors their old signs, the ancient insignia of the trades of the merchants of Morlaix. Some are grotesque figures carved in wood, painted and gilt; there is one little figure, for instance, at the corner of the Rue Notre Dame, “Au Sommeur Breton,” in cocked hat and curled wig, which carries us back in imagination several centuries.

In the “Rue des Nobles,” where the high-pitched roofs and overhanging eaves nearly meet across the street, we may see the actual dwellings of the nobles of Brittany in the fifteenth century, whilst above on the steep hillsides, and all around, are the modern, meaner, and more healthy dwellings of the traders of the nineteenth.

The approach to Morlaix by water in the old days, when at the last turn of the river the pointed gables and towers came into view, must have been very picturesque. Its aspect in 1505, when the nobles received the Queen-Duchess Anne on her pilgrimage through Brittany, and later—when Mary Queen of Scots landed here on her way to Paris to espouse the Dauphin in 1548—we may picture to ourselves, with some regret, as we walk down the new wide Rue de Brest, and see above us the great railway viaduct. It is a strange medley of grey roofs, trees, rocks, towers, factory chimneys, quays lined with stores, precipitous streets, tottering dwellings, and defaced churches (one turned into a granary), arched over by the modern railway viaduct, from the view of which there is no escape, but which, from its very height and solidity, has a certain grandeur of effect. But the old is quite overwhelmed by the new, and even the steep hillsides seem dwarfed by the giant proportions of the viaduct. There is not only more movement, but there is more colour in Morlaix, than we are accustomed to in Brittany; down on the quay, for instance, there are red sashes, and clothing of bright Oriental hues, drying in the wind; and there is a certain Eastern air about the open shops in the old quarters which tells of distant commerce. But the present prosperity of Morlaix is in its tobacco manufactories, in its trade in butter, grain, fruit, &c., and in its position as the natural place of export for the products of a fruitful part of Brittany.

It is well to stay at Morlaix to make sketches of some of the lofty interiors with their carved staircases, some of which are quite unique; and it is well to see it on Sundays, for nowhere shall we see pleasanter faces or a happier and brighter-looking population. On market mornings the country people crowd the Place, and, in the morning and in the evening, five or six hundred factory hands, men and women, pass up and down the Rue de Brest. It is a familiar sight, but the neat caps and dark homely attire of the women are again delightful to see. The brightness, style, and vivacity, of the women of Morlaix leave a distinct impression on the mind.

In the neighbourhood, in the direction of Brest, are two of the most famous calvaries and churches of the Renaissance, St. Thégonnec and Guimiliau. It is half an hour’s journey by train to the little deserted station of St. Thégonnec, on the railway to Brest, and a mile to the north is the village. There is no one at the station but the station-master, and no communication with the village of St. Thégonnec excepting by a covered cart, which meets the morning train. The fine church, which stands in the midst of a straggling village of dilapidated houses, pigsties, and dirt, is rich in sculpture and gilding in the style of the Renaissance; on the high-altar, on the pulpit, and in the side chapels are elaborate carvings, much overdone with gilding and restoration, but grand in general effect. In the churchyard all is grey, sad-looking, and dilapidated; the ancient calvary, erected in 1610 in dark Kersanton stone, is injured and time-stained; the quaint figures, elaborately carved, representing passages in the history of Christ (dressed in ruffs and gowns of the sixteenth century), are roughly propped up and stuck together, for the benefit of pilgrims who come to the shrine.

The calvary of St. Thégonnec, like most others in Brittany, depicts scenes in the life and Passion of Christ. In the centre is a group of three crosses, representing the scene of the Crucifixion, with figures of the centurion and soldiers, angels, and the Virgin and St. John, and on either side are the two thieves. Below, round the base of the structure, are figures in Breton costume, representing the judgment of Pilate, Christ bearing the cross, the Entombment, and the Resurrection. Some of the figures are remarkable for animation, and, in spite of the state of the monument, appeal more powerfully to the imagination than a group of coloured life-size figures representing the Entombment which is shewn to visitors in the crypt.[^[5]]

[5]. For a sketch of one of the calvaries, see page [91].

The church and calvary of Guimiliau is in a quiet village a few miles to the south-west, a short drive from St. Thégonnec, crossing the railway. The church dates from the Renaissance, and is rich in carving and decoration; the interior is loaded with ornament, the eastern end being a mass of crude colours and florid decoration. In the south porch is some elaborate carving, and in the organ loft are some bas-reliefs on the oak panels. There is a baptistry of carved oak, consisting of a canopy with allegorical figures, supported on eight spiral pillars, around which are twisted vine leaves, fruit, flowers, and birds. The pulpit, dated 1677, is also a remarkable work of art. But in the churchyard, time-stained and crumbling to decay as usual, is the great object of our visit, a solid stone structure raised upon arches, upon which is a crowd of little carved figures in the costume of the sixteenth century, representing the various scenes of the Passion. There are saints in the niches at the corners, and high above is a crucifix, with the figures of Mary and St. John on either side. This monument dates from 1580, but many of the figures have been restored at a later date.

Altogether the calvaries of St. Thégonnec and Guimiliau, whether regarded from a picturesque or antiquarian point of view, are the most interesting monuments we have yet seen; interesting in their very loneliness, the object of so much thought and labour in the middle ages, left thus neglected and in ruin. The calvaries of Brittany seem little cared for, excepting as curiosities; but once a year, at Easter time, there are religious ceremonies connected with them, when special services are performed, and the various scenes depicted on the monuments are explained to the people. Then is the time to visit St. Thégonnec and Guimiliau, when the people are seen gathered round the sculptured crosses, in the same costumes and in the same attitude of faith as their forefathers.

From the time we left St. Thégonnec station until our return in the evening, after visiting these two calvaries, we have seen few people in the fields or on the roads. The busy city of Morlaix absorbs all available hands, and leaves the country towns almost deserted. When the railway was advanced at an enormous cost through a difficult country to the port of Brest, it was thought, naturally enough, that it would open up traffic en route; but here at St. Thégonnec no one comes. “I live,” says the station-master, “in a vast solitude, the monotony of which is only broken by the passing of five or six trains a day; scarcely any one comes near me; a stray tourist or two in the summer, and an occasional visit from a wolf in winter, one of which has killed my favourite dog.” This station-master, whose daughter was being educated at Morlaix, kept a brood of turkeys for distraction; but it was “a lonely life,” as he said, a solitude the more keenly felt because he was connected by a telegraph wire with the headquarters of the administration of the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest. “It was solitude without peace, for at any moment, day or night, the bell might ring.” It is difficult to realise that this is on the main line of railway between Paris and Brest!

POTATO-GETTING NEAR ST. POL DE LÉON.

There is no stranger or more suggestive contrast for the traveller in Brittany than to leave Morlaix on a summer’s morning and drive twelve miles in a north-westerly direction to St. Pol de Léon. It takes only three hours, but in that short journey we pass, as it were, from life to death, from the commercial activity of to-day to a stillness which belongs to the past. The passage is from wharves and warehouses, from crowded factories and the shrieking of steam, to open country, hill and dale, to the sea. In Morlaix the monuments are to commerce, in St. Pol de Léon to the church; in Morlaix there is activity and a certain amount of civilisation, in St. Pol de Léon, by contrast, there is stillness, poverty, and degradation. Our last view of Morlaix is of a stupendous railway viaduct, of comfortable villas and trim gardens; our first view of St. Pol de Léon across the open land is of three noble church spires standing out sharply against the sky. Ancient stone crosses and images of saints in glass cases are passed as usual on the roadside, before we approach Léon, “the Holy City,” which five centuries ago, when Morlaix was unknown, was an important bishopric and the centre of great ecclesiastical wealth. To-day its aspect is poor and dreary, even in sunshine; grey and cold in colour, and generally dirty.

But the cathedral with its spires and the tower of the church of Notre Dame de Creizker (nearly 400 feet high) are the absorbing points of interest, the reason of our journey to St. Pol.

The inhabitants, numbering about 7000, are principally agricultural, or are employed at the port; fishermen and knitting women, reserved and dignified in manner, living rough homely lives, disdaining many of the modern ways of Morlaix, but having a keen eye to commerce, which they carry on actively with far-away places, including Norway and Greenland.

As we saunter up the rough, ill-paved streets of the cathedral square, the men come out of the cafés and débits de tabac, and give us a rough but not unkindly greeting, as in the sketch. The principal occupation of our three friends is to cultivate potatoes, cabbages, onions, asparagus, and other vegetables for foreign markets; for this part of Brittany forms one vast market-garden, whence the cities of Western Europe are supplied. The inhabitants who live in the cathedral square have grown up in perpetual wonderment (expressed in their faces) at the summer procession of pilgrims to St. Pol de Léon; pilgrims in strange costumes, who dispense sous to their children, inquire for the keys of the tower of the Creizker, and then mount several hundred feet above them in the wind.

The cathedral dedicated to St. Pol is a fine example of early Gothic architecture, noble in proportions, rich in carving and sombre in colour, the dark green Kersanton stone giving a fine effect to the interior, in which some white-robed nuns are generally to be seen on their knees. The nave is thirteenth-century work, there is some florid carving on the south porch, and a fine rose window; above are two towers, with lofty lancet windows, and spires which remind us of churches in Normandy.

But the spire of Notre Dame de Creizker—literally, “Our Lady of the Middle Town”—which is higher than the cathedral towers, is the most interesting object in St. Pol; the central point round which the lives of the Léonnais radiate, a landmark seen far and wide by land and sea. This spire, built in the fourteenth century, in the reign of John IV., Duke of Brittany, is supposed to be the work of an English architect. The tower is of granite, richly ornamented with a projecting cornice, and its spire is pierced through to the sky. The beauty and magnificence of the churches of St. Pol de Léon are out of all proportion to the present importance—or unimportance—of the place. The inhabitants have little sympathy with the art of the sixteenth century, or with the Druidical remains they find in their fields, but they welcome travellers gladly in the nineteenth.

It is a wide plain round about St. Pol, from which the Gothic spires seem to reach to heaven, and where a human figure, standing in a field, points upwards with strange emphasis against the sky; a district peopled by classic-looking market gardeners, whose children walk in groves of cabbages five feet high, and play at hide and seek in their shadows.

Gurgoyle at Roscoff.

Three miles north of St. Pol is the little sea-port of Roscoff, historically interesting as the landing-place of the child princess Mary Queen of Scots, who passed through Roscoff on her way to Nantes in 1548. There are the ruins of a chapel founded by her, still standing on the seashore; in the church, with its open belfry tower, are some curious alabaster reliefs; and in the neighbourhood, in a convent garden, is a gigantic fig-tree, said to be two centuries old. Roscoff is now used as a bathing-place, and there is a constant passing to and fro in summer between this port and a little island three miles farther north, the Île de Batz, where a hardy population of fishermen and women ply their dangerous trade, with hardly any communication with the shore in winter. It is almost worth while to cross to the Île de Batz to see the “Druidesses,” as the women of the island are called, assembling on Sundays in their island church; and it might be worth while for a painter to make a longer stay in this neighbourhood, to make studies (if only for colour) of some of the curious figures to be seen in such out-of-the-way corners as Roscoff. Here is one of an old man with long hair and semi-nautical aspect, who sits in the evening on a stone seat in front of the cottage which he owns, facing the sea; a poor man to outward appearance, but an owner of the soil; his face is screwed and weather-worn, his clothes are patched in various shades of brown; his blouse is of a dark and greasy tinge; his working life has been spent in the fields or down at the port, but his final cause is undoubtedly to smoke; he has coloured by degrees, like a good old pipe, and his sabots have caught the true meerschaum tinge; he has smouldered at Roscoff for many years, and seems ready for burning, stacked against the wall like the fagots collected for winter fires. There is no difficulty in making a sketch, for this rich-toned “owner of the soil” of Finistère has a perfect contempt for strangers, and is as immovable as the gurgoyle sketched on the preceding page.

Let us now turn westward in the direction of Lesneven and Le Folgoet, to see one of the finest churches in Finistère. There are two roads to Lesneven, of which we would recommend the traveller to take the one to the north, near the sea. The country is for the most part dreary in aspect, but there are some curious wayside crosses on the route. There are a few fields of buckwheat, corn, and rye, banked up by high hedges, and skirted by pollard trees. It is one of those drives which should be taken leisurely by the antiquary or the archæologist; a route where there is little to remind us of the present, and much to bring before us the habits of the past. Every monument we pass on the road, every hovel at the roadside, and nearly every peasant in the fields, is of the pattern of a past age.

As we skirt these quiet shores of northern Finistère, we may listen for a moment to a story just five hundred years old, a story that every Breton peasant that we pass on the road knows by heart: how a poor idiot named Salaun, who lived in the neighbourhood of Lesneven for forty years, and begged for his bread in the name of the Virgin, uttering only the words, “Ave Maria,” was found dead by a fountain and buried on the spot; how a white lily grew upon his grave, with the words, “Ave Maria,” inscribed upon the leaves; and how John of Blois, then fighting for the dukedom of Brittany, hearing of the “miracle,” vowed that, if successful in battle, he would erect a church to Notre Dame de Folgoet, i.e. “Fool of the Wood.”

IN THE CHURCH OF LE FOLGOET.

The church was completed by his son, John V., about 1420. It was built like most of the churches and monuments of Finistère, of the dark Kersanton stone found near St. Pol de Léon, and at the village of Kersanton, near Brest. The church consists of a lofty nave and aisles under one roof, with a long projecting transept on the south side. The great beauty of the church is in its carving, that on the south porch being perhaps the finest. The great west door, now falling into ruin, is elaborately ornamented with wreaths of the vine and other devices, and above it is a bas-relief representing the Nativity and the Adoration of the Shepherds. In the beautiful south porch, which is supposed to have been added by the Queen-Duchess Anne, are the arms of Brittany and figures of the twelve apostles in niches, and round its roof are traces of a richly carved parapet. In the interior there are five altars, with carved figures of angels, birds, and flowers; and on the rood-loft, between the choir and nave, supported upon elaborately carved pillars, is some open tracery cut in stone, in good preservation. There is a fine rose window, as at St. Pol de Léon.

The spring, or Fool’s Well, is under the high-altar, and the water flows into a basin outside the church. It is here that the sick and needy come and kneel before a statue of Our Lady set in a Gothic niche, and bathe their limbs in the water of the miraculous well; a retired spot, where, at all hours of the day, peasants are to be found on their knees in prayer.

We have given but slight descriptions of the churches of St. Pol de Léon and Le Folgoet, but enough to indicate that here at least the traveller will be rewarded for going out of the beaten track, and that in Brittany, owing to the wonderful durability of the Kersanton stone, we can still see the handwork and judge of the skill of the sculptors of the fourteenth century.

The church of Le Folgoet stands, as guide-books tell us, on “a silent spot, unvisited save on certain festivals, and removed a mile and a half from any town.” We find it the centre of a tumult impossible to describe. There is a large horse-fair being held, which has collected a crowd almost equal to that at Carhaix; but here there is more variety in the costume of the men, the red Phrygian caps and sashes lighting up the crowd with unusual colour. It is a scene strangely in contrast with the quiet of the cathedral, where under its cool arcades men are kneeling, whip in hand; they have come to pray for a special blessing from St. Cornély, the patron saint of cattle.

The men, in light canvas trousers and blue jerseys, standing on the left in the picture of the fair, are horse dealers and agents for the government, who attend every cattle fair and market throughout the country. The men on the right, watching a horse being trotted out, are thoroughly characteristic figures, portraits of well-to-do Breton farmers and dealers.

The boy on the horse is a good example of the Breton gamin, or hanger-on at fairs, who trots out the horses with untiring energy, and with a freedom and grace of limb delightful to behold.

HORSE FAIR AT LE FOLGOET.

CHAPTER VII.
Brest—Plougastel—Châteauneuf du Faou.

At Landerneau we are once more on the high-road to Brest. We have left for a time the dreary wind-blown promontories of the coast, and find shelter in a pleasant valley, surrounded by trees and gardens, and watered by a river which opens out westward into the bay of Brest.

The railway from Landerneau to Brest is carried for the most part at a high level, and from the windows on the left hand we obtain beautiful views of the scenery of the bay. Below we can see the stores of timber for naval use, and are otherwise reminded of our approach to a sea-port by the company which collect at the small stations en route. In the crowded carriage are old weather-beaten fishermen and countrywomen with market baskets, and, in one corner, two boys with fair fresh faces, set in wide straw hats, bearing upon them the inscriptions of Vulcan and Vengeance.

Brest is a naval station of such importance that even travellers in search of the picturesque should not pass it by without a short visit; the arsenal, docks, and harbour are on a scale of completeness second only to Cherbourg; moreover, Brest is the most convenient point from which to visit other parts of the coast of Finistère, especially the fishing village of Le Conquet, the abbey of St. Mathieu on the extreme western point of Brittany, and the island of Ouëssant. Brest is situated on an elevated position on the north side of one of the finest natural harbours in the world, commanding good views from its ramparts and promenades. The population is about 70,000, exclusive of soldiers and sailors; a busy cosmopolitan maritime city, in which there is little of the Breton character to be studied.

In order to realise the beauty of the inland bay of Brest, we must look down again from our imaginary ballon captif, and see its blue waters, green banks and woods coming down to the water’s edge; the country dotted with white villas and little wooden châlets belonging to the wealthy traders of Brest, and here and there the sombre avenues of a château with grey, high-pitched roofs and pointed turrets peeping through the trees.

Across this inland sea, traversed by little steamers and dotted with white sails—raised high upon the heath-clad hills which form the western spur of the Monts d’Arrée—is the little town of Plougastel.

It is too late to cross the bay on the occasion of our visit to Plougastel, and so we take the last train to Kerhuon station, where there is a ferry. A vessel has just been paid off at Brest, and in the railway carriage are several sailors on their way home. One of them gets out with us at Kerhuon, and we go down together to the river. By some mischance the ferry-boat is missing, and all is darkness at the little boathouse. The young sailor, ready at expedients, puts down his pack, collects some furze, and lights a fire as a signal. We sit and wait and shout at intervals, burning the fuel until just about midnight, when we hear the plash of oars, and a dark object glides past; it is a fishing-boat with one mast, with three men in the stern, and two women rowing. After a little parleying they agree to take us across for thirty centimes each, and the women turn the boat round, running it heavily against the stones of the causeway. We get in quickly and stand in the bows, whilst we silently cross the Landerneau river. It is a strange, mysterious boat-load; not a word is uttered, there is no sound but the heavy plodding and working of the oars, and the night is so dark we cannot see the faces of the men or the nature of the packages that weigh down the stern. The moon, rising through the clouds, just illumines the darkness as we near the shore; it shines on the smooth, wet mast, on the waterproof hat of the marine standing up in the boat, and reveals close to us the strong, stout arms of a girl, bared to the shoulder, her head concealed in a dark, tight-fitting headdress, with lappets like an Egyptian sphynx; the head is raised for a moment, and eyes are turned upon us as we leave, but no word is uttered, scarcely a “Bon soir!” as the boat drifts away into the night.

The moon shines as we ascend the hill—winding up a path between great rocks and under the shadow of stunted trees, to Plougastel—revealing a poor-looking town of plain stone houses, silent and deserted at this midnight hour. At a corner of two streets our companion points out the inn and takes leave, having to go to his home at the further end of the town. We knock for admittance, but without avail; heads are put out of various windows, but the answer is that every house is crowded, for “to-morrow is the fête”; and, truth to tell, curses are heaped upon the strangers for disturbing the dogs, who begin to howl as they trot by on their midnight errands. There is nothing to be done until daybreak, and so the night is spent in the open air.

We have come to Plougastel to see the people, and also its famous calvary, which stands in the middle of a desolate churchyard strewn with newly cut stone. As the day begins to dawn, we make our way to the church, and to the spot where we can just discern the calvary, with its carved figures standing darkly against the sky. There is a flutter at our approach, for birds have been nestling behind the headless horsemen, and sheltering in the nooks and corners of the ancient pile. We leave them to silence a little longer, and stroll out to the highest ground to see the sun rise. Soon there is a streak of light from the east, which gives shape and outline to the church tower and the grey roofs of Plougastel, and, as we reach the high ground outside the town, the landscape southward is lighting in the morning sun; we see cultivated valleys and parklike views, with pleasant green slopes leading down to the sea. But beautiful as is the foreground, with its undulating green, interspersed with granite boulders, with dew upon gossamer webs and little clouds of vapour stealing between clumps of grass, the view across the bay, where the distant headlands (indicated on the map overleaf) take a pearly tinge, is the best sight of all. A little northward and westward are the masts, chimneys, and church spires, and the smoke and steam, of Brest, for the morning is breaking over a busy scene at the arsenal and dockyards; but here, as the sun shines out, the sound in the long grass are of grasshoppers, birds, and bees.

It is the morning of the fête; the thrush clears his throat, and so do the peasants in their own way, as they come slowly up the hill. Let us leave the view and go into the streets of Plougastel, which are already alive with people, some of whom might be the descendants of Eastern races, wearing Egyptian or Phrygian headdresses, caps from Albania, embroideries from Greece, and sashes from Arabia. Here, then, for the first time in our travels, we find colour predominating in the costumes of the people. Some of the women wear close-fitting dark green caps embroidered with gold thread, their dark skirts also bordered with embroideries or stripes of colour; some wear white stockings and neat-fitting, red or black, slippers or shoes. But the prevailing headdress of the women is the white cambric coiffe with large side lappets and wide collars which we see elsewhere in Finistère; the men have broad-brimmed hats with embroidered strings or ribbons. Some of the men who come from the south wear striped trousers with a red sash, and spare blue jacket with numerous silver buttons, as in the sketch opposite. Some are dressed entirely in blue cloth or serge, with sashes and red caps, but others have broad white trousers and belts, their jackets and blouses embroidered on the shoulders and sleeves. There is colour everywhere, subdued by the dark blue of blouses and the sober brown and green stuff gowns of the older women.

It is said that the people of Plougastel, preserving their old costumes and traditions, still live much apart from their neighbours; a life half seafaring, half agricultural, whose origin is traced to some early immigration of Eastern races. By ten o’clock hundreds of people have come in from the neighbouring villages, and as they all crowd together at the church door and in the square round the calvary, we see the strangest medley of costumes in all Brittany. They collect round the calvary, some praying, some quarrelling or bargaining for small wares; a general place of rendezvous on fête-days, especially on the 24th of June (the Feast of St. Jean, called the “Pardon of Birds”), when a large number of birds are offered for sale. This is a good day to see the costumes of the peasants, to hear their songs, and to see the dances in the streets of Plougastel.

The calvary was erected about the year 1602, and some of the figures are as sharp and clear as if carved yesterday; some are headless, and otherwise injured or destroyed. Around the three elevated crosses are a series of bas-reliefs, full-length figures cut in Kersanton stone, depicting various incidents in New Testament history—the Entry into Jerusalem, Christ teaching among the Doctors, the Offerings of the Magi, the Baptism of St. John, the Entombment, &c. On the south side is a representation of the Bearing of the Cross, on the north is the Judgment of Pilate, and so on. Some of the figures are very expressive, some have a certain quaintness and humour, and here and there we detect the same anachronisms in costume as at St. Thégonnec, where the Breton costume is introduced.

Altogether we must regard the calvary of Plougastel as a curiosity rather than as a great work of art; a grotesque group which, in its dark rugged outline set against the sky, will be remembered by travellers as something peculiar to Brittany, something which, in this land of strange mediæval monuments and relics, is yet perhaps the strangest sight of all.[^[6]]

[6]. See sketch of a calvary on page [91].

Returning to Daoulas, we join the high-road between Landerneau and Quimper, and pass southwards along the inland shores of the bay of Brest to Châteaulin. As travellers speed through this district by railway, they get glimpses, on the left hand, of the forest of Guimerch, and on the right, through the tree-tops, of inlets of the bay, and of the ancient little town of Le Faou, lying as it were at their feet.

On the railway we pass over an estuary at a great elevation, and on a greater part of the route to Châteaulin are on the spurs of the Monts d’Arrée. Travellers from Brest to Quimper should not be deterred from stopping at Châteaulin by the one line devoted to it in guide-books, viz. “a dirty little town in parklike scenery, with no good inns.”

The shores of the bay of Brest and the bay of Douarnenez are districts to be lingered in when the sun shines, for the days are really few when we may see the country to advantage. The luxuriance of foliage on the hills, the height of the grasses, the deep green in the valleys, and the enormous umbrellas carried by the peasants, should remind us that fine days are few.

Châteaulin is crowded once a year to visit the Pardon of Ste. Anne la Palue, a ceremony that generally takes place on the last Sunday in August. The modern chapel of Ste. Anne stands alone upon high ground, overlooking the bay of Douarnenez, near Plonévez-Porsay, a small village about eight miles west of Châteaulin. Crowds of people come from Brest by boat, and every road and pathway leading to the chapel is lined with people on the morning of the Pardon. The ceremonies are nearly the same as at Guingamp and at Ste. Anne d’Auray, but the camping-out of the people on the hillside above the sea (sometimes 10,000 in number), the processions of pilgrims, bare-footed, to the Holy Well of Ste. Anne, and other customs, are more curious than any to be seen elsewhere.

It is at the Pardon of Ste. Anne la Palue that the ceremonies of the church are rendered most picturesque from the surroundings, and where a greater variety of the ancient costumes of Cornouaille are to be seen. The trinkets, rosaries, and ribbons which are blessed and sold to the peasants are a modern importation from Angers or Lyons, but the embroidery round the dress of a beggar woman may be rare in colour and design. Nowhere else, excepting at Plougastel, shall we see such embroidered caps and bodices; nowhere, not even at Auray, such bronzed and wrinkled human creatures.

The procession of the priests and people takes place on Saturday, about three in the afternoon, when the banner of Ste. Anne la Palue is carried across the hills by girls dressed in crimson, gold-embroidered robes, with scarves of silver thread and headdresses of lace and tissue of gold.

These are pictures in sunshine which are rare at Pardon times, and of summer nights when camping under tents is no hardship; but what must the scene be at Ste. Anne la Palue in storm and rain, when thousands of pilgrims, old and young, have no shelter, when all colour and brightness has vanished, and the wind sweeps over the hills?

Let us now turn inland a few miles, following the course of the Canal de Brest, to Châteauneuf du Faou, a small town where Mr. Caldecott made sketches at a Pardon which was held in the rain. This visit, made in 1874, will be best described in the artist’s own words:—

“The courier for Châteauneuf du Faou left Châteaulin at 3 A.M. So we hire a phaeton, and proceed up the hilly road towards Pleyben. On the left is a beautiful vale with a pretty village by the side of the river which runs towards Brest. The scenery is like the borders of Wales, and the weather like that of Scotland; but the clean, elderly girls coming down the road are like themselves only.

GOING TO THE PARDON AT CHÂTEAUNEUF DU FAOU.

“We reach Pleyben in about two hours, a small deserted-looking town with a wide Place, at one end of which is a curious calvary (date 1670) undergoing repair, and an old church, partly Gothic, partly Renaissance. The painted window over the altar is apparently old, but part is replaced by plain glass. The ceiling is blue with gold stars, and there are large painted effigies of the apostles in the porch.

“In about two hours after leaving Pleyben, the phaeton rattles into the little town of Châteauneuf du Faou, knocking about the umbrellas of the people crowding the streets on the occasion of a pardon. The Hôtel du Midi, where we put up, is at the farther end of the town, and is conducted in a simple manner. Ladies would not like its arrangements. Several inhabitants, and a visitor or two, dine at the table d’hôte, but all are unable to carve a duck except the English visitor, who is accordingly put down as a cook. There is music in the streets, and the town is full of people, some of whom dance a kind of quadrille, called the ‘gavotte,’ in the market-hall; others attend a large booth to see acrobatic and other performances.

“The next day is still wet, and there are many people again in the streets, some from far away. The races come off on the high-road. I go to see the finish of one; four horses, strong and about fourteen hands high, gallop up a hilly length of a high-road; a pink, a red, a yellow, and a green and white jacket, dash by with a flourish of gaily tied up tails. I join the admiring crowd which encircles the winner, and we all go in procession to the Hôtel de Ville. I notice as the rider dismounts and enters the building to receive the prize (twenty francs) that he uses no saddle, wears his usual trousers, and has his coloured cap and jacket made of calico.

“In the large timber-built market-hall is a vast crowd of extensively linened, many-buttoned men—some with rosettes, the stewards of the fête—joined hand in hand in one long serpentine line with clean, red-faced, large-capped, big-collared girls. They jig along the earthen floor in shoes, clogs, and sabots to the music of a flageolet and a bag-pipe, varied by an occasional few bars of the voice. This is called the ‘gavotte,’ as the waitress of the hôtel, who is dancing, informs me. A farmer in blouse, with a collar (sketched overleaf), beats time with his sabots. One soldier, two town bonnets, and a few gendarmes relieve the costume of the peasants, which is, however, full of variety.”

The Breton ronde or round dance, of which the gavotte is a good example, is one of the most characteristic scenes to be witnessed in Brittany. At nearly every fête and gathering—in the streets, in the fields, or in the town-hall—we see the peasants dancing the gavotte, the musicians being generally two, one with the ancient Armorican bag-pipe (biniou), the other with a flageolet. Frequently, as in the sketch, one of the musicians puts down his instrument to sing.