Chapter 6

“Some, chance-poised and balanced, lay So that a stripling arm might sway A mass no host could raise, In nature’s rage at random thrown, Yet trembling like the Druid’s Stone, On its precarious base.” —LORD OF THE ISLES.

The council of Nantes, in the seventh century, ordered the bishops to have the rocking-stones destroyed. The coarse rose-coloured granite of this coast resembles the Egyptian.

We rowed back to the little inn at Ploumanach, and had some eggs and a hot langouste or rock-lobster. This kind is more plentiful on the coast of Brittany than the common, but these rocky shores abound in both sorts. The village of Ploumanach is built nearly into the sea, in the midst of rocks overhanging the harbour. It is almost exclusively frequented by fishermen; in the front is a group of rocks or islands called Les Sept Iles; the Ile aux Moines, the most important among them, is strongly fortified, and is directly opposite Ploumanach. At the inn we found a German artist employed in making sketches in oil of this strange coast. It was late when we reached Lannion, a town prettily situated in the valley of Leguer; it contains no remarkable buildings except a few houses of the period of Henry IV. and Louis XIII. in the market-place. The mackerel and other fisheries are carried on from here, the grande and petite pêche, the "lieu" is taken in shoals and salted. The seaweed or wrack (_Fucus vesiculosus_) called goëmon, is extensively collected along the coasts of Brittany for fertilising the lands and also for fuel, which last is so scarce that even cow-dung is collected and dried against the walls for the same use. The gathering of goëmon takes place in March and September, and employs the whole population of the district. Souvestre says, that on the appointed day for gathering the crop, horses, oxen, cows, dogs, every animal, and every machine, is put into requisition. Women and children all are assembled in the bays, sometimes to the number of 10,000 persons; but, to allow the poor to have the full advantage, the custom is, on the first day, to admit only the necessitous of the parish. These borrow their neighbours’ vehicles, and collect a good crop. It is called "the day of the poor." The goëmon grows on rocks at a distance from the shore, and the peasants not having sufficient boats to collect it tie the heaps together with cords on to branches of trees and form a raft, on which the whole family is launched; a barrel is attached at the end, and the unsteady craft often rolls over and its cargo is precipitated into the water. The fine sands of the sea shore are also carted and laid on the heavy lands to divide the soil. Ascending the valley of the Leguer, about eight miles from Lannion, on the opposite side of the river, we turned down a muddy lane, and getting out into a field saw in front of us the imposing castle of Tonquédec, perhaps the finest remains in Brittany of military architecture, dating from the fourteenth century. It crowns the summit of a hill, wooded down to the river’s edge, with water-mills and a little village at the foot, the bright sparkling river running through the deep wild valley; nothing can exceed the picturesque effect of these ruins when seen from the opposite bank. Tonquédec has belonged from time immemorial to the Viscomtes de Coêtmen, who held the first rank among the nobles of Brittany, but one of them espousing the cause of the Constable Clisson against Duke John IV. saw his fortress demolished. It was restored under Henry IV., and again dismantled by order of Cardinal Richelieu, who hated castles and their nobility. The castle is an irregular four-sided figure. It had an outer enclosure, and was entered by a drawbridge, and furnished with every imaginable fortification. Three sides were surrounded by dwellings, among these a fine roofed salle d’armes remains. A flying bridge led to the keep, which was of four stories, but the entrance on the first story, so that in case of siege the garrison might retire to the keep, and hold out till want of provisions or ammunition compelled them to surrender. The towers and walls remain, the latter are ten feet thick.

On our way to Plouaret we drove up to the château of Kergrist, a square edifice with pepper-box towers at each angle, in good preservation, occupied by a lady of the name of Douglas. Our driver could not find the way to the "Chapelle des Sept Saints," built over a dolmen, which lay near the station at Plouaret, whence we proceeded by rail, and, entering the department of Finistère, shortly after reached Morlaix over its magnificent granite viaduct, the most important among the many which occur between Rennes and Brest. The railway runs parallel to the coast, and traverses, not far from their mouths, the streams which abound in this "pays accidenté." This gigantic work is one-sixth of a mile (292 yards) long, and consists of two tiers of arches, fourteen in the upper line and nine below.

Morlaix is picturesquely built on the sides of three ravines, so steep that the saying goes, "De la mansarde au jardin, comme on dit à Morlaix." It is situated on a tidal river, about eight miles from the sea, ascended by small vessels, which give the place a lively appearance. Few towns have so many beautiful timbered houses of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries remaining. One of the most curious is that belonging to a miller, No. 19, in the Rue des Nobles, a street where the houses are built one story projecting over the other, so that the top stories of the opposite houses nearly touch each other and exclude the light. The fronts, gable-shaped, have their enormous beams richly carved, and supported by brackets and statues of St. Yves or other favourite saints; some are overlaid with lozenge-shaped slates, and finished at the point with a leaden "épi," or ornamental terminal. All have a kind of hall, panelled and sculptured to the roof, the staircases richly sculptured and supported by a pillar carved from top to bottom with statues of saints or grotesque figures superposed one over the other. Among the statuettes in the house, No. 19, are the figures of St. Roch and his dog; St. Christopher carrying the infant Jesus, St. Michael, and various others. On another staircase, in better preservation, but not so richly carved (at the Veuve Perron’s, No. 14, Grande Rue), are female saints,—the Virgin, St. Catherine, and St. Barbara.

Morlaix gave a grand reception to the Queen-Duchess Anne, when on her pilgrimage through Brittany in 1505. The town presented her with a little ship of gold, bearing the arms of the city, and enriched with precious stones, and a tame ermine with a diamond collar round its neck. Anne received the ermine, and caressed the little animal, who returned her endearments, and, at length, suddenly concealed itself in her bosom, which unexpected proceeding startled the Queen, when the Seigneur du Rohan, who was by her side, exclaimed, "What do you fear, madam; is not the ermine your cognisance?" No less enthusiastic was the reception given by the citizens of Morlaix forty years later (1548) to Mary Stuart, then only five years old, on her landing in France. She was lodged in the convent of the Jacobins, and assisted at the Te Deum in the church of Notre Dame-du-Mur. When passing through one of the gates on her way back, the drawbridge, overloaded with spectators, gave way, and several persons were thrown into the water. Mary’s Scottish attendants cried out "Treason!" but the Seigneur de Rohan, who was on horseback by the side of the royal litter, indignantly exclaimed, "Jamais Breton ne fit trahison." The loyalty and good faith of the Bretons is proverbial. "En tout chemin, loyauté," is a Breton motto,(8) and it is one of the virtues attributed to them by a Breton writer, who assigns to them four virtues and three vices. Their virtues consist in a love of their country and their home, resignation to the will of the Almighty, loyalty to each other, and hospitality. Their vices are avarice, contempt for women, and drunkenness. Their love of country and home is carried to an extent, rivalling, if not exceeding, that of the Swiss. The Breton not only loves the village where he was born, but he loves the field of his fathers, the hearth and the clock of his home, even the bed on which he was born, and on which he hopes to close his eyes. The conscript and sailor are often known to die of grief when away from their native land. Brittany possesses for its children an inconceivable attraction, and there is no country in the world where man is more attached to his native soil.

“O landes! ô forêts! pierres sombres et hautes, Bois qui couvrez nos champs, mers qui battez nos côtes, Villages où les morts errent avec les vents, Bretagne, d’où vient l’amour de tes enfants?” —BRIZEUX.

The Bretons are brave soldiers and good sailors; their disposition is hasty and violent, and even ferocious in anger. When the people of Nantes rose up in rebellion against Duke Francis, his brother-in-law, the Comte du Foix, sent to pacify them, said to him on his return from his mission, "J’aimerais mieux être prince d’un million de sangliers que de tel peuple que sont vos Bretons"—Brittany has always been the theatre of great virtues and great crimes.

On Sunday we went to the Welsh Baptist Chapel, to hear Mr. Jenkins preach in the Breton language. He has been there thirty years zealously labouring among the peasants, to convert whom he was sent by the Welsh Baptist Missionary Society. From his thorough knowledge of the French and Breton languages, he is eminently fitted for the task. He travels about the surrounding country preaching, and establishing schools, and has revised the Breton(9) translation of the New Testament for the Society, and circulated, by means of colporteurs, from eight to nine thousand Bibles, besides above 100,000 tracts. The task of acquiring the Breton language is less difficult for a Welshman, for the similarity between them is so great that the two people are able to make themselves understood to each other. The labours of Mr. Jenkins have lately awakened the attention of the Breton Roman Catholic clergy, who have publicly denounced him from their altars, but without causing him to slacken in the good work he has undertaken. Persecuted by a tyrannical priesthood, who hold dominion over a peasantry bigoted in proportion to their ignorance, his position is one of difficulty and danger; but he goes on with undrooping energy, convinced that, though the progress is slow, the good seed has not been sown in vain, and will, in due time, bear fruit, though those who first sowed it may have passed away. There were about a dozen Bretons at the evening service; they seemed to be constantly going in and out, as if unable to keep up their attention to so long a service. There are also English Protestant chapels at Morlaix and Quimper, and French at Brest and Lorient.

We saw a christening in the cathedral, of a child about eighteen months old; the mother wore a wonderful conical cap of lace.

A few houses from our hotel a ball was going on, given every week for the workpeople of the town. The clatter of their iron-pointed wooden shoes seemed quite to drown the music.

Next day we walked to the Fontaine des Anglais, so-called from the slaughter of a body of English at that place. Jealous of the prosperity of Morlaix, Henry VIII. sent a fleet up the river to attack the place, and the commander, being informed by a spy of the absence of the chief nobles at Guingamp, and of the townsmen at the fair of Pontivy, landed with a force which entered Morlaix, burnt it, and returned laden with booty to their boats. Six or seven hundred men, who were intoxicated, fell asleep in the wood, where they were attacked by the nobles, who had hastened from Guingamp to the assistance of the town, and were all massacred. The neighbouring fountain, said to have been tinged with the invaders’ blood, received in memory of the event the name of "Fontaine des Anglais." It was on this occasion the town of Morlaix added to its arms, a lion (emblem of vigilance), encountering a two-headed leopard (for England), with the punning motto, "S’ils te mordent, mors-les" (Morlaix).

Emile Souvestre, author of ’Le Foyer Breton,’ and ’Les Derniers Bretons,’ the ablest portrayer of Breton manners, customs, and superstitions, was a native of Morlaix; he died in the Protestant Communion, 1854.

We were recommended to sail down the Morlaix River to its mouth, as the scenery is very picturesque, but we had not time to effect it. The great beauty of Brittany generally consists in its river scenery, the Rance, to Dinan; the rivers of Quimper and Quimperlé; the Aven, Elorn, and Blavet, are all highly picturesque and worth visiting. Our next drive was to St. Pol de Léon, partly along the bank of the river, passing under the church of Notre Dame-de-la-Salzette and the convent below of St. François. The tall steeples of St. Pol are seen at a great distance, and looking behind is the best view of the Mené-Bré, an insulated conical mountain, one of the Mené-Arré chain, situated near the station of Belle-Isle-Bégard. A chain of mountains runs through the Côtes-du-Nord, and, at the western end of the department, forks off into two branches which traverse the whole of Finistère,—the Mené-Arré, or northern chain, and the Montagnes Noires, or southern.

St. Pol looks like a town of the Middle Ages. "The holy city," as it is called by the Léonnais, one of the four bishoprics(10) into which Brittany was divided, comprising the modern districts of Morlaix and Brest. The Pays de Léon is remarkable for the number of its religious monuments, its fine churches, its bone-houses, calvaries, way-side crosses, and shrines. Crosses are set up in every direction, and of every description, from the plain unpretending simple cross of wood or stone, to the huge crosses flaunting in green paint, with tears of gold—specimens of the taste of the maire or priest of the district. No Breton passes the sacred symbol without kneeling to salute it, and making the sign of the cross—evidence that the piety of those who first raised them has not degenerated in their posterity. The country is rich and varied. The Léonnais is tallest of all the Breton race; his dress is generally black or blue, with a coloured scarf round his waist, his hair is worn very long, and his broad-brimmed hat has a silver buckle. He is grave, of a calm confiding faith, which nothing can shake or alter, and of intense religious feeling. The church is the place of meeting, where all his business is transacted, all his aspirations centered. Throughout Brittany the priesthood are low and ignorant. Like the Irish, the Breton farmer’s great ambition is to make his son a priest. In no part of France are they more uneducated than in Brittany.

St. Pol is still and melancholy, the grass grows in the streets, the city looks as if it had not awakened since its palmy days of the fourteenth century. Its churches, calvaries, cemeteries, all silent as death—

“A deep, still pool in the ocean of life.”

Its lively neighbour, Morlaix, offers a strange contrast: its inhabitants may well say they are three hundred years in advance of St. Pol.

The pride of St. Pol de Léon is the church of Notre Dame-de-Creizker. Its steeple, nearly 400 feet high, was said by Vauban to be the boldest piece of architecture he ever beheld. It is built in the centre of the church, entirely of granite, cut in the shape of tiles and open work, to within eighty feet from the base. According to the legend, on the spot where the church now stands, there lived in the time of St. Génévroc, a young girl, whom the saint found, when passing her house on the fête of our Lady, employed at her needle. He reproached her gently with her impiety, yet she went on sewing, saying "she required food on Sundays as well as on work days." But the girl has hardly finished speaking, when all her body became cold and motionless as a stone. She was completely paralysed. Asking pardon of St. Génévroc, he made the sign of the cross upon each of her limbs, and the power of motion returned. Grateful for her recovery, she gave to the saint, her house, which was situated in the middle of the town (as its name implies), as a site for his church. It is said to have been built by an English architect, invited to Brittany by Mary Plantagenet, daughter of Edward III., and first wife of Duke John IV.(11)

The axis of the nave is inclined to the left, a mystic allusion to the position of the head of the expiring Saviour on the cross. _Et inclinato capite, emise spiritum_, "And He bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." The north porch of the Creizker is beautifully sculptured with leaves of the mallow, the vine, and mulberry. It was all under repair when we saw it.

The cathedral has two fine towers with spires, and a magnificent rose window of the fifteenth century in the south transept, with, above, the "fenêtre d’excommunication." The fine porch, lightly and delicately sculptured, is surmounted by a balustrade, whence the episcopal benediction was given. Over the high altar is a large wooden crosier, gilt, from which to suspend the ciborium, similar to that we saw in the cathedral of Dol. A black marble slab, at the foot of the steps of the high altar, marks the grave of St. Pol de Léon, who died 570. St. Pol, the patron bishop and founder of the cathedral, was one of the clergy of Great Britain who emigrated to Brittany in the sixth century; he landed in the island of Ouëssant, and passed on to the country of Léon, where he founded a monastery. The island of Batz was, at that time, infested by an enormous dragon, sixty feet long; the saint, accompanied by a warrior, entered the cavern of the monster, tied his stole round its neck, and gave him to his companion to lead, St. Pol following, beating him with his stick, till they arrived at the extremity of the island, when he took off the stole, and commanded the dragon to throw itself in the sea, an order the animal immediately obeyed. St. Pol is always represented with the dragon by his side, the stole round its neck. We were shown a little bell, said to have belonged to the saint. It appears he had repeatedly asked the king to give him this bell for his new church, but had always been refused. When one day some fishermen brought him a large fish taken off the island of Batz, and in its mouth was the coveted bell. It is certainly very ancient in form, a kind of square pyramid about four inches wide and nine high, of beaten red copper mixed, we were told, with a considerable quantity of silver. It is now rung over the heads of the faithful on pardons, as a specific against headache and earache—a singular remedy! The cathedral has a fine marble tomb of Bishop Visdelou, preacher to Queen Anne of Austria; he is represented in a half reclining posture, in his pontifical garments. In every part of the cathedral are the little boxes of skulls.

Adjacent is the Ursuline convent, where is preserved a small figure of the Virgin in jet; brought from a church in the Iles Sainte Marguerite, taken from the Spaniards in the seventeenth century. It is supposed to possess miraculous powers, and is sent round to the sick as a specific.

We breakfasted at the little inn (Hôtel de France), commanding a pretty view of the coast from its windows and garden. The Léon country was governed by Viscounts, who boasted, among several manorial rights, the "droit de motte," which empowered them, if a vassal (they were "serfs de motte") attempted to live out of his demesne, or to enter the service of another lord, to bring him back to his "motte," a cord round his neck, and inflict upon him corporal punishment. By virtue of the same right, if the demesne of a lord was so placed that it had no natural height from which to survey its extent, his vassals were made to bring sufficient cart-loads of earth to raise a mound or "motte" of the requisite elevation. The other privilege was the droit de "bris," equivalent to our flotsum and jetsum, so lucrative that a Léon Viscount is recorded to have said, when a noble was exhibiting his casket of gems, that he possessed a jewel more precious than all they were admiring—alluding to a rock famous for its shipwrecks. Duke John the Red, taking advantage of the misdeeds of one of these lords of Léon, seized his rich possessions and united them (1276) to the crown. The viscounty of Léon fell by alliance, in the fourteenth century, to the house of Rohan, in whose favour is was raised in the sixteenth to a principality.

We continued our drive to Roscoff, three miles distant, a little sea-port town, formerly one of the three great dens of corsairs and smugglers, all under the protection of St. Barbe,—the other two being Camaret and Le Conquet. Roscoff was the emporium of considerable contraband trade with England. Tea, wine, and brandy were brought over in small casks, which the smugglers tied together and threw into the sea, when near the coast, and landed at night. The whole country round is now one extent of kitchen-garden, the light sandy soil, dressed with the goëmon, produces an incredible quantity of vegetables, onions, cabbages, parsnips, asparagus, artichokes, cauliflowers, &c. Of onions, 2,000,000 lbs. are said to be sent every year to England alone. The people here wear black caps, those of the men are stocking-knit. The gardeners of Roscoff will carry their produce above a hundred miles for sale. The chief vegetable consumed by the Bretons themselves is the cabbage, of which the quantity raised is enormous. The kind grown is mostly the Jersey or cow-cabbage, which grows with stalks from five to six feet high, and has large leaves at every joint. They use them for their cattle, as well as for their own eating. Avenues of cabbages, stacked five or six feet high, are to be seen in most Breton markets. Bread or porridge of buckwheat (blé noir) with cabbage-soup is the customary diet of the country. The recipe is simple, consisting of a cabbage-leaf, over which a little hot water is thrown, and a "soupçon" of butter added to give it a flavour. These ingredients compose the national soup which always appears at the tâble d’hôte, with the inevitable "ragoût," _i. e._ harricoed mutton. The little town of Roscoff has some historic importance. It was here that John de Montfort sailed to England to do homage to King Edward III. for the duchy of Brittany, and returned by the same port. Here also the child-princess Mary Stuart landed in 1548 to marry the young Dauphin, afterwards Francis II. In commemoration of the event, she afterwards caused the little chapel of St. Ninian to be built close on the water’s edge. It is not more than fifty feet long, and has an eastern flamboyant window, with others in the side walls. The arches are fast going to decay, the stone altar is also sculptured. When we saw it, the interior was filled with bundles of broom-branches and poultry. It is strange this little chapel, built by the Queen of two Kingdoms, should be suffered to fall to ruin for the lack of a trifling outlay.

Here, two hundred years later, Prince Charles Stuart landed after Culloden, in the French frigate the ’Heureux,’ sent by the French Government to facilitate his escape, having eluded, through the chances of a fog, the pursuit of the English cruisers; and here he knelt, in the chapel of his ancestress, to return thanks for his deliverance.