Sorcery is a very present power in most isolated communities, and in
the civilized portions of Brittany it is but a thing of yesterday,
while in the more secluded departments it is very much a thing of
to-day. The old folk can recall the time when the farm, the dairy, and
the field were ever in peril of the spell, the enchantment, the
noxious beam of the evil eye, and tales of many a "devilish cantrip
sleight," as Burns happily characterized the activity of the witch and
the wizard, were told in hushed voices at the Breton fireside when the
winter wind blew cold from the cruel sea and the heaped faggots sent
the red glow of fire-warmth athwart the thick shadows of the great
farm kitchen, and old and young from grandsire to herd-boy made a
great circle to hearken to the creepy tales so dear to the Breton
heart.
As in the East, where to refuse baksheesh is to lay oneself open to
the curse of the evil eye, the beggar was regarded as the chief
possessor of this bespelling member. The guild of tattered wanderers
naturally nourished this superstition, and to permit one of its
members to hobble off muttering threats or curses was looked upon as
suicidal. Indeed, the mendicants were wont to boast of their feats of
sorcery to the terrified peasants, who hastened to placate them by all
the means in their power.
Certain villages, too, appear to have possessed an evil reputation
among the country-folk as the dwelling-places of magicians, centres of
sorcery, which it was advisable to shun. Thus we read in Breton
proverb of the sorcerers of Fougères, of Trèves, of Concoret, of
Lézat.
The strangest circumstances were connected with the phenomena of
sorcery by the credulous Bretons. Thus, did a peasant join a dance of
witches, the sabots he had on would be worn out in the course of the
merrymaking. A churn of turned butter, a sour pail of milk, were
certain to be accounted for by sorcery. In a certain village of
Moncontour the cows, the dog, even the harmless, necessary cat, died
off, and the farmer hastened to consult a diviner, who advised him to
throw milk in the fire and recite certain prayers. The farmer obeyed
and the spell was broken!
In the town of Rennes about fifty years ago dwelt a knowing fellow
called Robert, a very 'witch-doctor,' who investigated cases of
sorcery and undertook the dissipation of enchantments. On a certain
large farm the milk would yield no butter. An agricultural expert
might have hinted at poor pasturage, but the farmer and his wife had
other views as to the cause of the 'insufficiency of fats,' as an
analyst would say, in the lacteal output of the establishment.
Straightway they betook themselves to the mysterious Robert, who on
arriving to investigate the affair was attired in a skin dyed in two
colours. He held in leash a large black dog, evidently his familiar.
He exorcized the dairy, and went through a number of strange
ceremonies. Then, turning to the awestruck farm hands, he said:
"You may now proceed with your work. The spell is raised. It has been
a slow business. I must go now, but don't be afraid if you see
anything odd."
With these words he whistled, and a great black horse at once
appeared as if from nowhere. Placing his hand on its crupper, he
vaulted into the saddle, bade good-bye to the astonished rustics, and
while they gazed at him open-mouthed, vanished 'like a flash.'
Many kinds of amulets or talismans were used by the Breton peasantry
to neutralize the power of sorcerers. Thus, if a person carried a
snake with him the enchanters would be unable to harm his sight, and
all objects would appear to him under their natural forms. Salt placed
in various parts of a house guarded it against the entrance of wizards
and rendered their spells void.
But many consulted the witch and the sorcerer for their personal
advantage, in affairs of the heart, to obtain a number in the casting
of lots for conscription which would free them from military service,
and so forth; and, as in other countries, there grew up a class of
middlemen between the human and the supernatural who posed as
fortune-tellers, astrologers, and quack mediciners.
It was said that sorcerers were wont to meet at the many Roches aux
Fées in Brittany at fixed periods in order to deliberate as to their
actions and settle their affairs. If anyone, it was declared, wandered
into their circle or was caught by them listening to their secret
conclave he seldom lived long. Others, terrified at the sight
presented by the gleaming eyes of the cat-sorcerers, blazing like live
coals, fled incontinently from their presence, and found that in the
morning the hair of their heads had turned white with the dread
experience. Long afterward they would sit by the fireside trembling
visibly at nothing, and when interrogated regarding their very evident
fears would only groan and bury their faces in their hands.
A story is told of one, Jean Foucault, who one moonlight night had,
like Tam o' Shanter, sat overlong
Fast by an ingle bleezin' finely,
Wi' reaming swats that drank divinely,
where the cider was as good as the company, and, issuing at midnight's
weary hour from his favourite inn, was not in a mood to run away from
anything, however fearsome. Walking, or rather rolling, across the
moor singing the burden of the last catch he had trolled with his
fellows at the ale-house, all on a sudden he stumbled into a circle of
sorcerer-cats squatting around a cross of stone. They were of immense
size and of all colours, black, grey, white, tortoise-shell, and when
he beheld them seated round the crucifix, their eyes darting fire and
the hair bristling on their backs, his song died upon his lips and all
his bellicose feelings, like those of Bob Acres, leaked out at his
finger-tips. On catching sight of him the animals set up a horrible
caterwauling that made the blood freeze in his veins. For an awful
moment the angry cats glared at him with death in their looks, and
seemed as if about to spring upon him. Giving himself up for lost, he
closed his eyes. But about his feet he could hear a strange purring,
and, glancing downward, he beheld his own domestic puss fawning upon
him with every sign of affection.
"Pass my master, Jean Foucault," said the animal.
"It is well," replied a great grey tom, whom Jean took to be the
leader; "pass on, Jean Foucault."
And Jean, the cider fumes in his head quite dissipated, staggered
away, more dead than alive.
_Druidic Magic_
The more ancient sorcerers of Brittany deserve a word of notice. Magic
among the Celtic peoples in olden times was so clearly identified with
Druidism that its origin may be said to have been Druidic. Whether
Druidism was of Celtic origin, however, is a question upon which much
discussion has taken place, some authorities, among them Rhys,
believing it to have been of non-Celtic and even non-Aryan origin, and
holding that the earliest non-Aryan or so-called Iberian people of
Britain introduced the Druidic religion to the immigrant Celts. An
argument advanced in favour of this theory is that the Continental
Celts sent their neophyte Druid priests to Britain to undergo a
special training at the hands of the British Druids, and that this
island seems to have been regarded as the headquarters of the cult.
The people of Cisalpine Gaul, for instance, had no Druidic priesthood.
Cæsar has told us that in Gaul Druidic seminaries were very numerous,
and that within their walls severe study and discipline were entailed
upon the neophytes, whose principal business was to commit to memory
countless verses enshrining Druidic knowledge and tradition. That this
instruction was astrological and magical we have the fullest
proof.[50]
The Druids were magi as they were priests in the same sense that the
American Indian shaman is both magus and priest. That is, they were
medicine-men on a higher scale, and had reached a loftier stage of
transcendental knowledge than the priest-magicians of more barbarous
races. Thus they may be said to be a link between the barbarian
shaman and the magus of medieval times. Many of their practices were
purely shamanistic, while others more closely resembled medieval
magical rite. But they were not the only magicians of the Celts, for
frequently among that people we find magic power the possession of
women and of the poetic craft. The magic of Druidism had many points
of comparison with most magical systems, and perhaps approximated more
to that black magic which desires power for the sake of power alone
than to any transcendental type. Thus it included the power to render
the magician invisible, to change his bodily shape, to produce an
enchanted sleep, to induce lunacy, and to inflict death from afar.
The arts of rain-making, bringing down fire from heaven, and causing
mists, snow-storms, and floods were also claimed for the Druids.
Many of the spells probably in use among them survived until a
comparatively late period, and are still employed in some remote
Celtic localities, the names of saints being substituted for those
of Celtic deities. Certain primitive ritual, too, is still carried
out in the vicinity of some megalithic structures in Celtic areas,
as at Dungiven, in Ireland, where pilgrims wash before a great stone
in the river Roe and then walk round it, and in many parts of
Brittany.[51]
In pronouncing incantations the usual method employed was to stand
upon one leg and to point with the forefinger to the person or object
on which the spell was to be laid, at the same time closing one eye,
as if to concentrate the force of the entire personality upon that
which was to be placed under ban. A manuscript possessed by the
monastery of St Gall, and dating from the eighth or ninth century,
includes magical formulæ for the preservation of butter and the
healing of certain diseases in the name of the Irish god Diancecht.
These and others bear a close resemblance to Babylonian and Etruscan
spells, and thus go to strengthen the hypothesis often put forward
with more or less plausibility that Druidism had an Eastern origin. At
all magical rites spells were uttered. Druids often accompanied an
army, to assist by their magical arts in confounding the enemy.[52]
There is some proof that in Celtic areas survivals of a Druidic
priesthood have descended to our own time in a more or less debased
condition. Thus the existence of guardians and keepers of wells said
to possess magical properties, and the fact that in certain families
magical spells and formulæ are handed down from one generation to
another, are so many proofs of the survival of Druidic tradition,
however feeble. Females are generally the conservators of these
mysteries, and that there were Druid priestesses is fairly certain.
The sea-snake's egg, or adder's stone, which is so frequently alluded
to in Druidic magical tales, otherwise called _Glain Neidr_, was said
to have been formed, about midsummer, by an assemblage of snakes. A
bubble formed on the head of one of them was blown by others down the
whole length of its back, and then, hardening, became a crystal ring.
It was used as one of the insignia of the Archdruid, and was supposed
to assist in augury.
The _herbe d'or_, or 'golden herb,' was a medicinal plant much in
favour among the Breton peasantry. It is the _selago_ of Pliny, which
in Druidical times was gathered with the utmost veneration by a hand
enveloped with a garment once worn by a sacred person. The owner of
the hand was arrayed in white, with bare feet, washed in pure water.
In after times the plant was thought to shine from a distance like
gold, and to give to those who trod on it the power of understanding
the language of dogs, wolves, and birds.
These, with the mistletoe, the favourite Druidical plant, the sorcerer
is entreated, in an old balled, to lay aside, to seek no more for vain
enchantments, but to remember that he is a Christian.
_Abélard and Héloïse_
The touching story of the love of Abélard and Héloïse has found its
way into Breton legend as a tale of sorcery. Abélard was a Breton. The
Duke of Brittany, whose subject he was born, jealous of the glory of
France, which then engrossed all the most famous scholars of Europe,
and being, besides, acquainted with the persecution Abélard had
suffered from his enemies, had nominated him to the Abbey of St
Gildas, and, by this benefaction and mark of his esteem, engaged him
to pass the rest of his days in his dominions. Abélard received this
favour with great joy, imagining that by leaving France he would
quench his passion for Héloïse and gain a new peace of mind upon
entering into his new dignity.
The Abbey of St Gildas de Rhuys was founded on the inaccessible coast
near Vannes by St Gildas, a British saint, the schoolfellow and friend
of St Samson of Dol and St Pol of Léon, and counted among its monks
the Saxon St Dunstan, who, carried by pirates from his native isle,
settled on the desolate shores of Brittany and became, under the name
of St Goustan, the patron of mariners.
St Gildas built his abbey on the edge of a high, rocky promontory,
the site of an ancient Roman encampment, called Grand Mont, facing
the shore, where the sea has formed numerous caverns in the rocks.
The rocks are composed chiefly of quartz, and are covered to a
considerable height with small mussels. Abélard, on his appointment
to the Abbey of St Gildas, made over to Héloïse the celebrated
abbey he had founded at Nogent, near Troyes, which he called the
Paraclete, or Comforter, because he there found comfort and
refreshment after his troubles. With Nogent he was to leave his
peace. His gentle nature was unable to contend against the coarse
and unruly Breton monks. As he writes in his well-known letter to
Héloïse, setting forth his griefs: "I inhabit a barbarous country
where the language is unknown to me. I have no dealings with the
ferocious inhabitants. I walk the inaccessible borders of the
stormy sea, and my monks have no other rule than their own. I wish
that you could see my dwelling. You would not believe it an abbey. The
doors are ornamented only with the feet of deer, of wolves and bears,
boars, and the hideous skins of owls. I find each day new perils.
I expect at every moment to see a sword suspended over my head."
It is scarcely necessary to outline the history of Abélard. Suffice
it to say that he was one of the most brilliant scholars and
dialecticians of all time, possessing a European reputation in his
day. Falling in love with Héloïse, niece of Fulbert, a canon of
Paris, he awoke in her a similar absorbing passion, which resulted in
their mutual disgrace and Abélard's mutilation by the incensed
uncle. He and his Héloïse were buried in one tomb at the Paraclete.
The story of their love has been immortalized by the world's great
poets and painters.
An ancient Breton ballad on the subject has been spoken of as a "naïf
and horrible" production, in which one will find "a bizarre mixture of
Druidic practice and Christian superstition." It describes Héloïse as
a sorceress of ferocious and sanguinary temper. Thus can legend
magnify and distort human failing! As its presentation is important in
the study of Breton folk-lore, I give a very free translation of this
ballad, in which, at the same time, I have endeavoured to preserve the
atmosphere of the original.
THE HYMN OF HÉLOÏSE
O Abélard, my Abélard,
Twelve summers have passed since first we kissed.
There is no love like that of a bard:
Who loves him lives in a golden mist!
Nor word of French nor Roman tongue,
But only Brezonek could I speak,
When round my lover's neck I hung
And heard the harmony of the Greek,
The march of Latin, the joy of French,
The valiance of the Hebrew speech,
The while its thirst my soul did quench
In the love-lore that he did teach.
The bossed and bound Evangel's tome
Is open to me as mine own soul,
But all the watered wine of Rome
Is weak beside the magic bowl.
[Illustration: HÉLOÏSE AS SORCERESS]
The Mass I chant like any priest,
Can shrive the dying or bury the dead,
But dearer to me to raise the Beast
Or watch the gold in the furnace red.
The wolf, the serpent, the crow, the owl,
The demons of sea, of field, of flood,
I can run or fly in their forms so foul,
They come at my call from wave or wood.
I know a song that can raise the sea,
Can rouse the winds or shudder the earth,
Can darken the heavens terribly,
Can wake portents at a prince's birth.
The first dark drug that ever we sipped
Was brewed from toad and the eye of crow,
Slain in a mead when the moon had slipped
From heav'n to the fetid fogs below.
I know a well as deep as death,
A gloom where I cull the frondent fern,
Whose seed with that of the golden heath
I mingle when mystic lore I'd learn.
I gathered in dusk nine measures of rye,
Nine measures again, and brewed the twain
In a silver pot, while fitfully
The starlight struggled through the rain.
I sought the serpent's egg of power
In a dell hid low from the night and day:
It was shown to me in an awful hour
When the children of hell came out to play.
I have three spirits--seeming snakes;
The youngest is six score years young,
The second rose from the nether lakes,
And the third was once Duke Satan's tongue.
The wild bird's flesh is not their food,
No common umbles are their dole;
I nourish them well with infants' blood,
Those precious vipers of my soul.
O Satan! grant me three years still,
But three short years, my love and I,
To work thy fierce, mysterious will,
Then gladly shall we yield and die.
Héloïse, wicked heart, beware!
Think on the dreadful day of wrath,
Think on thy soul; forbear, forbear!
The way thou tak'st is that of death!
Thou craven priest, go, get thee hence!
No fear have I of fate so fell.
Go, suck the milk of innocence,
Leave me to quaff the wine of hell!
It is difficult to over-estimate the folk-lore value of such a ballad
as this. Its historical value is clearly _nil_. We have no proof that
Héloïse was a Breton; but fantastic errors of this description are so
well known to the student of ballad literature that he is able to
discount them easily in gauging the value of a piece.
In this weird composition the wretched abbess is described as an
alchemist as well as a sorceress, and she descends to the depths of
the lowest and most revolting witchcraft. She practises shape-shifting
and similar arts. She has power over natural forces, and knows the
past, the present, and the things to be. She possesses sufficient
Druidic knowledge to permit her to gather the greatly prized serpent's
egg, to acquire which was the grand aim of the Celtic magician. The
circumstances of the ballad strongly recall those of the poem in which
the Welsh bard Taliesin recounts his magical experiences, his
metamorphoses, his knowledge of the darker mysteries of nature.
_Nantes of the Magicians_
The poet is in accord with probability in making the magical exploits
of Abélard and Héloïse take place at Nantes--a circumstance not
indicated in the translation owing to metrical exigencies. Nantes was,
indeed, a classic neighbourhood of sorcery. An ancient college of
Druidic priestesses was situated on one of the islands at the mouth of
the Loire, and the traditions of its denizens had evidently been
cherished by the inhabitants of the city even as late as the middle of
the fourteenth century, for we find a bishop of the diocese at that
period obtaining a bull of excommunication against the local
sorcerers, and condemning them to the eternal fires with bell, book,
and candle.[53]
The poet, it is plain, has confounded poor Héloïse with the dark
sisterhood of the island of the Loire. The learning she received from
her gifted lover had been her undoing in Breton eyes, for the simple
folk of the duchy at the period the ballad gained currency could
scarcely be expected to discriminate between a training in rhetoric
and philosophy and a schooling in the _grimoires_ and other
accomplishments of the pit.
FOOTNOTES:
[50] Rice Holmes, _Cæsar's Conquest_, pp. 532-536.
[51] See Rolleston, _Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race_, p. 66.
[52] See Gomme, _Ethnology in Folk-lore_, p. 94.
[53] It is of interest to recall the fact that Abélard was born near
Nantes, in 1079.