CARNAC.
The field of Carnac is a large, open space where eleven rows of black
stones are aligned at symmetrical intervals. They diminish in size as
they recede from the ocean. Cambry asserts that there were four thousand
of these rocks and Fréminville has counted twelve hundred of them. They
are certainly very numerous.
What was their use? Was it a temple?
One day Saint Cornille, pursued along the shore by soldiers, was about
to jump into the ocean, when he thought of changing them all into stone,
and forthwith the men were petrified. But this explanation was good only
for fools, little children, and poets. Other people looked for better
reasons.
In the sixteenth century, Olaüs Magnus, archbishop of Upsal (who,
banished to Rome, wrote a book on the antiquities of his country that
met with widespread success except in his native land, Sweden, where it
was not translated), discovered that, when these stones form one long,
straight row, they cover the bodies of warriors who died while fighting
duels; that those arranged in squares are consecrated to heroes that
perished in battle; that those disposed in a circle are family graves,
while those that form corners or angular figures are the tombs of
horsemen or foot-soldiers, and more especially of those fighters whose
party had triumphed. All this is quite clear, but Olaüs Magnus has
forgotten to tell us how two cousins who killed each other in a duel on
horseback could have been buried. The fact of the duel required that the
stones be straight; the relationship required that they be circular; but
as the men were horsemen, it seems as if the stones ought to have been
arranged squarely, though this rule, it is true, was not formal, as it
was applied only to those whose party had triumphed. O good Olaüs
Magnus! You must have liked Monte-Pulciano exceeding well! And how many
draughts of it did it take for you to acquire all this wonderful
knowledge?
According to a certain English doctor named Borlase, who had observed
similar stones in Cornouailles, "they buried soldiers there, in the very
place where they died." As if, usually, they were carted to the
cemetery! And he builds his hypothesis on the following comparison:
their graves are on a straight line, like the front of an army on plains
that were the scene of some great action.
Then they tried to bring in the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Cochin
Chinese! There is a Karnac in Egypt, they said, and one on the coast of
Brittany. Now, it is probable that this Karnac descends from the
Egyptian one; it is quite certain! In Egypt they are sphinxes; here they
are rocks; but in both instances they are of stone. So it would seem
that the Egyptians (who never travelled), came to this coast (of the
existence of which they were ignorant), founded a colony (they never
founded any), and left these crude statues (they produced such beautiful
ones), as a positive proof of their sojourn in this country (which
nobody mentions).
People fond of mythology thought them the columns of Hercules; people
fond of natural history thought them a representation of the python,
because, according to Pausanias, a similar heap of stones, on the road
from Thebes to Elissonte, was called "the serpent's head," and
especially because the rows of stones at Carnac present the sinuosities
of a serpent. People fond of cosmography discovered a zodiac, like M. de
Cambry, who recognised in those eleven rows of stones the twelve signs
of the zodiac, "for it must be stated," he adds, "that the ancient Gauls
had only eleven signs to the zodiac."
Subsequently, a member of the Institute conjectured that it might
perhaps be the cemetery of the Venetians, who inhabited Vannes, situated
six miles from Carnac, and who founded Venice, as everybody knows.
Another man wrote that these Venetians, conquered by Cæsar, erected all
those rocks solely in a spirit of humility and in order to honour their
victor. But people were getting tired of the cemetery theory, the
serpent and the zodiac; they set out again and this time found a Druidic
temple.
The few documents that we possess, scattered through Pliny and Dionysius
Cassius, agree in stating that the Druids chose dark places for their
ceremonies, like the depths of the woods with "their vast silence." And
as Carnac is situated on the coast, and surrounded by a barren country,
where nothing but these gentlemen's fancies has ever grown, the first
grenadier of France, but not, in my estimation, the cleverest man,
followed by Pelloutier and by M. Mahé, (canon of the cathedral of
Vannes), concluded that it was "a Druidic temple in which political
meetings must also have been held."
But all had not been said, and it still remained to be discovered of
what use the empty spaces in the rows could have been. "Let us look for
the reason, a thing nobody has ever thought of before," cried M. Mahé,
and, quoting a sentence from Pomponius Mela: "The Druids teach the
nobility many things and instruct them secretly in caves and forests;"
and this one from Tucain: "You dwell in tall forests," he reached the
conclusion that the Druids not only officiated at the sanctuaries, but
that they also lived and taught in them. "So the monument of Carnac
being a sanctuary, like the Gallic forests," (O power of induction! where
are you leading Father Mahé, canon of Vannes and correspondent of the
Academy of Agriculture at Poitiers?), there is reason to believe that
the intervals, which break up the rows of stones, held rows of houses
where the Druids lived with their families and numerous pupils, and
where the heads of the nation, who, on state days, betook themselves to
the sanctuary, found comfortable lodgings. Good old Druids! Excellent
ecclesiastics! How they have been calumnied! They lived there so
righteously with their families and numerous pupils, and even were
amiable enough to prepare lodgings for the principals of the nation!
But at last came a man imbued with the genius of ancient things and
disdainful of trodden paths. He was able to recognize the rests of a
Roman camp, and, strangely enough, the rests of one of the camps of
Cæsar, who had had these stones upreared only to serve as support for
the tents of his soldiers and prevent them from being blown away by the
wind. What gales there must have been in those days, on the coasts of
Armorica!
The honest writer who, to the glory of the great Julius, discovered this
sublime precaution, (thus returning to Cæsar that which never belonged
to Cæsar), was a former pupil of l'École Polytechnique, an engineer, a
M. de la Sauvagère. The collection of all these data constitutes what is
called _Celtic Archæology_, the mysteries of which we shall presently
disclose.
A stone placed on another one is called a "dolmen," whether it be
horizontal or perpendicular. A group of upright stones covered by
succeeding flat stones, and forming a series of dolmens, is a "fairy
grotto," a "fairy rock," a "devil's stable," or a "giant's palace"; for,
like the people who serve the same wine under different labels, the
Celto-maniacs, who had almost nothing to offer, decorated the same
things with various names. When these stones form an ellipse, and have
no head-covering, one must say: There is a "cromlech"; when one
perceives a stone laid horizontally upon two upright stones, one is
confronted by a "lichaven" or a "trilithe." Often two enormous rocks are
put one on top of the other, and touch only at one point, and we read
that "they are balanced in such a way that the wind alone is sufficient
to make the upper rock sway perceptibly," an assertion which I do not
dispute, although I am rather suspicious of the Celtic wind, and
although these swaying rocks have always remained unshaken in spite of
the fierce kicks I was artless enough to give them; they are called
"rolling or rolled stones," "turned or transported stones," "stones that
dance or dancing stones," "stones that twist or twisting stones." You
must still learn what a _pierre fichade_, a _pierre fiche_, a _pierre
fixée_ are, and what is meant by a _haute borne_, a _pierre latte_ and a
_pierre lait_; in what a _pierre fonte_ differs from a _pierre fiette_,
and what connection there is between a _chaire à diable_ and a _pierre
droite_; then you will be as wise as ever were Pelloutier, Déric, Latour
d'Auvergne, Penhoet and others, not forgetting Mahé and Fréminville.
Now, all this means a _pulvan_, also called a _men-hir_, and designates
nothing more than a stone of greater or lesser size, placed by itself in
an open field.
I was about to forget the tumuli! Those that are composed of silica and
soil are called "barrows" in high-flown language, while the simple heaps
of stones are "gals-gals."
People have pretended that when they were not tombs the "dolmens" and
"trilithes" were altars, that the "fairy rocks" were assembling places
or sepultures, and that the business meetings at the time of the Druids
were held in the "cromlechs." M. de Cambry saw in the "swaying rocks"
the emblems of the suspended world. The "barrows" and "gals-gals" have
undoubtedly been tombs; and as for the "men-hirs," people went so far as
to pretend that they had a form which led to the deduction that a
certain cult reigned throughout lower Brittany. O chaste immodesty of
science, you respect nothing, not even a peulven!
A reverie, no matter how undefined, may lead up to splendid creations,
when it starts from a fixed point. Then the imagination, like a soaring
hippogriff, stamps the earth with all its might and journeys straightway
towards infinite regions. But when it applies itself to a subject devoid
of plastic art and history, and tries to extract a science from it, and
to reconstruct a world, it remains even poorer and more barren than the
rough stone to which the vanity of some praters has lent a shape and
dignified with a history.
To return to the stones of Carnac (or rather, to leave them), if anyone
should, after all these opinions, ask me mine, I would emit an
irresistible, irrefutable, incontestable one, which would make the tents
of M. de la Sauvagère stagger, blanch the face of the Egyptian Penhoët,
break up the zodiac of Cambry and smash the python into a thousand bits.
This is my opinion: the stones of Carnac are simply large stones!
* * * * *
So we returned to the inn and dined heartily, for our five hours' tramp
had sharpened our appetites. We were served by the hostess, who had
large blue eyes, delicate hands, and the sweet face of a nun. It was not
yet bedtime, and it was too dark to work, so we went to the church.
This is small, although it has a nave and side-aisles like a city
church. Short, thick stone pillars support its wooden roof, painted in
blue, from which hang miniature vessels, votive offerings that were
promised during raging storms. Spiders creep along their sails and the
riggings are rotting under the dust. No service was being held, and the
lamp in the choir burned dimly in its cup filled with yellow oil;
overhead, through the open windows of the darkened vault, came broad
rays of white light and the sound of the wind rustling in the tree-tops.
A man came in to put the chairs in order, and placed two candles in an
iron chandelier riveted to the stone pillar; then he pulled into the
middle of the aisle a sort of stretcher with a pedestal, its black wood
stained with large white spots. Other people entered the church, and a
priest clad in his surplice passed us. There was the intermittent
tinkling of a bell and then the door of the church opened wide. The
jangling sound of the little bell mingled with the tones of another and
their sharp, clear tones swelled louder as they came nearer and nearer
to us.
A cart drawn by oxen appeared and halted in front of the church. It held
a corpse, whose dull white feet protruded from under the winding-sheet
like bits of washed alabaster, while the body itself had the uncertain
form peculiar to dressed corpses. The crowd around was silent. The men
bared their heads; the priest shook his holy-water sprinkler and mumbled
orisons, and the pair of oxen swung their heads to and fro under the
heavy, creaking yoke. The church, in the background of which gleamed a
star, formed one huge shadow in the greenish outdoor atmosphere of a
rainy twilight, and the child who held a light on the threshold had to
keep his hand in front of it to prevent the wind from blowing it out.
They lifted the body from the cart, and in doing so struck its head
against the pole. They carried it into the church and placed it on the
stretcher. A crowd of men and women followed. They knelt on the floor,
the men near the corpse, and the women a little farther away, near the
door; then the service began.
It did not last very long, at least it impressed us that way, for the
low psalmodies were recited rapidly and drowned now and then by a
stifled sob which came from under the black hoods near the door. A hand
touched me and I drew aside to let a bent woman pass. With her clenched
fists on her breast, and face averted, she advanced without appearing to
move her feet, eager to see, yet trembling to behold, and reached the
row of lights which burned beside the bier. Slowly, very slowly, lifting
up her arm as if to hide herself under it, she turned her head on her
shoulder and sank in a heap on a chair, as limp as her garments.
By the light of the candles, I could see her staring eyes, framed by
lids that looked as if they had been scalded, so red were they; her
idiotic and contracted mouth, trembling with despair, and her whole
pitiful face, which was drenched with tears.
The corpse was that of her husband, who had been lost at sea; he had
been washed ashore and was now being laid to rest.
The cemetery adjoined the church. The mourners passed into it through a
side-door, while the corpse was being nailed in its coffin, in the
vestry. A fine rain moistened the atmosphere; we felt cold; the earth
was slippery and the grave-diggers who had not completed their task,
found it hard to raise the heavy soil, for it stuck to their shovels. In
the background, the women kneeling in the grass, throwing back their
hoods and their big white caps, the starched wings of which fluttered in
the wind, appeared at a distance like an immense winding-sheet hovering
over the earth.
When the corpse reappeared, the prayers began again, and the sobs broke
out anew, and could be heard through the dropping rain.
Not far from us, issued, at regular intervals, a sort of subdued gurgle
that sounded like laughter. In any other place, a person hearing it
would have thought it the repressed explosion of some overwhelming joy
or the paroxysm of a delirious happiness. It was the widow, weeping.
Then she walked to the edge of the grave, as did the rest of the
mourners, and little by little, the soil assumed its ordinary level and
everybody went home.
As we walked down the cemetery steps, a young fellow passed us and said
in French to a companion: "Heavens! didn't the fellow stink! He is
almost completely mortified! It isn't surprising, though, after being in
the water three weeks!"
* * * * *
One morning we started as on other mornings; we chose the same road, and
passed the hedge of young elms and the sloping meadow where the day
before we had seen a little girl chasing cattle to the drinking-trough;
but it was the last day, and the last time perhaps, that we should pass
that way.
A muddy stretch of land, into which we sank up to our ankles, extends
from Carnac to the village of Pô. A boat was waiting for us; we entered
it, and they hoisted the sail and pushed off. Our sailor, an old man
with a cheerful face, sat aft; he fastened a line to the gunwale and let
his peaceful boat go its own way. There was hardly any wind; the blue
sea was calm and the narrow track the rudder ploughed in the waters
could be seen for a long time. The old fellow was talkative; he spoke of
the priests, whom he disliked, of meat, which he thought was a good
thing to eat even on fast days, of the work he had had when he was in
the navy, and of the shots he had received when he was a customs
officer.... The boat glided along slowly, the line followed us and the
end of the _tape-cul_ hung in the water.
The mile we had to walk in order to go from Saint-Pierre to Quiberon was
quickly covered, in spite of a hilly and sandy road, and the sun, which
made our shoulders smart beneath the straps of our bags, and a number of
"men-hirs" that were scattered along the route.