Officiel de Tréguier, curé de Tredretz et de Lohannec. Sa maison, qui a
subsisté jusqu’en l’année 1834, ayant été alors demolie à cause de
vetusté, Mg^r Hyacinthe Louis de Quelen, Arch^vque de Paris, et
propriétaire des domaines de Kermartin, a fait placer cette inscription,
afin qu’un lieu sanctifié par la presence d’un si grand serviteur de
Dieu ne demeurât pas inconnu (1837).”
The house is a good specimen of a Breton dwelling; by the side of the
fire, in the one room of which most of these cottages consist, fixed
against the wall like the berth of a ship, stands the bedstead or "lit
clos" of old oak, shut in by carved and well-waxed sliding panels, often
inscribed with the sacred monogram. The two mattresses, paillasse, and
"cossette de plume," are piled up to such a height as barely to admit of
its tenants creeping into the bed. In front is the customary chest,
containing the family wardrobe, answering the double purpose of a seat and
the means of ascending into the bed. Often we have seen cupboards on each
side of the large chimney with two shelves, which served as beds for the
juvenile members of the family. Forms and a polished table complete the
furniture; the last has frequently little wells hollowed in the top, used,
instead of plates, to hold the soup. Over the table, suspended by pulleys,
are two indispensable articles in a Breton dwelling—a large circular
basket to cover the bread, and a kind of wooden frame or rack, round which
the spoons are ranged. Forks they do not use. Festoons of sausages, with
hams, bacon, candles, skins of lard, onions, horse-shoes, harness, all
hang suspended from the ceiling, which consists of fagots of hazel
suspended by cross-poles. The floor is of beaten earth. One narrow window
admits the light, and there are no outhouses. The manure-heap is generally
at the house-door, and the pigs and poultry seem on an equally intimate
footing as they are in our Irish cabins. The Breton’s cottage has often no
garden, to occupy his leisure hours; and the men, after their daily work,
resort to the cabaret to spend their time and their earnings. Agriculture
is very backward in Brittany, but the land produces abundance of corn. It
is thrashed out direct from the field, on a clay floor (aire). Beet-root
and clover grow very luxuriantly, and in some fields the pretty red clover
(_Trifolium incarnatum_) carpets the country with its crimson flowers.
Near the farmhouse of Kermartin is the parish church of Minihy-Tréguier,
formerly a chapel founded by St. Ives and attached to the "manoir." The
will of St. Ives is framed and hung up in the church, and his breviary is
also preserved here; but the guide said it was now kept at the priest’s
house, as people were in the habit of taking away a leaf as a relic.
Minihy, _i. e._ Monk’s House, is a name given to those places which,
through the intercession of some saint, had the right of sanctuary. They
were marked with a red cross, and, how great soever the crime, were
regarded as inviolable. In 1441 the right of sanctuary was restricted to
churches; before, it was extended to towns and districts. Tréguier had the
privilege within a radius of twelve miles from the town. St. Malo also
possessed the right of sanctuary. Tréguier is one of the four bishoprics
that formed the ancient divisions of Brittany. The others were Léon,
Cornouaille, and Vannes. The "pays de Tréguier" answers exactly to the
present department of the Côtes-du-Nord; Léon to the territory or
arrondissement of Brest and Morlaix; Cornouaille has Quimper and Carhaix
for its principal towns; and Vannes, the country of Celtic remains, is to
the south.
Tréguier is prettily situated on a hill, at the confluence of the rivers
Jaudy and Guindy; its principal building is the beautiful, imposing
cathedral, with its elegant spire, begun in the thirteenth century by St.
Yves, and dedicated to St. Tugdual, whose name, like St. Yves, is often
given in baptism to the Breton children. St. Yves is buried here, and also
Duke John V., who founded the Chapelle du Duc, and desired to be interred
at the feet of St. Yves, for whom he had a special regard, and to whom he
erected a magnificent tomb, for three centuries the object of veneration
in Brittany. The Duke paid for it his own weight in silver (389 marks 7
oz.), in 1424, to Maistre Jacques de Hougue. The victories of his father
John the Conqueror were chased in bas-relief round the tomb, which was
destroyed in 1793. Duke John V. was a contemptible prince, who eight times
changed his party from weakness rather than policy, and on whom Margaret
de Clisson and her sons retaliated the cowardly seizure of her father, the
Constable Clisson, by Duke John IV. One of the towers of the cathedral is
called the tower of Hastings, but its date is evidently subsequent to that
of the Norman freebooter. The cathedral has preserved its beautiful
cloisters, the work of the fifteenth century, although it has been ravaged
by the Normans of the ninth century, the English in the fourteenth, the
Spaniards in the sixteenth, and by the Revolutionists of 1793. It was the
port chosen by the Constable Clisson, 1387, for the invasion of England,
an expedition proposed and projected by himself. His hatred against the
English was so great, though educated in England, he was termed the
"boucher des Anglais." When the Duke of Brittany gave Chandos the château
of Gavre, which was within a league of Clisson’s château of Blain (Loire
Inférieure), "I will never," he exclaimed, "be the neighbour of the
English," and accordingly he sallied out one morning and burnt the castle
to the ground. Chandos complained to the Black Prince, who sent a letter
of remonstrance to Clisson, but it was only replied by a challenge to the
Prince to meet him in single combat. Clisson caused his own ship to be
built at Tréguier, and had constructed a tower or framework of large
timber, to be put together on his landing in England, for the lords to
retreat to as a place of safety, and to be lodged therein securely in the
event of a night attack. This tower, Froissart says, was so constructed,
that when dislodged it could be taken to pieces, and many carpenters and
other workmen were engaged, at very high wages, to go with it to England
to superintend the putting of it together. Four thousand men-at-arms and
2000 cross-bowmen were in readiness for the expedition, with horses,
vessels laden with wine, salted provisions, and other necessaries. All
these formidable preparations were rendered useless by the arrest of the
Constable the day before his embarkation. We went to the Cemetery, which
has its ossuary, reliquary, or bone-house, an inseparable appendage to a
Breton churchyard. It is the custom in Brittany, after a certain time, to
dig up the bones of the dead, and preserve their skulls in little square
boxes, like dog-kennels, with a heart-shaped opening through which the
skull is visible. They are all ticketed with the names and dates of the
deceased, as "Ci gît le chef de * * * D. c. D. (décédé) le * * * * *.
Priez Dieu pour son âme."
[Illustration: 21. Skull-box.]
These boxes sometimes occupy prominent places inside the churches or
porch, on window sills, the capitals of columns, and other ledges; but
more often are ranged in the ossuaries or charnel-houses built in the
churchyards to receive them, with a row of death’s-heads carved in the
stone outside. The large bones are also placed in the ossuaire. The rich
are buried in "enfeux" or arched recesses in the chapels or abbeys they
have founded.
We continued our carriage to Lannion, our driver not very clear of his
way, and in Brittany the road is very difficult to be discerned; for on
each side are high earthen banks, sometimes eight or ten feet high, and on
the top of these are planted timber-trees, such as oak, elm, and ash,
which often meet at the top, entirely intercepting the view, making these
narrow lanes a perfect slough and most intricate to thread. Sometimes they
are cut in irregular steps in the solid rock, and serve for the bed of a
stream. Each field is also surrounded by these hedgerow-trees, which are
cut every four or five years.
We drove to Perros Guirec, a lovely little watering-place built on a small
promontory with a safe harbour, whence wheat, hemp, and cattle are
exported to England; it is six miles from Lannion. A dangerous rock,
called Roche Bernard, is at its entrance. The view is lovely. From Perros
we scrambled over a hilly cart-road to Ploumanach, about three miles
distant—a wonderful spot, huge round erratic blocks of pink granite flung
over land and sea in the wildest confusion. The whole coast is one sea of
boulders, a chaos of rocks of all sizes cover the soil in every direction,
and in many places there is no soil at all, and the loose masses rest on a
bare bed of rock, stretching, in unbroken extent, to a great distance. "A
wanderer," says Mr. Trollope, "amid this strange and silent scene might
fancy himself the only living thing in the midst of a world turned to
stone. In every possible variety of uncouth form and capricious, strange
positions, the endless masses were around us."
“All is rocks at random thrown,
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone."”
LORD OF THE ISLES.
One rock, surrounded at high water by the tide, is a square block of red
granite of thirty to forty feet high, placed on the top of a still higher
mass, on which it rests upon a very small base. It is called the "Roche
Pendue," and serves as a landmark for the fishermen. We took a small boat
full of fish resembling codlings or small cod, called "lieu," and were
rowed by the fishermen through a sea of granite boulders to the opposite
side of the Trégastel estuary, to see the "pierre pendue," or
rocking-stone (Breton, _rouler_), the largest in Brittany. These stones
are so nicely poised that they can be moved with the slightest impulse by
any one knowing the exact point at which to touch them. They were used in
early times as proving-stones, and called "Pierres de verité."
“Firm as it seems,
Such is its strange and virtuous property,
It moves obsequious to the gentlest touch
Of him whose breast is pure; but to a traitor,
Though e’en a giant’s prowess nerved his arm,
It stands as fixed as Snowdon.” —MASON.