CHAPTER I._Rambles in Brittany

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RAMBLES IN BRITTANY

_WORKS OF FRANCIS MILTOUN_

_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely

illustrated. Net, $2.00; postpaid, $2.16_

_Rambles in Normandy_

_Rambles in Brittany_

_The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_

_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely

illustrated. Postpaid, $2.50_

_The Cathedrals of Northern France_

_The Cathedrals of Southern France_

_L. C. PAGE & COMPANY_

_New England Building, Boston, Mass._

[Illustration: _Constable’s Tower, Vannes_

(_See page 147_)]

Rambles

BRITTANY

BY FRANCIS MILTOUN

_With Many Illustrations_

BY BLANCHE MCMANUS

[Illustration: colophon]

BOSTON

L. C. PAGE & COMPANY

1906

_Copyright, 1905_

BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY

(INCORPORATED)

_All rights reserved_

Published October, 1905

_COLONIAL PRESS

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.

Boston, U. S. A._

APOLOGIA

No promise given to the hostess of one’s inn is alleged as an excuse

for writing this book, but it is true that rosy, busy Madame X of the

Soleil d’Or, in the fishing village in which the work received its

final collation and revision, watched its growth for many a week, daily

declaring her hope of some day receiving a volume containing “your

impressions.” And, indeed, her hope shall not be vain, for one of the

first copies shall be most speedily despatched to her. Moreover, the

author and artist hope that it may be acceptable to her critical mind,

for she is not likely to be lenient, though she knows full well that to

the many authors and artists who make a refuge of her modest inn for

months she owes her livelihood.

The book is a record of many journeys and many rambles by road and rail

around the coast, and in no sense is it put forth either as a special or

as a complete survey of things and matters Breton.

Many lights and shadows have been thrown upon the screen from various

points, but the effort has been made to blend them all into a pleasing

whole, which shall supplement the guide-books of convention.

It were not possible to do more than has been attempted within the

limits of a volume such as this, and therefore many details of routes,

and historical data of a relative sort, and a certain amount of

topographical information have been scattered through the volume or

placed in the appendix, in the belief that such information is greatly

needed in a work attempting to purvey “travel talk” even in small

measure.

Some of this knowledge is so little subject to change that it may well

stand for all time, and, in these days of well-nigh universal travel,

may be not thought out of place in a volume intended both for the

armchair traveller and also for him who journeys by road and rail. That

only a very limited quantity of such information can be included is a

misfortune, inasmuch as such a handbook is often used when no other aid

is accessible to the traveller.

Finally, the illustrative material, the large number of drawings of

sights and scenes, of great architectural monuments, and of the dress

of the people, is offered less as a complete pictorial survey than as a

panorama of impressions received on and off the beaten track,--and more

satisfying and truthful than the mere snap-shots of hurried travel.

In addition, many maps, plans, and diagrams should give many of the

itineraries a lucidity often lacking in the usual railway maps.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

APOLOGIA v

PART I.

I. INTRODUCTORY 3

II. THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE 11

III. THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE 33

IV. TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY 45

V. THE BRETON TONGUE AND LEGEND 59

VI. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 70

VII. THE FISHERIES 88

PART II.

I. THE LOIRE IN BRITTANY 99

II. NANTES TO VANNES 116

III. THE MORBIHAN--VANNES AND THE “GOLFE” 140

IV. AURAY AND THE MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS OF

MORBIHAN 159

V. MORBIHAN--LORIENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD 179

VI. FINISTÈRE--SOUTH 187

VII. FINISTÈRE--NORTH 221

VIII. THE CÔTES DU NORD 249

IX. THE EMERALD COAST 271

X. ON THE ROAD IN BRITTANY--MAYENNE,

FOUGÈRES, LAVAL, AND VITRÉ 309

XI. RENNES AND BEYOND 329

XII. RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS AND PARDONS 341

APPENDICES 359

INDEX 373

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

CONSTABLE’S TOWER, VANNES (_See page 147_) _Frontispiece_

THE LOIRE AT NANTES facing 4

DEVICE OF ANNE OF BRITTANY 17

ANNE OF BRITTANY 18

BRETON POST-CARD 21

ST. BRIEUC facing 30

CROISIC facing 42

MAP OF BRITTANY facing 44

THE MAIN ROADS OF BRITTANY 48

TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY 55

ST. POL DE LÉON facing 60

THE BRETON TONGUE 62

GILLES DE LAVAL 66

YOUNG BRETONS 78

FROM THE ARTIST’S SKETCH BOOK 80

LA COIFFE POLKA 81

IRONING COIFS 83

BRETON TYPES 85

DOUARNENEZ facing 88

PORNIC 113

DONJON OF CLISSON facing 114

ST. NAZAIRE 123

ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS OF GUÉRANDE (DIAGRAM) 126

CHÂTEAUBRIANT facing 128

CHILDREN OF REDON 133

TOUR D’ELVEN facing 138

MARKET-WOMAN, VANNES 142

THE COUNTRY NEAR VANNES 143

ANCIENT CITY WALLS, VANNES (DIAGRAM) 147

CHÂTEAU OF SUSCINO facing 148

GENERAL PLAN OF CHÂTEAU OF SUSCINO (DIAGRAM) 149

PLOËRMEL facing 152

SHRINE OF ST. ETIENNE, JOSSELIN 154

CHÂTEAU DE JOSSELIN facing 156

INTERIOR OF MARKET-HOUSE, AURAY facing 160

SHRINE OF ST. ROCH, AURAY 162

THE LINES OF CARNAC 168

THE LINES OF CARNAC facing 168

MAP OF CARNAC AND THE SURROUNDING COUNTRY 170

QUIBERON facing 172

HENNEBONT facing 182

QUIMPERLÉ facing 188

MARKET-HOUSE, FAOUËT facing 192

MARKET-DAY 193

ROSPORDEN 196

STONE CRUCIFIX, CONCARNEAU facing 198

CONCARNEAU 199

PONT AVEN facing 202

ENVIRONS OF PONT AVEN (MAP) 204

FROM THE MUSEUM AT QUIMPER 207

CAPE DE LA CHÈVRE facing 214

WOMAN OF CHATEAULIN 217

CAMARET facing 220

LANDERNEAU facing 224

CALVARY, PLOUGASTEL facing 228

LIGHTHOUSE OF CRÉAC’H, OUESSANT facing 236

ROSCOFF 239

MA DOUEZ 244

CARVED WOOD STAIRCASE, MORLAIX facing 246

PROCESSION OF SAILORS, ST. JEAN DU DOIGT 247

OLD HOUSE, TRÉGUIER 253

HOUSE OF ERNEST RENAN, TRÉGUIER 254

SHRINE OF ST. YVES, TRÉGUIER 256

A BINOU PLAYER 261

BINIC 267

RAMPARTS OF ST. MALO facing 272

HOUSE OF DUGUAY-TROUIN, ST. MALO 281

TOWER OF SOLIDOR, ST. SERVAN facing 284

PLANS OF THE TOWER OF SOLIDOR 285

THE VALLEY OF THE RANCE (MAP) 292

DUGUESCLIN 293

REZ-DE-CHAUSSÉE OF DONJON, DINAN (DIAGRAM) 295

COIF OF MINIAC 307

MAYENNE facing 310

PLAN OF THE ANCIENT WALLS AND TOWERS OF

FOUGÈRES 314

BEUCHERESSE GATE, LAVAL 319

PLAN OF VITRÉ IN 1811, SHOWING CITY WALLS 321

CHÂTEAU DE VITRÉ facing 322

TOWER OF ST. MARTIN, VITRÉ 323

CHÂTEAU DE ROCHERS 325

ARMS OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ 327

MONASTERY OF ST. MÉLAINE, RENNES 331

HUELGOAT facing 340

PARDON OF ST. JEAN DU DOIGT facing 352

THE PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 359

THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 361

COMPARATIVE METRIC SCALE (DIAGRAM) 364

SKETCH MAP OF CIRCULAR TOUR IN BRITTANY 366

ARCHITECTURAL NAMES OF THE VARIOUS PARTS OF

A FEUDAL CHÂTEAU (DIAGRAM) 367

TIDE AND WEATHER SIGNALS IN THE PORTS OF

BRITTANY (DIAGRAM) 368

PART I.

RAMBLES IN BRITTANY

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY

The regard which every one has for the old French provinces is by

no means inexplicable. Out of them grew the present solidarity of

republican France, but in spite of it the old limits of demarcation

are not yet expunged. One and all retain to-day their individual

characteristics, manners, and customs, and also a certain subconscious

atmosphere.

Many are the casual travellers who know Normandy and Brittany, at least

know them by name and perhaps something more, but how many of those who

annually skim across France, in summer to Switzerland and in winter to

the Riviera or to Italy, there to live in seven-franc-a-day pensions,

and drink a particularly vile brand of tea, know where Brittany leaves

off and Normandy begins, or have more than the vaguest of vague notions

as to whether the charming little provincial capital of Nantes, on the

Loire, is in Brittany or in Poitou. A recollection of their school-day

knowledge of history will help them on the latter point, but geography

will come in and puzzle them still more.

There are many French writers, and painters for that matter, who have

made these provinces famous. Napoleon, perhaps, set the fashion, when

he wrote, in 1786, that eulogy beginning: “It is now six or seven years

since I left my native country.” More familiar is the “Native Land” of

Lamartine. Camille Flammarion wrote “My Cradle,” meaning Champagne;

Dumas wrote of Villers-Cotterets, and Chateaubriand and Renan of

Brittany; but head and shoulders above them all stand out Frederic

Mistral and his fellows of the Félibres at Avignon and Arles.

[Illustration: _The Loire at Nantes_]

All this offers a well-nigh irresistible fascination for those who

love literary and historic shrines,--and who does not in these days of

universal travel, personally conducted or otherwise? Not every one can

follow in the footsteps of Sterne with equal facility and grace, or

bask in the radiance of a Stevenson or a Gautier. Still, it is given

to most of us who know the lay of the land to discover for ourselves

the position of these celebrated shrines, whether the pilgrimage be

historical, literary, or artistic.

This is what gives a charm to travel, and even where no new thing is

actually discovered, no new pathways broken, there is, after all, a

certain zest in such an exploration rivalling that to be obtained from

an expedition to the uttermost confines of the Dark Continent, to Tibet,

or to Tierra del Fuego.

Primarily, the ancient provinces of France have a story of historical

and romantic purport not equalled in the chronicles of any other nation.

The distinctive types are but vaguely limned, but the Norman and the

Breton stand out most distinctly, and such figures as the Norman and

Breton dukes of real history live even more vividly in one’s mind than

D’Artagnan and his fellows in the great portrait-gallery of Dumas.

One need not be of the antiquary species in order to revel in the great

monuments of history abounding in Brittany even as in Normandy. There

are many and beautiful shrines elsewhere,--and doubtless some are more

popularly famous than any in Brittany,--but none have played greater or

more important rôles in the history and development of the France of

to-day than those of the two northwestern provinces.

As has been said, each of the great provinces into which France

was divided previous to the Revolution possessed characteristics,

unmistakable even to-day. As to the topography of any single one,

the question is so vast in its detail that more than mention of

principal features can hardly be made in a book such as this. It is

then perhaps enough that some slight information concerning Brittany

and its principal places should be recorded here, and that the chief

configurations of its territory should be outlined.

In addition to the principal old-time governments, there were the

ancient fiefs and local divisions, and these in many cases had names

often encountered in history and literature. Sometimes these were relics

of the still earlier day, of Gaul before the Roman conquest, their

ancient names having come down through the ages with but little change.

If one would understand the economic or agricultural aspect of France of

to-day, he must know these principal provinces by name at least.

When one is at Chartres, he must be aware that he is on the edge of the

great plateau of Beauce,--the granary of France,--and that as he crosses

into Brittany--perhaps through Perche, whence come the great-footed

Percherons--he enters the country of the ancient Veneti. Farther west

lies rock-bound Cornouaille, which in every characteristic resembles

Cornwall in Britain; Léon on the north, and finally Penthièvre.

The traveller remakes his history where he finds it. If he have a good

memory, this is not a difficult process, but, in any case, the French

guide-books, that is to say, those written in French, not the English or

Anglo-German variety, are sufficiently explicit as to dates and events

to set him on the right track.

The armchair traveller usually desires something more. He likes

his plain stories garnished with a not too elaborate series of

embellishment, both as to text and illustration, giving him some

tangible reminder of things as they are in this enlightened twentieth

century, when tram-cars have taken the place of the diligence, and the

electric light has supplanted the tallow dip, and one may well say with

Sterne: “Since France is so near to England, why not go to France?”

Here, in spots all but unknown even in Normandy and Brittany, the

traveller finds for himself monuments of a civilization gone before and

of a local history not yet completely erased, and as interesting as

those of any land made famous by antiquaries whose only claim to fame

rests upon their questionable ability in propounding new theories, of

which the chief merit is plausibility,--a process of history-making

sadly overdone of late in some parts.

Both in Brittany and in Normandy there are innumerable glorious

architectural monuments of a past from which history may be builded

anew. Character counts for a great deal with cities as with individuals.

One can love Rouen as the capital of the ancient Normandy, or Nantes as

the capital of Lower Brittany, but he will no more have the same sort of

affection for Lyons or for Nice than he will have it for Manchester or

for Chicago.

In the days of old, when each little town had its dignitaries, who may

have been counts or who may have been bishops, there was perhaps more

individuality than in the present age of monotonous prefects and mayors.

Nantes had its dukes, and Rouen had its prelates, and both of them,

even to-day, overshadow the civic dignitaries of their time; hence it is

the memory of the parts played by them which induces an association of

ideas prompting a desire to know personally the ground trodden by them.

Normandy and Brittany are supposed to be the happy hunting-grounds of

cheap tourists and trippers, but, as a matter of fact, the former do

not go beyond Dieppe, or the latter beyond the Channel Islands,--with

possibly a day excursion to St. Malo,--so no discomfort need really

arise from the fear of their presence. Furthermore, the tourists from

across Channel that one does meet in Normandy or Brittany to-day are not

so outrageous in their dress and manners as the type pictured by _Punch_.

It is a generally recognized fact that no special hardship is involved

in modern travel; caravansaries have for the most part given way to inns

which, if not exactly palatial, at least furnish creature comforts of a

quality quite as good or a great deal better than those to which most

travellers are accustomed at home. One may, and most likely will, miss

his or her particular brand of tea or tobacco, but will find substitutes

quite as excellent, and as far as the language question is concerned,

why, that lies at one’s own door, unless one wants to go out as a

disciple of Esperanto, the modern successor of Volapuk, dead years ago

of sheer weight of consonants.

This book, then, is meant to ensure better knowledge on the part of

the casual traveller of that delectable land which may be somewhat

vaguely described as old France, of which Brittany and Normandy are as

representative in their survivals as any other part.

CHAPTER II.

THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE

Brittany, the ancient province which underwent such a strife of warfare

and bloodshed in the struggle against invaders, and finally against

France, has become one of the most loyal of all the old-time divisions

making up the present republic. Her struggle against a curtailment of

her ancient rights and the attempts to conserve her liberties were

futile, and when the Duchess Anne took Louis XII. for her second

husband, Brittany became a part of the royal domain never to be

separated therefrom.

It was Duguesclin who saved it for France, Duchess Anne who enriched it,

Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Laennec, and Renan who made it illustrious in

letters, and Duguay-Trouin, Jacques Cartier, Surcouf, Du Couëdic, and

many besides who added to all this the spirit of adventure and romance

with which the chronicles of Brittany have ever abounded.

Commonly it has been called a land of granite, an expression which has

been consecrated by the usage of many years, but it is also a land most

picturesque, melancholy, and dreamy, with immense horizons of sea and

sky, and a climate strictly temperate throughout all the year.

“O landes, O forêts, pierres sombres et hautes,

Bois qui couvrez nos champs, mers qui battez nos côtes,

Villages où les morts errent avec les ventes,

Bretagne! d’où te vient l’amour de tes enfants.”

Brittany in early days had a parliament the most important in France.

Armorica was its more ancient name, which in old Breton signified “near

to the sea,” or “on the sea.”

From the beginning of the fifth century, for a matter of perhaps a

hundred years, the peninsula was known as Armorique, and its people

as Armoricans. After this time the name disappeared from general

use, and Brittany and Breton came. From the sixth century onward the

change became permanent, and such chroniclers as Gregory of Tours, for

instance, always referred to Britannia, Britanniœ, Britanni, and

Britones, in writing of the peninsula and its people.

When first peopled from Britain across the Channel, Brittany was the

most thinly populated part of all Gaul. Each wave of immigration, as

the Britons from across the water fled from the invading Saxons, added

to the population of the land, until ultimately it became as a hundred

Britons against ten Armoricans. At least, this is the way the French

historians and antiquaries put it, and so Armorique became Brittany,

and such is the origin of French Brittany, quite independent of the

etymology of the word Breton itself.

The inhabitants even to-day--more than in any other of the ancient

provinces of France--have preserved the ancient nomenclature of the land

and its people, and everywhere one finds only Bretons whose home is

Brittany.

Mercator, the map-maker, was more of a success than Mercator, the

historical chronicler. He said of the Bretons, in 1595, that they were

“for the most part avaricious and largely given to making distinctions

between glasses and tumblers.” As a matter of record, this is not so

true of the Bretons as it is of the Normans, or of the Germans, or of

the Spaniards. Up to the time of Cæsar the name Armorica seems to have

been applied to all the coast of Northwestern France of to-day, with a

little strip running as far south as the mouth of the Garonne, but more

particularly it afterward designated the peninsula of Brittany as we

know it to-day.

The region was early put under the guardianship of a chieftain, who

invariably, here as elsewhere in those days, took advantage of every

opportunity to advance his frontiers.

This attempted aggrandizement was not so successful here as in other

parts, and by the fifth century Armorica had shrunk to the region lying

entirely between the Seine and the Loire. In the life of St. Germain of

Auxerre one reads:

“Gens inter geminos notissima clauditur amnes

Armoricana prius veteri cognomine dicta est.”

Finally, at the close of the sixth century, Armorica merged itself in

Brittany, but the “Concile de Tours” makes a remarkable distinction

between the new settlers and those who had previously been known as

Romans. This distinction was also clearly made by St. Samson, who wrote

in the seventh century that Britannia was the name given to Armorica by

the exiled Britons who had fled from the Saxons and the Angles and had

there taken up their home.

Before the Roman conquest there were five tribes in the country, named

by Cæsar as the Nannetes, the Veneti, the Osismii, the Curiosolitæ,

and the Rhedones,--names which, with but slight evolution, exist even

to-day. Things went on quietly under Roman control, but when Clovis

became the master of a part of Gaul he was obliged to treat with the

Armoricans. Finally the Britons from across the sea came “like a

torrent,” and established themselves, changing the names of certain

regions to Cornouaille, Léon, Bro-Waroch, etc. Conquered in 799 by a

lieutenant of Charlemagne, the Bretons revolted again some little time

after, and, at the death of the great emperor, successfully withstood

the attacks of the formidable army which Louis the Amiable had sent

against them. For a quarter of a century Brittany now suffered attack

and pillage by the Normans, relieved only when Alain Barbe-Torte drove

the invaders from his territory. Previous to the Norman inroad, the

Bretons lived in petty tribes, of which each formed a “_plou_,” a prefix

still often met with in Breton place-names. The chief of a _plou_ was

known as a _machtiern_.

Up to this time no foreign customs had been introduced, but, after the

victories of Alain Barbe-Torte, tribal organization was succeeded by

that of the fief.

By the tenth century feudalism was thoroughly established throughout

most of the ancient provinces of France, and the land was covered with

seigniories, great and small, the one more or less dependent upon the

other. Dukes, counts, and seigneurs, each in his own territory, played

the hereditary sovereign in little, and above them was the suzerain

power of which they were vassals.

After the expulsion of the Normans, the ancient Breton kingdoms of

Domnonée, Cornouaille, and Bro-Waroch disappeared, and the sovereign of

all Brittany bore the title of duke.

Historians write of the nine ancient barons of Brittany, among whom

was divided the governmental control of the country, all of them being

virtually subject to the reigning duke. They were:

I. Seigneur d’Avaugour or De Goëllo.

II. Vicomte de Léon.

III. Seigneur de Fougères.

IV. Sire de Vitré.

V. Sire de Rohan.

VI. Seigneur de Chateaubriand.

VII. Seigneur de Retz.

VIII. Seigneur de la Roche-Bernard.

IX. Seigneur du Pont.

These original baronies expanded into a round hundred by the fifteenth

century, and the list of them contains the ancestral names of the Breton

nobility.

Henry II. of England dealt severely with Brittany, but his son Geoffrey

married Constance, the daughter of Duke Conan IV., and this made the

condition of the province more tolerable.

The first step toward the union of Brittany with the kingdom of France

came when--through the intrigues of Philip Augustus--the daughter of

Geoffrey Plantagenet married Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux, and a

prince of the blood royal of France. Joan of Penthièvre also married the

Count of Blois, another lieutenant of the King of France.

[Illustration: _Device of Anne of Brittany_]

The war of succession in Brittany between the ducal houses of Blois and

Montfort was, up to the fourteenth century, the principal event of the

province’s early history. The Montforts achieved final victory at Auray

in 1364. Upon the death of Francis II., his daughter Anne, the chief

figure in all Breton history, so far as existing memorials of her life

are concerned, became duchess.

[Illustration: _Anne of Brittany_]

In 1491, she married Charles VIII. of France, and eight years later his

successor, Louis XII. The daughter of this last marriage, the Princess

Claude of France, married the Duke of Angoulême, afterward Francis

the First, and the fortunes of Brittany and France were thenceforth

indissolubly allied, for, upon becoming Queen Claude of France, the

inheritor of Brittany ceded the province to her royal spouse and his

descendants in perpetuity. Queen Claude died in 1524, which event for

ever assured France of this province,--the most beautiful gem in the

royal crown. The union of Brittany and France was celebrated with much

pomp in 1532.

The ancient county or duchy of Bretagne was bordered on the east by

Anjou and Maine, on the west by the Atlantic, on the north by the

British Channel and Normandy, and on the south by Poitou. The province

had two territorial divisions, Upper and Lower, and Rennes was the

parliamentary capital.

Upper Brittany comprised the five episcopal dioceses of Dol, Nantes,

Rennes, Saint-Brieuc, and St. Malo, and Lower Brittany counted four

similar divisions, Quimper, St. Pol de Léon, Tréguier, and Vannes. Thus

the political divisions of a former day corresponded exactly with those

of the Church.

To-day Brittany is divided into five departments: Côtes du Nord,

Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Inférieure, and the Morbihan.

The administrative government of Brittany, or rather of its present-day

departments, like that of the rest of France, radiates from the

capital of the department, which is the residence of the prefect, the

tax-collector, the bishop, and, in general, of all heads of departments.

The chief town is also the seat of the General Council and (with few

exceptions) of the assize court.

The most ancient codified law of Brittany was known as the little book,

but the manuscript copy has been lost. The most ancient work which

recites the “customs” of this great province dates only from 1330. This

curious document is known as the “Very Ancient Law,” and contains 336

articles. “The Ancient Law” was compiled and published at Nantes in

1549, and contains 779 articles.

Brittany has been, and perhaps ever will be, considered by Frenchmen

an alien land, where, in its great plains and mountainous regions, in

the valleys of its bubbling rivers, and on its rock-bound shores, the

people, one and all, “speak a tongue so ancient and so strange that he

who hears it dreams of a vanished race.”

Yes, Brittany is a land of menhirs, of legends and superstitions, but

all this but makes a roundabout journey the more enjoyable, and one

must really cross and recross it to its uttermost confines in order to

realize its great variation of manners and customs, to say nothing of

speech, for, even though the Breton tongue is dying out as a universal

language, one still buys his post-card with a queer legend on its face,

which looks like Dutch at first glance, but really is Breton.

In Madame de Sévigné’s time the ladies of Lower Brittany were famous

for their beauty. In “Letter XLIV.,” written to her daughter, Madame de

Sévigné said: “Many beauties of Lower Brittany were present at the great

ball, the brilliant Mademoiselle de L----, a fine girl who dances very

well.”

[Illustration: _Breton Post-card_]

Things do not seem to have changed greatly to-day, and, although Madame

de Sévigné wrote of court beauties only, in the Lower Province one

frequently meets such beauty of face as one does not see everywhere in

France. It must be owned that the figures, if not exactly found wanting,

are often too ample. The sternness of the land, like the bleakness of

Holland, has, apparently, added no end of grace to the features of the

women, whatever may have been its hardening effect upon the men.

In Cornouaille, Latin _Cornu-Galliæ_, one finds almost the same name

and the same derivation as in English Cornwall, and the topographical

aspect is much the same in both instances. “The people of Cornuaille are

faithful to tradition, and above all others merit the name of Bretons,”

says J. Guillon.

The Province of Léon forms the northern part of the Department of

Finistère. The name was a development from Pagus Legionensis, a large

military colony having been quartered there in Roman times.

In the south the ancient Breton Province of Bro-Waroch became the

county of Vannes, the counts being in reality dependents of the Duke

of Brittany; their people spoke, and retain even to-day, a distinct

dialect, greatly varying from that of the rest of Brittany.

In the earliest times, both Nantes and Rennes were the seat of important

administrative governments, but the Counts of Nantes ceded their fiefs

to the Bretons in the eleventh century. Chief of these were the fiefs of

the Baron of Retz, the Seigneur de Clisson, who defended the southern

frontier against Poitou, and the Baron of Ancenis, who was the bulwark

between Brittany and Anjou.

In the north, the ancient Breton kingdom of Domnonée was, in the twelfth

century, divided into two counties, that of Penthièvre and Tréguier.

It was Duke Geoffrey who introduced feudalism of the Anglo-Norman and

French variety. In earlier times, when a nobleman died, his children

divided his lands and goods in equal parts among them, but in Normandy

and France the estate went to the eldest of the line.

It was only in the twelfth century that the Bretons went outside their

own domain. Previously, they were decidedly an untravelled race, but

under Philip the Fair Paris came to know Breton well, though chiefly

through the poorer classes.

They went to the schools and seminaries of Orleans to become clerics;

sold their cattle and horses in the markets of Paris, and their wheat

in Maine and Anjou, and their feudal lords, it is perhaps needless to

say, bought their dress in the capital of fashion, and their wines in

Gascony. From this time, Brittany may be said to have been opened to the

world.

Not always were the Bretons a peaceful, law-abiding race, at least

they did not always appear in such a light to their contemporaries.

According to Bouchart, Duke Francis II. received a letter wherein his

brother-in-law, the Count of Foix, said: “Monseigneur, I declare to

God, I would rather be the ruler of a million of wild boars than of such

a people as are your Bretons.”

In 1460, Francis II. founded the University of Nantes, thus doing away

with the necessity of the young Breton’s going to Paris, Orleans, or

Angers for his education.

Printing was discovered in Germany, and all in good time it appeared

in Brittany, at Lannion, and at Tréguier. There were establishments

devoted to the art even before they existed in such important places as

Lyons or Montpellier. One of the first books printed in Brittany was a

French-Breton dictionary, published in 1499, and known as the Catholicon

of Jean Lagadeuc.

By this time, a remarkable form of government, unique in all the

world, was established in Brittany. In some respects it was modelled

on the English Parliament, but in no way resembled that of the French

legislative body.

The Estates met each year at Rennes, at Vannes, at Nantes, at Redon, at

Vitré, or at Dinan, and at last, under Francis II., Parliament came to

be a fixture at Rennes.

Even after the union of Brittany with France, the ancient rights,

privileges, and liberties were assured to the old province until the

Revolution. These sittings of the Estates at Rennes were sumptuous

affairs, accompanied by a round of feasting and dancing at which

appeared all the aristocracy who could.

Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter of one of the grand affairs as

follows:

“The good cheer is excessive; the roasts are brought on entire, and the

pyramids of fruit are so huge as to make it necessary to take down the

doors for their entrance.... After dinner, MM. de Locmaria and Coëtlegon

danced with two Breton girls, taking some amazing steps.... Play is

continuous, balls endless, and thrice a week there are comedies.”

The relations between the nobility and peasantry in seventeenth-century

Brittany were perhaps closer and more affectionate than in any other

part of France. The noblemen frequently visited the peasants on their

farms, and on Sunday the peasants danced in the courts of the castles

and manor-houses.

“Virtually, under the old system, Brittany was peopled by rural

nobility,” says Cambry, and indeed this must have been so, for within a

small radius of Plougasnou were more than two hundred noblemen’s houses,

“so poor,” says the chronicler, “that their inhabitants might well be

classed with the labourers themselves.”

Brittany’s part in the Revolution was equivocal. The Republicans really

had beaten the Royalists, but they had also aided the Girondins, and at

Paris the Girondins were as much hated as the Royalists themselves. The

Convention sent its representatives into the province, not to thank the

Bretons for their help in the great struggle, but with the idea of still

further arousing the passions of the people.

Among these representatives were Geurmer, Prieur de la Marne,

Jean-Bon-St.-Andre, and the rascally and heartless Carrier, who drowned

his hundreds at Nantes, and guillotined twenty-six Bretons in one day at

Brest.

The Breton feeling and sympathy was in the main with the Republicans,

though manifestly the majority had no sympathy with the rule of

the Terrorists. It is curious to note, however, the change in the

nomenclature of places in the endeavour to eliminate the religious

and aristocratic prefixes and suffixes with which many of the Breton

place-names were endowed.

St. Cast became Havre-Cast.

St. Fiacre became Fiacre-les-Bois.

St. Gildas became Gildas du Chaneau.

St. Gilles-les-Bois became Bellevue.

St. Jacut-de-la-Mer became Isle Jacut and Port Jacut.

Chateaulin became Cité sur Aôn.

Pont l’Abbé became Pont Marat.

Quimper became Montagne sur Odet.

St. Martin des Champs became Unité des Champs.

St. Pol de Léon became Port Pol.

Belle Ile en Mer became Ile de l’Unité.

Château Fouquet became Maison-des-Sans-Culottes.

Isle aux Moins became Isle du Morbihan.

Roche-Bernard became La Roche Sauveur.

Rochefort en Terre became Roche des Trois.

St. Gildas de Rhuis became Abélard.

St. Briac became Port Briac.

St. Lunaire became Port Lunaire.

St. Malo became Port Malo.

St. Servan became Port Solidor.

With the incoming of the Empire, most of these names reverted to their

early form.

In our day, while many of the old provinces of France have suffered--if

they really do “suffer”--from a decreasing population, Brittany has

augmented her numbers continually. It is a well-worn saying among the

political economists of France that the “fine and healthy race of

Bretons is one of the greatest reserves and hopes of the republic.”

Three-quarters of all those who man French ships come from the Breton

peninsula.

Hamerton has said that no race, more than the English, had so strong

a tendency to form attachments for places outside their native land.

There may be many reasons for this, and assuredly the subject is too

vast and varied to be more than hinted at here. Brittany, at any rate,

has proved, in and out of season, a haven, as safe as a home-port,

for the Briton and his family, when they would not wander too far.

Possibly it comes after Switzerland, though France as a whole, “the most

architectural country in Europe,” has been sadly neglected, for, as has

been said before, no Englishman ever loved France as Browning loved

Italy.

The native love of the Frenchman for the land of his birth is, to him,

above all else. It is almost incomprehensible to an outsider; it is

something more than mere patriotism; it is the love of an artist for his

picture, as Balzac said of his love of Touraine. This sentiment goes

deep. After the province comes the immediate environment of his village,

and then the village. “_Rien n’est plus beau que mon village, en verité

je vous le dis._” Thus has written and spoken many a great Frenchman.

Nowhere in the known world is provincialism so deep and profound a trait

as in France; and the Breton is always a Breton, contemptuous of the

Norman, God-fearing, and peaceful toward all. There is throughout France

always an intense provincial rivalry, though it seldom rises to hatred

or even to jealousy.

Probably there is no great amount of truth in the following quatrain,

evidently composed by a resident of Finistère, and there first heard

by the writer of this book, but it reflects those little rivalries and

ambitions which have appeared in the daily life-struggle among the

inhabitants of other nations since the world began:

“Voleur comme un Léonard,

Traitre comme un Trégarrais,

Sot comme un Vannetais,

Brutal comme un Cornouaillais.”

Sometimes the love of one’s own country may be carried to an extreme.

We read that for long years, and until recently, the inhabitants of

Trélaze positively refused to assimilate with outside conditions of life

to the least degree, and finding a Breton of this little zone or islet

who spoke French was as improbable as to find one who spoke English.

At St. Brieuc there is a special quarter where the Breton-speaking

folk live to the number of two thousand, and this out of a population

of only twenty-two thousand, while at Nantes the Bretons number ten

thousand. At Angers there is a large and apparently growing Breton

colony; likewise at Havre, in Normandy, where they have a special chapel

in which the priest preaches in the Breton tongue. At Paris, too, there

are various Breton colonies, and the Church of St. Paul and St. Louis,

in St. Anthony’s Street, has a Breton priest. It is the same with the

church of Vaugirard. At Havre there are something over three thousand

Breton-speaking persons, and in Paris seven thousand.

Perhaps Brittany has produced fewer great painters and sculptors than

any other section of France, but all Bretons are artists in no very

small way, as witness their wonderfully picturesque dress and their

charmingly stage-managed fêtes and ceremonies.

The pioneer painter of Breton subjects was doubtless Adolph Leleux, who,

as one of the romantic school in Paris, found in this province what many

another of his contemporaries was seeking for elsewhere, and discovered

Brittany, as far as making it a popular artists’ sketching-ground is

concerned. His first paintings of this region were exhibited in the

Salons of 1838-39-40, and Paris raved over them. His peasant folk,

with their embroidered waistcoats and broad-brimmed hats, had the very

atmosphere of Brittany.

[Illustration: _St. Brieuc_]

Leleux’s success was the signal for a throng of artists to follow in his

footsteps, and to-day their number is countless, and the very names of

even the most famous would form too long a list to catalogue here.

Among Leleux’s most celebrated canvases were “La Karolle, Danse

Bretonne” 1843; “Les Faneuses,” 1846; “Le Retour du Marché,” 1847;

“Cour de Cabaret,” 1857; “Jour de Fête en Basse Bretagne,” 1865; and

successively the “Foire Bretonne,” “Les Braconniers,” “Le Pêcheur de

Homards,” “Pèlerinage Breton,” and “Le Cri du Chouan.”

In all these works one finds the true Brittany of Rosporden and

Penmarc’h.

Fortin’s “Cahute de Mendicant dans le Finistère” (1857), “La

Bénédicité,” and “La Chaumière du Morbihan” follow Leleux as a good

second, then Trayers with “Marché Breton and “Marchande de Crepes à

Quimperlé.”

Among other noted pictures are Darjours’s “Palaudiers du Bourg de Batz”

and the “Fagotiers Bretons”; Guerard’s “Jour de Fête” and “Messe du

Matin, Ille-et-Vilaine”; Fischer’s “Chemin du Pardon” and “Auberge à

Scaër,” and Roussin’s “Famille Bretonne.”

Gustave Brion, with his “Bretons à la Porte d’une Eglise”; Yan

Dargent, with his “Sauvetage à Guisseny,” and Jules Noel, with his

“Danse Bretonne,” and various landscapes of Brest, Quimper, Auray, and

Douarnenez, are on the list of names of those who made the Breton region

famous in the mid-nineteenth century.

Since then, the followers in their footsteps have been almost too many

to number.

Most folk call to mind with very slight appreciable effort such

masterpieces as Jules Breton’s “Retraite aux Flambeaux” and “Plantation

d’un Calvaire,” now in the museum at Lille, and Charles Cottet’s

“Bateaux de Pêche à Camaret” in the Luxembourg gallery.

In addition, there have been innumerable “great pictures” painted by

English and American artists whose very names form too long a list to

catalogue here.

CHAPTER III.

THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE PROVINCE

One reason for the diversified interests of France and the varying

methods of life is the vastly diversified topographical features. “Great

plains as large as three Irelands,” said Hamerton, “and yet mountainous

districts quite as large as the whole of the British Isles.” This

should have served to disabuse British travellers of some false notions

regarding France, but many of them still hold to the views which are to

be gained by railway journeys across the lowlands of Gaul, forgetting

for a moment that well within the confines of France there are fifty

mountain peaks above eleven thousand feet high, and that majestic Mont

Blanc itself rises on French soil.

Then there are the two thousand miles of seacoast which introduce

another element of the population, from the dark-skinned sailor of the

Mediterranean to his brother of Finistère, who is brought into the world

chiefly to recruit the French navy. The Norman sailorman is a hardy,

intrepid navigator even to-day, but he is to a great extent of the

longshore and fishing-boat variety, whereas the true Breton is a sailor

through and through.

Before now, Brittany has been compared, disparagingly, with Provence,

and with some justness perhaps. Provence, however, does not persistently

broil under a “fierce, dry heat,” and Brittany is not by any means

“a wind and wave swept land, where nothing nourishes itself or grows

fat.” Potatoes are even fattening, and Brittany, in all conscience,

grows enough of that useful commodity to feed all France. In three

things Brittany and Provence more than a little resemble one another.

Both preserve, to a very remarkable extent, their ancient language and

their old-time manners and customs, though in all three they are quite

different one from the other.

The general topographical aspect of the coast of the whole Breton

peninsula is stern and wild, whether one encounters the dreary waste of

sand, in the midst of which sit Mont St. Michel and Tombelaine, or the

cliffs away to the westward, or the bleak and barren Belle Ile en Mer,

where Fouquet built his famous stronghold.

On the “Emerald Coast” the sea and sky are often of a true Neapolitan

clearness, and, indeed, the climate of the whole peninsula is, even in

winter, as mild as many a popularly fashionable Mediterranean resort;

but it is not always so bright and sunny; there is a deal of rain in

winter, and often a penetrating dampness, whose only brother is the

genuine Scotch mist.

Still, in all but four months of the year, there is a brilliancy and

softness about the climate of the coast of Brittany which encourages

violets, roses, onions, and potatoes to come to maturity at so early a

date that the Londoner has ceased to raise the question as to whether or

not they may be “best English,” when he sees these products laid out of

an early morning in his beloved Covent Garden.

To know a country or its people at its best, one should really take one

of its great men for a guide. Hear then what Chateaubriand says of “La

Terre Bretonne”:

“This long peninsula, of a wild and savage aspect, has much of

singularity about it: its narrow valleys, its non-navigable rivers

bathing the feet of its ruined castle-keeps and châteaux, its old

abbeys, its thatch-covered houses, and its cattle herded together in its

arid pastures. One valley is separated from another by forests of oak,

with holly bushes as large as beech-trees, and druidical stones around

which sea-birds are for ever circling.

“Of an imagination lively, but nevertheless melancholic, of a humour as

flexible as their character is obstinate, the Bretons are distinguished

for their piety, and none the less for their bravery, their fidelity,

their spirit of independence, and their patriotism. Proud and

susceptible, but without ambition and little suited to the affairs of

court or state, they care nothing for honours or for rank.”

The picture is not very vivid, but it is wonderfully true, and of this

one meets continual evidence in a journey around the coast, from the Bay

of St. Michel in the north to Belle Ile or Nantes in the south.

No part of France has a physiognomy more original than Bretagne; none

has been marked by nature in a more emphatic manner than this ancient

home of the Celts.

“...la terre du granit

Et de l’immense et morne lande.”

It is indeed a land of contrasts, where ancient, mystical, and weird

menhirs and dolmens, relics of prehistoric times, are mingled with

mediæval monuments and modern forts, arsenals, and viaducts.

The country is by no means unlovely, but it partakes of none of the

conventional beauties of other parts. It is not sterile, though it is

stern; it is not very fertile, but its product is ample; and it stands

as the most westerly point of the mainland of Northern Europe, open to

all the wild buffetings of the tempestuous Atlantic which has sculptured

its coast-line into such fantastic forms that a shipwrecked mariner must

think himself fallen upon the most stern and rock-bound of coasts.

The general aspect of Brittany is green and gray. It is, as the Breton

himself says, an austere heath,--the country-side half-effaced in

demi-tints, and the sea boisterous and wicked.

This, however, is only one of its moods; to-morrow it may be as

brilliantly sunlit as the Bay of Naples, and may have a sea and sky of

gold and turquoise. But this mood passes quickly, and again it settles

down to a misty softness and mildness of climate that has given its name

to one of the five great climatic divisions of France, the Armorican.

The sunsets of Brittany are always glorious. Nowhere on the rim of great

ocean’s mirror are there more splendid and grandly scenic effects to be

observed. An exceedingly realistic Frenchman once described a sunset in

the Bay of Douarnenez as a “bloody apotheosis,” the real aspect of which

is readily inferred. Of this Breton Cornouaille, Béranger sang:

“Faisons honte aux hirondelles.

Tu croiras, sur nos essieux,

Que la terre a pris des ailes

Pour passer devant les yeux.”

The country inland is as original as the coast, and both the peasant on

shore and the sailor on the sea are Breton to the core. Never has

Brittany been called charming or gracious, never lovely or sweet, but

always cold, though not so in climate, which is always terrible and

austere.

But, for all that, it is delightful, and when one has tired of the

stupid gaieties of Switzerland or the Rhine, let him rough it a bit

among the low hills and valleys of the Côtes du Nord, or the rocky

promontories and inlets of Finistère, or, on the south coast between

Quimper and Nantes, on one of those little tidal rivers such as the

Aven, and let him learn for himself that there is something new under

the sun, even on well-trodden ground.

Truth to tell, Brittany is not nearly so well known to English-speaking

folk as it should be. There is a fringe of semi-invalid, semi-society

loiterers centred around St. Malo, and enlivened in the summer months by

the advent of a little world of literary and artistic folk from Paris.

Then there is an artist colony or two in Lower Brittany, where the

visitors work hard, dress uncouthly, and live cheaply for four or five

months of the year. At Nantes there is the overflow of tourists of

convention from the châteaux district of Touraine, and up and down the

length and breadth of Brittany, from Mont St. Michel to St. Nazaire, and

from Dol to Brest, are to be found occasional wanderers on bicycles or

in motor-cars.

The great mass, however, is herded around the conventionally “gay” five

o’clock resorts of Dinard, Paramé, and St. Malo, and in by far the

greater area of the province the seeker for pleasure and true

edification is far more rare than is popularly supposed. The occasional

rather wretched hotel has hitherto kept the fastidious away, and the

terrific hobnails of the Breton wooden shoe have all but driven

travellers in motor-cars and bicycle riders to despair. Both these

deterrents, real and fancied, are disappearing, however. The hygienic

bedrooms of the Touring Club are found here and there, and the peasants,

or, at least, some of them, now wear a sort of cast-iron sole

apparently clamped or riveted to the wooden shoe; at least there are no

big, pointed, mushroom-headed tacks to drop out, point uppermost, in dry

weather.

The topographical aspect of Brittany is largely due to the two great

zones of granite formation which come together at their western

extremities,--the mountains of Alençon and the jutting rocks that come

to the surface from Poitou northward.

In general, the whole aspect of Brittany echoes the words of Brizeaux,

the Lorient poet:

“O terre de granit, recouverte de chênes.”

One would hardly call Brittany mountainous, but its elevations are

notable, nevertheless, in that they rise, for the most part, abruptly

from the dead level of the ocean. Inland, the topography takes on more

of the nature of a rolling moorland, with granite cropping out here and

there in the elevations. The following quatrain describes it exactly:

“À MON PAYS

“O ma chère Bretagne,

Que j’aime tes halliers,

Tes verdoyants graniers,

Et ta noire montagne.”

--_Corbinais._

The greatest altitudes in Brittany are: The Sillon de Bretagne (near

Savenay), eighty-nine metres; La Motte (Montagnes Noires between Quimper

and Brest), 289 metres; Menez Hom (Montagnes Noires), 330 metres; Mont

St. Michel (Montagne d’Arrée), 391 metres.

The Breton rivers are not great rivers as the waterways of the world go,

although they are important indeed to the country which they irrigate.

Chief among them are the Vilaine, navigable to Rennes, the Rance, the

Odet, the Aulne, and of course the Loire, which flanks the southern

boundary of the old province nearly up to its juncture with the Mayenne,

and continues its navigable length in Brittany up to, and a trifle

beyond, the town of the same name. The Couesnon, flowing northward

into the vast Bay of Mont St. Michel, forms the northeastern boundary

separating Brittany from Normandy.

The great length of irregular coast-line accounts for the continuation

of the generally severe and stern aspect of the interior, the sombre

granite cliffs jutting far out into the open, half-enclosing great bays

and forming promontories and headlands which are characteristically

Breton and nothing else. They might resemble those of the Greek

mainland and archipelago were they but environed with the life and

languor of the South, but, as it is, they are Breton through and

through, and their people have all their hopes and sympathies wrapped up

in the occupations of a colder clime.

The old territorial limits of the Province of Brittany embraced a small

tract south of the Loire, known as _Le Rais_, or the Retz country.

Here is Clisson, the feudal castle and estate so constantly recurring in

French history. Pornic, Paimbœuf, and the Lac de Grande Lieu also lie

southward of the Loire in this old appanage, but, in the main, Breton

history was played on the Armorican peninsula north of the Loire.

The height of the tides on the Breton coast varies considerably. All

this is caused by the flow of the North Sea and the Straits of Calais

meeting the current coming directly from the Atlantic, so that in some

instances the flood-tide rises to a height of from fifty to sixty feet

above “dead water,” as the French call it.

The immense Bay of Mont St. Michel, at low water, is a stretch of bare

sand more than three hundred square kilometres in extent, but it is

completely covered and converted into a great tranquil gulf by the

rising tide.

[Illustration: _Croisic_]

At Croisic, at the mouth of the Loire, there is a 5.16 metre rise of

the tide, which around the Breton coast-line varies as follows:

Port Navalo, Morbihan 4.72

Lorient 4.60

Concarneau 4.68

Douarnenez 6.16

Brest 6.42

Ouessant 6.38

Roscoff 8.22

Ile Brehat 9.90

St. Malo 11.44

Iles Chausey 11.74

Mont St. Michel 12.30

The aspect of the region round about Dol, in the north, is that of a

little Holland, with its flats and windmills and its cultivated ground

protected from the sea by a rim of downs and dikes. It is not so very

great an expanse that follows these outlines, but the likeness is one

to be remarked. To the westward lie the jutting rocks and capes, beyond

which are the isolated islands of Ouessant and its fellows, and all

around the coast extend landlocked bays and harbours sheltering the

great fishing ports of Douarnenez and Concarneau and the commercial

ports of St. Malo, Morlaix, Brest, Lorient, and Vannes.

From a military and strategic point of view the whole northwest coast of

France, from the mouth of the Loire through Brittany and Normandy, is

exceedingly well protected, with a great port and base of supplies both

at Brest in Brittany and at Cherbourg in Normandy.

Forts Minden, Ville Martin, and Penthièvre, Port Louis, Lorient, and

Brest, and the Forts du Pilier, Le Palais, Lacroix, Cezon, and Château

du Taureau, with St. Malo and Fort des Rimains, protect the whole Breton

seashore in practically unassailable fashion, though there are still the

sea fights at Ouessant, in 1778 and 1794, and The Hogue in 1692, to say

nothing of the land engagements at Quiberon in 1795, to remember.

[Illustration: Map of Bretagne]

CHAPTER IV.

TRAVEL ROUTES IN BRITTANY

Tourists are commonly supposed to belong to the pleasure-seeking

or invalid class, and so they mostly do, still one may travel for

instruction (which is pleasure, also) and be mindful of the conditions

of life around him, and profit accordingly, unless he absolutely demands

the life of the boulevards of Paris or the homœopathic excitements of

the little horses in some popular watering-place.

It is undoubtedly true that most tourists are of limited interests,

which may be pleasure, or art, or architecture, or worshipping at

historical shrines. All this is well enough in its way, but if one could

combine a modicum of each he would profit much more largely, to say

nothing of being amused and instructed, too.

The time has long since passed when travellers reviled Brittany as

a province where “husbandry was no further advanced than among the

Hurons,” as a writer of the eighteenth century said within twenty-four

hours after he had crossed the boundary between Normandy and Brittany,

at Pontorson, where the causeway road branches off to Mont St. Michel.

Evidences of husbandry are still very much to the fore, but it is more

advanced in the interior, at least; on the coast the harvest of the sea

takes its place.

Brittany, in husbandry, may not be so advanced as some other parts.

There are no such elaborate operations going on here as in the regions

where high farming is practised--in Beauce, or Normandy, or Anjou.

Neither are such numbers of mechanical farming-tools in operation,

but in spite of all this there is a very considerable and prosperous

industry born of the soil of which most strangers to Brittany, and some

who have travelled there, are entirely ignorant. All along the great

highways crossing and recrossing Brittany one sees the little roadside

farms with their attendant small flocks of live stock, sheep, cattle,

geese, ducks, and fowls, which point, at any rate, to the fact that the

peasant need not be as ill-nourished as he is generally supposed to be;

and really he is not.

The charm of journeying by road in France is indescribable, perhaps,

to its fullest degree. Natural beauties count for much, but in a land

peopled with historic castles, churches, and abbeys, as Normandy and

Brittany are, it is found doubly enjoyable even though one professes no

expert architectural knowledge, or no profound aptitude for historical

research. These, however, are but side-lights, which make the actual

pilgrimage among such shrines greatly to be cherished among one’s

personal experiences.

It is the whole which pleases, and not fragmentary and piecemeal

beauties and charms; and never was this more true than of a well-beloved

land, be it one’s own or an alien shore.

Brittany and its travel routes, whether by road or rail, offer as full a

measure of all these attractions as it is possible for one to conceive.

The great highways of Brittany have not the same favour with travellers

by road as those of other parts of France. They are equally important

and equally well cared for by a paternal government, but their inclines

are steeper--sometimes suicidal--and certainly more frequent than

elsewhere in France, and distances stretch out interminably.

[Illustration: _The Main Roads of Brittany_]

The great national road which stretches from Paris to Brest covers a

distance nearly equal to that from Paris to Turin, or from Paris to

Amsterdam.

There are, however, in Brittany no long stretches of unrolled road

surface, and for the most part the roadways are as smooth as can

anywhere be found. Were it not for the eternal switchbacks, and the

aforementioned hobnail, with its pointed end usually upmost, Brittany

would be a far more popular touring-ground for the automobile than it

is. The hooded cart of Normandy and Brittany, such as one meets going

to and from the market-towns, is another real dread to the man in the

motor-car.

It is not that the occupant is unwilling to hear one’s horn, but it is

almost impossible that he should against a head-wind, until you are

close upon him. It is useless to point to your ear as you whisk by and

ask him--in a shout--if he is deaf, or to say: “Well, now, you sleep

well.” He will pay little or no attention to you, and anyway, most

likely, he was _not_ asleep, as are so many of his fellows that one

meets on English roads.

In Brittany the traveller by road often meets an obstruction in the

shape of a flock of sheep slowly making its way toward one, or in the

opposite direction, or even a flock of ducks or geese, which are even

more dreadful. Sheep are stupid, hens and chickens are silly, but geese

are arrogant and obstinate.

It is very disconcerting, of course, for the motor-car driver at full

speed to have to draw in his ten, or twenty, or thirty horses in order

to avoid decapitating a whole goose and gosling family, but it lends a

charm to the travel, which a badly paved stretch of roadway--in Picardy,

for instance--wholly lacks.

Here when one does actually run into a flock of geese, such as one sees

on the high-coloured posters advertising a certain make of car, and in

the comic journals, it is one of the real humours of life. The amount of

curiosity an old goose or gander can show in a death-dealing motor-car

as it rushes by, and the chances they take of sudden death, are enough

to give an ordinarily careful driver innumerable heart-leaps.

This is about all the trouble one is likely to meet on Breton roads,

except, of course, the always present grazing cows, which here, though

they are always attended,--generally by a small boy or girl, who often

is not able to keep them in line as one would wish,--are allowed to

stray freely, and are not tethered as they are throughout Normandy.

It is not for the aforesaid reasons alone that motor-cars are scarce

in Brittany, for, after all, they form but minor troubles as compared

with the eccentricities of the machinery itself, and the tourist in

a motor-car is usually prepared for most things which are likely to

happen to him _en route_. So really if one likes a hilly country--and

it is not without its charms--Brittany offers much in the way of varied

and natural beauties that certain other provinces lack. Touraine, for

instance, delightful as it is as a touring-ground, is as proverbially

flat as a billiard-table.

There are, in the first place, not nearly so many motor-cars owned in

Brittany, and accordingly there are astonishingly few shelters and

repairers. Apparently, the Breton does not care for the new-fangled

means of locomotion, not recognizing, perhaps, that it has come to stay.

Still less does the Breton peasant’s brother, the Breton sailor or

fisherman, care for the motor-boat, which ought to have a great vogue in

such great inland seas as Morbihan, the Bay of Douarnenez, or the Goulet

or the roadstead of Brest.

The sailor of Brest or Lorient and the little fishing villages of the

west will tell you: “I like my boat better, with my sail and my arms

for motors.”

Often these great stretches of Breton roadway show an aspect of human

nature that is probably the same the world over; a peasant man or woman

is leading a cow,--always on the wrong side of the road, of course,--or

a sleepy farm-hand is drawing his cart to or from market,--still on the

wrong side of the road,--when the whirr and snort of a motor-car does

something more than awaken echoes.

The cows entangle themselves in their leading ropes, and the usually

placid horses bolt with the cart into the ditch. The native, of course,

reviles the car and its occupants, not because he hates them,--for they

are one of the mainstays of the inns of the countryside,--but merely to

display that untamable spirit of independence, which every mother’s son

of a French peasant has developed to a high degree.

In Brittany, as in most other lands,--in summer,--the traveller by road

gathers in a fine crop of wingy, stingy things, which project themselves

into one’s eyes with a formidable force when one goes at them with a

swift-moving car.

Occasionally one thinks he has come upon a vast convention of them,

so many are they in numbers and variety--flies, wasps, bees, and what

not, with a peculiar Gallic species of fly so infinitesimal that one

only stops to clear them out when he feels that his eyes are so full

of them that they may be uncomfortably crowded. The real or fabled

Jersey mosquito would go out of business with his Breton brother as a

competitor. Truly this is a new terror, and one that certainly was not

apparent, to anything like the present extent, before the advent of the

motor-car.

One comes upon a dull week in Brittany often, even in summer, when the

sky remains overcast, and great clouds roll up from out of the western

ocean. Often it is not cold, but it is bitterly damp and sticky, even

though it does not rain, but the native does not seem to mind it, at

least, he never complains.

The only objector ever met with by the writer was a Gascon who kept

a pharmacy at Quimper. He discussed it as follows: “Hideous country!

The wind blows here every day in the year, and the rest of the time it

rains,” he continued, enigmatically. “Yes, that abominable wind always

plays the same trick on me! What a country!” He was probably thinking of

his own bright and sunny home in the South, where seldom, if ever, are

conditions other than brilliantly tranquil.

There are three great highroads which cross Brittany from east to west,

the main road of Brittany from Alençon in Normandy, through Mayenne,

Fougères, Dol, Dinan, Guingamp, and Morlaix to Brest; the southern road

from Paris via Le Mans, or even following the Loire valley down from

Orleans to Nantes, and thence westward via Vannes, Lorient, and Quimper

to Brest, thus making the complete circuit of the Breton coast. A midway

course lies in almost a direct line east and west through Laval, Vitré,

Rennes, Ploërmel, Pontivy, and Carhaix.

These three highroads cover completely the itinerary of Brittany, in so

far as they follow the north and south coast and the country-side lying

between.

Cross country, from the Bay of Mont St. Michel to the mouth of the

Loire, one “route nationale” lies directly through Rennes, and another

ends at Vannes, in Morbihan.

These cover practically all the regular lines of traffic, and include

all the chief points of historical and topographical instances.

[Illustration: _Travel Routes in Brittany_]

Distances of themselves are not great in Brittany. From St. Malo to

Nantes is but 180 kilometres; from Laval to Brest but 337 kilometres;

and from Nantes to Brest is but 324 kilometres.

In these days of motor-cars and even bicycles, these distances are not

great, and so long as they are not taken at a rush,--which forbids

enjoyment,--they form no drawback to the pleasures of travel by road in

Brittany. One has only to add two or three hundred kilometres more, in

order to reach the starting-points of Nantes, Laval, or St. Malo from

Paris. Then the tour may seem a lengthy one; but even this is nothing

to find fault with; the intermediate country is in itself delightful,

whether one journeys down through the Orleanais, Touraine, and Anjou, or

westward through the heart of Normandy.

The railways in Brittany, except on some of the cross-country routes,

are developed to a high stage of efficiency. The great express lines of

the Western Railroad to St. Malo and to Brest run due west from Paris,

straight almost as the crow flies. Again, one may make his entry via

Nantes and the Loire valley through Touraine and Anjou by the Orleans

line, and have the satisfaction of setting out from Paris by the world’s

finest and most modern railway station, that wonderfully convenient and

artistic structure on the Quay of Orsay.

Rennes is the great railway centre of Brittany, and accordingly all

roads lead to Rennes. Here one may make up his itinerary at a price

which will include nearly every place west of that point for a matter

of _frcs._ 65 for first-class, and _frcs._ 50, second-class, and if

he tell the clerk of the booking-office at his point of departure for

Rennes that he intends doing this (and agrees with the formalities) he

will get a discount of forty per cent, on the price of first or second

class tickets up to that point. A plan of this itinerary and further

particulars are given in the appendix.

Third-class railway travel in Brittany ought to form one of the

long-remembered experiences of one’s visit to that province.

There is much amusement to be got out of a journey across Brittany from

St. Malo to Nantes, with mob-capped peasant-folk and blue-bloused and

picturesque farmers, all laden with huge baskets and bundles, and an

occasional live fowl, or perhaps a rabbit, or even a guinea-pig, though

one must not believe that Frenchmen eat guinea-pigs. The writer, at

least, never saw one being eaten, though what use they are really put to

is an open question.

Occasionally there will be a want of elbow-room in a third-class

carriage, but this is no great inconvenience, as the Breton mostly

travels short distances only, and at the next station one may be left

alone with only a drowsy Breton sailor--off on a furlough from a

man-of-war--to keep him company, with his red-knobbed tam-o’-shanter

rakishly over one ear.

Often a _foreigner_ will throw himself into one’s compartment,--an

American or an English artist, with his sketching paraphernalia, white

umbrella and all,--for artist-folk are mostly of the genus who travel

third-class. Good-naturedly enough, if his journey be a long one, he

will tell you much of the country round about, for your artist is one

who knows the byways as well as the highways--and perhaps a little

better. By this procedure, one stands a chance of gathering information

as well as being edified and amused.

CHAPTER V.

THE BRETON TONGUE AND LEGEND

The speech of Brittany, like its legend and folk-lore, has ever been a

prolific subject with many writers of many opinions.

The comparison of the speech of the Welshman with that of the Breton

has often been made, but by no one so successfully as by Henri Martin,

the historian, who, in writing of his travels in Wales, told how he had

chatted with the Celtic population there and made himself thoroughly

understood through his knowledge of Breton speech.

In its earliest phases, the Breton tongue had a literature of its own,

at least a spoken literature, coming from the mouths of its bards

and popular poets. In our own day, too, Brittany has its own songs

and verses, which, though many of them have not known the medium of

printer’s ink, have come down from past generations.

The three ancient Armorican kingdoms or states, Domnonée, Cornouaille,

and the Bro-Waroch, had their own distinct dialects.

There is and was a considerable variation in the speech throughout

Brittany, though it is and was all Breton. The dialects of Vannes,

Quimper, and Tréguier are the least known outside their own immediate

neighbourhood; the Léonais of St. Pol de Léon is the regular and common

tongue of all Bas Bretons.

The old-time limits of the Breton tongue are wavering to-day, and

from time to time have drawn appreciably toward the west, so that the

boundary-line, which once ran from the mouth of the Loire to Mont St.

Michel, now starts at the mouth of the Vilaine, and finishes at a point

on the northern coast, a little to the westward of St. Brieuc.

It was during the decadence of the Breton tongue--known to philologists

as the third period--that the monk Abelard cried out: “The Breton tongue

makes me blush with shame.”

The nearer one comes to Finistère, the less liable he is to meet the

French tongue unadulterated. The numbers knowing the Breton tongue alone

more than equal those who know French and Breton, leaving those who know

French alone vastly in the minority. The figures seem astonishing

to one who does not know the country, but they are unassailable,

nevertheless.

[Illustration: _St. Pol de Léon_]

Here in this department at least, and to a lesser degree in the Côtes

du Nord and the Morbihan provinces, one is likely enough to hear

lisped out, as if it were the effort of an Englishman: “_Je na sais

pas ce que vous dîtes_,” or “_Je n’entend rien_.” No great hardship or

inconvenience is inflicted upon one by all this, but now and again one

wishes he were a Welshman, for the only foreigners who can understand

the lingo are Taffy’s fellow country-men.

Breton legend is as weird and varied as that of any land. It is

astonishingly convincing, too, from the story of King Grollo and

his wicked daughter, who came from the Britain across the seas, the

Bluebeard legend, the Arthurian legend, which Bretons claim as their

own, as do Britons, to those less incredible tales of the Corsairs of

St. Malo and the exploits of Duguesclin and Surcouf.

[Illustration: _The Breton Tongue_]

There is a quaint Breton saying referring to little worries, which

runs thus: “When the wind blows up from the sea, I turn my barrel to

the north; when it blows down from the hills, I turn my barrel to the

south.” “And when it blows all four ways at once?” “Why, then I crawl

under the barrel.”

This is exactly the Breton’s attitude toward life to-day, but he finds

a deal of consolation in his legends and songs of the past, and in his

ruffled moments they serve to put him in a good humour again. This is

something more than mere superstition, it is a philosophical turn of

mind, and that is good for a man. The heroes of legend are frequently

those of history. One may cite Joan of Arc with relation to old France,

and Duguesclin in Brittany. There is a difference, of course, and it is

wide, but the comparison will serve, as there is no other character in

all the history of Brittany--unless it be that of Duguay-Trouin, the

Corsair of St. Malo--who stands out so distinctly in the popular mind as

does Duguesclin, “the real Breton.”

There is none in his own country, however illiterate he may be, and the

Breton peasant, in some parts, is notoriously illiterate, who knows

not this hero’s name and glory. Still more deeply rooted are the old

folk-lore superstitions which have come down through the ages by word of

mouth, no doubt with the accruing additions of time.

Morlaix is the very centre of a land of mystery, tradition, and

superstition. Among these superstitious legends, “Jan Gant y tan,” as it

is known by its Breton title, stands out grimly.

Jan, it seems, is a species of demon who carries by night five candles

on the five fingers of each hand, and waves them wildly about, calling

down wrath upon those who may have offended him.

Another is to the effect that hobgoblins eat the cream which rises on

milk at night.

Yet another superstition is that the call of the cuckoo announces the

year of one’s marriage or death.

Another, and perhaps the most curious of all, is that, if an infant by

any chance gets his clothes wet at certain pools or fountains, he will

die within a year, but he will live long years if he fall in, yet is

able to preserve his garments from all dampness.

When one drinks of the Fountain of De Krignac three times within the

hour, says the peasant of Plougasnou, and is not cured of the fever, let

him abandon all thoughts of a remedy and prepare for death.

There are two legends associated with Brittany which are little known.

Both relate to Bluebeard. This legend is of Eastern origin, as far as

concerns the story of the man who slew his wives by dragging them about

by the hair, ultimately decapitating them; but the French Academy of

Inscriptions and Polite Learning evolves a sort of modern parallel as

another setting for the same apocryphal story. It concerns a certain

Trophime, the daughter of a Duke of Vannes, in the sixth century. She

was married to the Lord of Gonord, whose castle was situated on Mont

Castanes, and was the eighth wife of her husband. He killed her because

she discovered the bodies of her seven predecessors; but her sister Anne

prayed to St. Gildas, who came with her two brothers to the rescue. St.

Gildas restored Trophime to life, and the Bluebeard of Gonord and his

castle were swallowed up by the earth.

The origin of the story has always been in doubt, but the generally

accepted theory is that Perrault founded the tale on the history of

Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Rais.

The Academy, however, destroys all this early conjecture in favour of

the Gilles de Laval affair. Since Gilles de Laval was a kinsman of the

Dukes of Brittany, the following is given as his claim to having played

the part, though, as the report of the Academy goes on to say, De Laval

proved himself to be but a fanatical sorcerer.

[Illustration: _Gilles de Laval, after an engraving of the fifteenth

century in the Bibliothèque Nationale._]

Gilles de Laval was born in 1404, and was a member of the family of

Laval-Montmorency. He was handsome, well born, rich, and a most valiant

soldier, and one of the warmest supporters of Joan of Arc, whom he

defended against all who spoke ill of her, constituting himself her

personal champion. He fought valiantly with the “Maid,” and was made a

marshal of France when twenty-six years of age. He was very wealthy,

and he doubled his possessions when he married at the early age of

sixteen. His extravagances, however, were greater than his riches. He

had a refined taste, and loved illuminated manuscripts, stamped Spanish

leather, Flemish tapestries, Oriental carpets, gold and silver plate,

music, and mystery plays. After peace was made, he and his wife retired

to their castles and lands in the Vendée, where Gilles soon found

himself hopelessly in debt. He had to find money somehow, for he was of

a fine, open-handed disposition, and had never denied himself anything.

It was only natural in that century that he should turn his thoughts

toward alchemy and the philosopher’s stone.

Francesco Prelati, an Italian with a reputation as a magician and a

maker of gold, was installed, with all his alchemist’s apparatus, in

Gilles’s castle; but when he was asked to make gold, he confided to

his patron that it would be necessary to summon the aid of the devil,

and that for this purpose the blood of young children was absolutely

required. The two then scoured the country round for children, whom

they murdered with horrible rites, until at last their crimes became

so notorious that they were arrested and tried at Nantes. Gilles de

Laval and his accomplice were accused of murdering no fewer than twelve

hundred children, and were tried for sorcery and found guilty. The Lord

of Laval was strangled, and his body was burned; but Francesco Prelati,

as a mere vulgar sorcerer, was burned alive.

At Saint Cast in the Côtes du Nord, one hears vague and fabulous reports

from the natives, even to-day, of a pirate ship--a veritable sister

ship to those of Duguay-Trouin of St. Malo--named the _Perillon_ and

commanded by one Besnard, known as the terror of the seas. Like other

songs of seafarers of the days gone by, that concerning the terror of

the seas is good enough to incorporate into the text of some rattling

story of pirates and corsairs, such as boys--and some grown-ups--the

world over like. Another popular Breton air was known as “Biron ha

D’Estin” (“Byron and D’Estaing”), and had to do with the war in America.

Another was the “Chant du Pilote,” and had for its subject the combat of

the _Surveillante_ and the forts at Quebec in 1780.

Of the same period was the “Corsairs’ Song,” which is very well known

throughout Upper Brittany even to-day, beginning thus:

“Le trente-un du mois d’août.”

Throughout Upper Brittany also one hears the old housewives still

mumbling the old words and air of the song current in the times of

Francis the First.

It was when the prince was treating for his release from captivity that

the words first took shape and form:

“Quand le roi départit de France,

Vive le roi!

À la male heure il départit,

Vive Louis!

À la male heure il départit (bis).

* * *

Il départit jour de dimanche.

* * *

Je ne suis pas le roi de France.

* * *

Je suis un pauvre gentilhomme

Qui va de pays en pays.

* * *

Retourne-t-en vite à Paris.”

CHAPTER VI.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

To-day the Bretons are the most loyal of all the citizens of the great

republic of France. In reality they are a most democratic people, though

they often affect a devotion for old institutions now defunct. They may

be a superstitious race, but they are not suspicious, although they have

marked prejudices. When thoroughly understood, they are both likable and

lovable, though their aspect be one of a certain sternness and aloofness

toward the stranger. Their weapons are all in plain view, however, like

the hedgehog’s; there is nothing concealed to thwart one’s desires for

relations with them.

Their country, their climate, and their environment have much to do

with their character, manners, and customs; and environment--as some

one may have said before--is the greatest influence at work in shaping

the attitude of a people toward an outsider, and every one is still an

outsider to a Breton, be he French, English, or American.

The Breton is really a gayer person than his expression leads one to

suppose. Madame de Sévigné wrote, with some assurance, as was her wont:

“You make me prefer the gamesomeness of our Bretons to the perfumed

idleness of the Provençals.”

Certainly, to one who knows both races, the comparison was well made. It

is a case of doing mischief against doing nothing.

Brittany has not Normandy’s general air of prosperity, and indeed at

times there is a very near approach to poverty and distress, and then it

is bruited abroad in the public prints that the fisheries have proved a

failure.

The Breton farming peasant, however, is not the poverty-stricken wretch

that he has sometimes been painted. He lives humbly, and eats vast

quantities of potatoes and bread, little meat, some fish, always a

salad, and, usually, a morsel of cheese, but he eats it off a cleanly

scrubbed bare board and from clean and unchipped plates.

In his stable, such few belongings in the form of live stock as he has

are well fed and contented, and his chickens and ducks and pigs and cows

are as much a pride and profit to him as to the peasant of other parts;

but, after all, Brittany is not a land of milk and honey. The peasant

lives in the atmosphere of dogged, obstinate labour, but he draws a

competence from it, and it is mostly those who live in the seacoast

villages, and those who will huddle themselves in and about the large

towns and ports, such as Quimper and Brest, that are ever in want, and

then only because of some untoward, unexpected circumstance.

Agriculture and the business of the sea are closely allied in Brittany.

Hundreds upon hundreds of young men work in the winter upon farms far

inland, and come down to the sea with the coming of February and March,

to ship in some longshore fishing-smack, or even to go as far away as

Newfoundland, the Orkneys, or to Iceland.

This gives not only a peculiar blend of character, but also a peculiar

cast of countenance to the Breton; he is a sort of half-land and

half-sea specimen of humanity, and handy at the business of either.

In many ports, the Breton struggles continually against shifting

sand,--sand which is constantly shifting when piled in banks on the

seashore, and becomes of the nature of quicksand when lying beneath the

water where the Breton moors his lobster-pots. Between the two, he is

constantly harassed, and until the off season comes has little of that

gaiety into which he periodically relaxes. Every one will remark that

the aspect of both men and women is sombre and dark, even though their

spontaneous gaiety and dress on the feast of a patron saint or at a

great pardon gives one the impression of gladness.

One sees this when on the great holidays the Breton peasant is moved

to song, and chants such lines as the following, which more nearly

correspond in sentiment to “We won’t go home till morning” than anything

else that can be thought of.

“J’ai deux grands bœufs dans mon étable,

J’ai deux grands bœufs marqués de rouge;

Ils gagnent plus dans une semaine

Qu’ils n’en ont couté, qu’ils n’en ont couté.

J’aime Jeanne ma femme!

Eh bien! j’aimerais mieux la voir mourir,

Que de voir mourir mes bœufs.”

Doubtless there is not so much hard-heartedness about the sentiment as

is expressed by the words, which, to say the least and the most, are not

wholly up to the standard of “love, cherish, and protect.”

Once in awhile one sees the type of man who is known among his fellows

as _Breton des plus Bretons_. Like his Norman brother, the Breton in

the off season works hard playing dominoes or cards in the taverns,

where one reads on a sign over the door that _Jean X donne à boire et à

manger_, that is, if the sign be not in Breton, which more often than

not it is.

The landlord does not exactly “give” his fare; he exchanges it for

copper sous, but he caters for the inner man at absurdly small prices,

and accordingly is well patronized, in spite of his refusal of credit.

Bowls is the national game of Brittany, having a greater hold upon the

simple-minded Breton, particularly in the neighbourhood of the Lannion,

than any other amusement. No respectably ambitious inn in all Brittany

is without its bowling-alley. As a distraction, it is mild and harmless,

and withal good exercise, as we all know.

The religious fervour of the Breton folk has been remarked of all who

know them howsoever slightly. It is universal, and, if it be more

apparent in one place than any other, it is in the Department of

Finistère, and it is not in the cities and towns that it reaches its

greatest height, but mostly in the country-side, or on the seacoast

among the labourers and the fisher-folk.

The religion of Brittany to-day is of the people and for the people. It

is one of the great questions of the world to-day, but from a dogmatic

point of view it shall have no discussion here. Suffice it to say that

throughout France, with the numerous great, and nearly always empty,

churches ever before one, one can but realize that the power of the

Church is not what it once was.

The churchgoers are chiefly women; seldom, if ever, except on a

great feast-day, are the churches filled with a congregation at all

representative of the population of the parish, and even in the great

cathedrals the same impression nearly always holds good.

In Brittany, the case is somewhat different, in the country districts

at least, and even at Roscoff, Quimper, Vannes, and Rennes, where

there are great cathedrals. In Brittany, in every parish church and at

every wayside shrine, is almost always to be found not only a little

knot of devoutly kneeling peasants, but, on all occasions of mark, a

congregation overflowing beyond the doors. What this all signifies, as

before said, is no concern of the writer of this book. It is simply a

recorded state of affairs, and, judging from the attitude of the people

themselves--when seen on the spot--toward the subject of religion,

the most liberal thinker would hardly consider that here in Brittany

religion was anything else than spontaneous devotion on the part of the

people.

Of religion and priests, Brittany is full, but the people are not by

any means priest-ridden, as many uncharitable and slack observers have

asserted before now. No priest bids a Breton worship at any shrine. They

do it of their own free will, and, though a churchman always officiates

at the great pardons and festivals, the worshippers themselves are as

much the performers of the ceremony as the priest.

In Brittany to-day the piece of money which passes current in most

transactions, though in numbers it is infrequently handled by the

traveller, is _la pièce_, the half-franc or ten-sous coin.

It is confusing when you are bargaining for a carriage to drive to some

wayside shrine, to be told the price will be “_deux pièces_,” when--in

Normandy--you have just formed the habit of realizing offhand that _deux

cent sous_ is the same thing as ten francs. It’s all very simple, when

one knows what they are talking about, and the Breton likes still to

think his institutions are different from those of the rest of France,

and so he goes on bargaining in _pièces_, when in other parts they are

counting in _sous_, which is even more confusing, or in _francs_.

Most of the farmhouses of Brittany are constructed of stone and wood,

with their roofs covered with a straw thatch. Of course this is a

dangerous style of building to-day, as the authorities admit. Indeed

a decree has gone forth in some parts forbidding the erection of any

new straw-thatched building, and again in other parts against using

any structure so built as a dwelling-house. The law is not absolutely

observed, but it is by no means a dead letter, and the homely and

picturesque thatched roof has now all but disappeared, except from the

open country.

To enter the Breton peasant’s farmhouse, one almost invariably descends

a step. The interior is badly lighted, and worse ventilated, but, as

it is mostly the open-air life that the peasant and his family lead,

perhaps this does not so much matter. Usually the house is composed

of but one room, with a floor of hard-trodden earth. This is the

dining-room, kitchen, and bedroom of all the family. The ceiling is

composed of great rough-hewn rafters, sometimes even of trunks left

with the bark on, and from it are hung the knives and forks and dishes,

as in a ship’s cabin.

[Illustration: YOUNG BRETONS

_B. McManus--1905_]

Furniture has been reduced to the most simple formula. Two or three

great closed and panelled beds or bunks line one side of the wall, with

perhaps a wardrobe, where the “Sunday-best” of the whole household is

kept. Beneath the great beds is a series of oaken chests, and there

the household linen is stored. These, with a long table, with a bench

and a wide passage on either side, the great, yawning fireplace,

with its crane and the inevitable highly polished pots and pans, form

the furnishings of this remarkable apartment. All this is homely and

strange, but it is comfortable enough for the occupants, if one does not

mind being crowded, and it is the typical dwelling throughout Brittany.

Everywhere in the Breton country one sees oxen, cattle, and, above

all, the horses of the indefatigable Breton race, “ready and willing

to work and full of spirit in warfare.” So said Eugene Sue, and the

same observation holds true to-day. None of the animals are so large

or so fat as in the neighbouring provinces, but this is not because of

malnutrition or because they are ill-tended. The cows of Brittany are by

no means such plump, dainty animals as the cows of the Cotentin, and the

Breton horses are certainly undersized when compared to the Norman sires

and the great-footed Percherons, but one and all possess good qualities

purely their own, and one thing above all should be noted,--Brittany is

exceedingly rich grazing country, if not agricultural.

[Illustration: _From the_ ARTIST’S SKETCH BOOK.]

Much of the local character is shown in the dress of the people, and

throughout the country-side and the seacoast villages alike both

men and women show that remarkable attention to dress which marks the

strong individuality of the race,--individuality which has come down

through the ages, and endures to this day in very nearly, if not quite

all, its original aspect. One knows this dress through photographic

reproductions, and from having occasionally seen it on the comic opera

stage, but actually to live among such picturesquely dressed folk is

like a step back into the past.

[Illustration: LA COIFFE POLKA--_The Smallest Coiffe in Brittany_

B. McM. 1905]

The costumes of Brittany are greatly varied, but all look theatrical,

and many of them are remarkably embroidered in multicoloured braid. On

all great occasions, feast-days and fairs, on Sundays and on the days

of the pardons, many ancient costumes, not modern reproductions, are

seen. Particularly is this to be noted at Pont l’Abbé, Pont Aven, and

elsewhere in the far west. The coifs of the women and the embroidered

waistcoats and velvet-ribboned hats of the men mark them as a species of

Frenchmen different from their Norman brethren; lovers of fanciful dress

and customs quite Southern in gorgeousness, and not the least like the

colder fashions of other dwellers in the same latitude.

At Quimper is an interesting Ethnological Museum, where one may study

the subject at length, and in the town one may buy fabrics and stuffs

and articles of wearing apparel fashioned in the genuine Breton manner.

The greatest activity of life in Brittany is in the coast towns, for

there the populace has for the longest time been in touch with the ideas

of an advanced civilization.

[Illustration: _Ironing Coifs_]

By the very geographic position of Brittany this was inevitable, as the

country was not in the direct path of any great current of commerce,

and had no great navigable river, except the Loire, which bordered it

upon the south. There had been malicious critics of things Breton before

him, but there could have been no real justification for the lament of

Paul St. Victor, who must have had an exceedingly bad dinner at his inn

when he delivered himself of the following:

“Breton dialect is full of barbarisms, and Brittany is not even a

healthy country for painters. It is a land of monasteries and dull

routine; the same types and the same costumes; no men, no women, all

Bretons, all of Brittany.”

As a race, the Breton may well be summed up as follows: They are the

descendants of the men of a primitive epoch, from whom they inherit

traits which even time has not entirely eradicated. Their intuitions are

correct, and their convictions profound; their will tenacious, and their

energies equal to all that may be demanded of them. They are proud,

truthful, courageous, intrepid, hospitable, and religious.

The manufacturing industry throughout Brittany is practically null, if

one except the work of the great arsenals and ship-building ports, and

the production of such articles of local consumption as sail-cloth.

Flax and hemp are grown in considerable quantities, but the ordinary

crops of cereals rise to nothing like the proportions of those reared

in Normandy or Perche. The Breton is strong on bee-keeping, however,

and keenly watches the busy workers of his hives as they gather their

harvest from the abundant crop of wild flowers covering the hillsides.

[Illustration: _Breton Types_]

The Breton communes are of vast extent compared with those of other

parts of France, but the population is scattered. Gathered around the

parish church are the dwellings of the market-towns of three, four,

or five hundred inhabitants or more. Upon the whole, Brittany is not

thinly peopled, the mean of its population exceeding that of most of

the other provinces of France. Whatever the aborigines were, whether

of Indo-Germanique type or of a species hitherto unplaced, the present

Breton population has been developed along lines close to those of

Britain. And the Bretons are not far behind, and herein undoubtedly lies

the charm of Brittany for the English-speaking traveller.

Writing of his stay at Guingamp,--which is about the dividing line

where one passes from the zone of the French tongue to that of the

Breton, where one is frequently to hear the short exclamation, “I do

not understand you,”--Arthur Young tells us of putting up at a roadside

inn “where the hangings over his bed were full of cobwebs and spiders.”

The inn-keeper remarked to him that he had “a superb English mare,” and

wished to buy it from him. “I gave him half a dozen flowers of French

eloquence for his impertinence,” said the witty traveller, “when he

thought proper to leave me and my spiders in peace.” “Apropos of the

breed of horses in Lower Brittany,” he continues, “they are capital

hunters, and yet my ordinary little English mare was much admired, while

every stable round about is filled with a pack of these little pony

stallions sufficient to perpetuate the local breed for long to come.”

To the humble inn--one of the regular posting-houses on the great

highroad from Paris to Brest--he is not so complimentary. “This

villainous hole,” said he, “which calls itself a great house, is the

best inn of the town, at which marshals of France, dukes, peers,

countesses, and so forth, must now and then, by the accidents to

which long journeys are subject, have found themselves. What are we

to think of a country that has made, in the eighteenth century, no

better provision for its travellers?” In this our author was clearly a

faultfinder, or at least he was unfortunate in not living at a later

day, for the above is certainly not true of the inns of France to-day,

though it may truthfully be said that, even to-day, the inns of Brittany

are a _little_ backward, but it is not true of the Hôtel de France at

Guingamp, which has even a dark room for the kodaker, and a _fossé_ for

the motor-car traveller.

CHAPTER VII.

THE FISHERIES

What the cider-apple crop is to Normandy, that the fisheries are to

Brittany, and more, for the fisheries turn over more money by far than

the cider of Normandy, which is grown purely for home consumption. The

Breton young person of the male sex takes to the sea in the little

pilchard-boats, the three-masters of the deep-sea fishery, or the

whalers, for the purpose of earning his livelihood, and also to secure a

prescribed term of exemption from military or naval service. With such

an object, it is no wonder that the industry employs so many hands,

and has become so important and considerable in its returns. Of course

the geographical position of the country has more than a little to do

with this, and also the stony soil of the country-side, suggesting the

harvest of the sea as a more ample crop.

In Brittany, the sea nourishes the land, though perhaps but meagrely.

[Illustration: _Douarnenez_]

From the mouth of the Loire, around Finistère to Lannion, thousands upon

thousands of the inhabitants live by the harvest of the sea, whereas,

if it were not for this, they might be forced to emigrate, or to hie

themselves to the large towns, there to herd in unsanitary quarters,

which is worse.

The pilchard fishery is practically at its best directly off the

Quiberon peninsula, opposite Lorient and Concarneau. It is important

also just offshore from Audierne, Douarnenez, and Camaret.

It is well to recall just what the sardine really is, inasmuch as we

mostly buy any “little fishes boiled in oil,” which a pushful grocer

may thrust upon us. The “corporal’s stripe,” or the “cavalry corporal,”

as the sardine is known in France, is quite a different species from

the “armed policeman,” or common sea-garden herring. The Atlantic, the

North Sea, the Baltic, and some parts of the Mediterranean are its

home. It winters between 50 degrees and 60 degrees north latitude, in

a zone where the temperature is constant, but from March to October it

emigrates toward the north. Sometimes the future sardines are known as

pilchards; on the coasts of Normandy and Picardy as _hareng de Bergues_;

as sardines in Brittany; as _royan_ in Charente; and as _sarda_ and

_sardinyola_ in the Pyrénées Orientales.

The best and most common method of preserving the sardine is by slightly

heating the oil before placing it with the fish in those little tin

boxes known the world over; then the boxes are soldered and put into

a double boiler and boiled for the better part of an hour, when the

exceedingly simple process is finished. So simple is it, and so readily

accomplished without a great capital investment, that the wonder is

that imitations of the “real Brittany sardines” are not more successful

elsewhere. Up to this time, however, nothing rivals the Breton product.

Each year, at the feast of St. Jean, the barques set out from the

various ports, all richly decorated, and often sped on their way by a

religious ceremony, at which a priest officiates and gives his blessing.

The profits vary considerably one year from another, as may be supposed.

The catch is by no means constant. Its ordinary receipts approximate

twelve million francs, and, when it drops below this figure, distress

is likely to ensue, particularly if a hard winter falls upon Brittany,

which in truth it seldom does.

The little fish return each year, their feeding-ground scarcely varying

thirty miles in any direction. Thus, in season, the boats with their

red sails and blue and brown nets put off for the same spots where

they took their catches last year, only to find that the habits of the

sardines have not in the least changed. Five or six men to a boat is

the average crew, and, if the wind be contrary, their speed is much the

same by means of oars. Once arrived on the ground, the skipper of the

boat throws overboard at intervals some handfuls of _rogue_ as a bait;

this is a paste composed of the roe of the cod, and the only drawback is

that its cost is great. It comes mostly from Norway, and, after passing

through many intermediate hands, finally reaches the Breton fisherman,

who pays from sixty to seventy francs per hundred kilos. When the price

rises above this figure, the ingenious skipper fabricates a substitute,

a mixture of the real article and a local vegetable product known as

_farine d’arachides_. Its results are not so good as those from the real

article, and the local fishermen have a saying which is doubtless so

true as to have become a proverb: “One must bait with fish to catch a

fish.” Moreover, the fish caught by this means do not rank as a first

quality product in the markets of the Breton fishing ports, owing to

the after-effects on the fish, which shall be undefined here. It may be

well to recall the fact, however, and, if you get a sardine which is not

what you think it ought to be, and is too much like a bad oyster, you

may depend upon it that it was caught with _farine d’arachides_.

The Breton custom is to fish with buoyed nets, disdaining the drag-net,

though occasionally the latter is used.

The buoyed nets merely scoop the surface of the water, but the drag-nets

are sunk to a depth of from forty to fifty metres. When the skipper

estimates that the net is full, or, at least, that he shall have a haul

worthy of his trouble, all hands, singing as all sailor-folk do, pull

the net inboard, and, with a clever turn, empty it of its freight of

silver-scaled fish, which are forthwith scooped up and placed in great

baskets. On the return to port, the fishermen still in harbour, the

factory hands, and all the inhabitants who are not otherwise employed,

even though they ought to be, to say nothing of curious peasant-folk

from the inland towns, and always a generous sprinkling of tourists, and

the inevitable American artist, are in waiting, curious as to the luck.

Here the dealers come and bargain for the catch. Thirty to thirty-five

francs a thousand is usually the market price, and the choicest fish

naturally sell first. Speculation comes in now and then, and a scare

as to the prospect of the catch being too abundant is as common and as

disastrous as the fear that it may not be large enough. Sometimes the

price will fall as low as a franc and a half, and then come “trials

without number for the sailors,” as an old fisherman told the writer.

Certainly, if thirty francs a thousand be only a paying wage, a franc

and a half must mean about the same as utter failure to the crew, who

generally work the boat on shares.

The pilchard fishers have not forgotten the crisis of 1903, to combat

the recurrence of which it was proposed to establish special schools

for fishermen apprentices, and to forbid the use of the drag-net, and

they are seeking a rearrangement of conditions whereby the returns

may be more equally distributed among the workers than now. At the

present time the owner--who fits out the boat--claims a third, and the

skipper a third, the hands dividing the other third. According to this

arrangement, the novice or apprentice receives an infinitesimal share.

As a Frenchman, a Breton of Quimper who was not in the sardine business,

said to us: “_Ces pauvres diables! Ils mériteraient mieux._” All of

which is true, so let all well-wishers, who are fond of the “little

fishes boiled in oil” at their picnic dinners, give a thought now and

again to the Breton fisherman.

Besides the sardine fisheries, there is a considerable traffic from

such ports as Tréguier, St. Malo, and Morlaix in the deep-sea fishery,

and elsewhere in the mackerel and herring fishery in Icelandic waters

and the North Sea, and these give a prosperity that would otherwise be

wanting.

Statistics are dry reading, and so they are not given here, but there

are some curious things with regard to the laws regulating the offshore

and deep-sea fisheries of France, just as there are with respect to

the line fishing, by which method one can legally take fish only if he

actually hold his rod or line in his hand: he may not lay it on the

ground beside him and doze until an unusually frisky gudgeon wakes him

up.

On all of the French fishing-craft, which sail to the Banks or

to Iceland for cod, French salt must be used, and all masters of

fishing-craft must keep a supplementary log or diary relating to the

takings of fish alone.

In deep-sea fishing the law prescribes that a vessel which is fitted

out for the fishing-banks must remain on the ground a certain length of

time. This is to preclude the possibility of a decreasing catch, it is

to be presumed, as many a fisherman has been known, before now, to give

up the labour with holds half-filled simply because he had come upon a

meagre feeding-ground. It seems a wise precaution, and is another of

those parental acts which the French government is always undertaking

on behalf of its children. There is still the whalebone catch to reckon

with, for the French government specializes this industry, and offers

a bonus of seventy francs a ton displacement on leaving port for all

French equipments, and fifty francs per ton displacement upon returning

after the term prescribed.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

THE LOIRE IN BRITTANY

At Ancenis, the Loire, that mighty river which rises near the frontier

of Garde, a Mediterranean department, enters Brittany on its way to the

Atlantic. For more than nine hundred kilometres above this point, the

Loire has been navigable for such fresh-water craft as usually are found

upon great waterways, and, having passed Orleans, Blois, and Tours, and

broadened out into a great, wide, shallow stream, it is to be reckoned

as one of the world’s great rivers. Mostly its appearance is that of a

broad, tranquil, docile stream, with scarce enough depth of water to

make a respectable current, leaving its bed with its bars of sand and

pebbles bare to the sky. This lack of depth, except at occasional flood,

is the principal and obvious reason for the comparative absence of

water-borne traffic.

At the times of the great freshets there are twenty-three feet or more

registered on the huge black and white scale of the bridge at Ancenis,

and again it falls to less than a fourth of that height, and then there

is a mere rivulet of water trickling through the broad channel at

Chaumont, at Blois, or at Orleans.

In the olden time, as one passed from Anjou into Brittany, by way of

the valley of the Loire, he came to a great barrier across the road,--a

veritable frontier post, with a custom-house and examiners, as if

one were passing into a foreign country. The Revolution changed all

this, and now nothing but another of that vast family of great, white

departmental boundary-posts marks the dividing line between the Maine et

Loire and the Loire-Inférieure, the border departments between the old

province of the Counts of Anjou and that of the Breton dukes.

Just above Ancenis, one passes vineyard after vineyard, and château

after château follows rapidly in turn,--all very delightful, as Pepys

would have said. Not so the bridge at Ancenis, quite the ugliest

wire-rope affair to be seen on the Loire, and one is only too glad to

leave it behind, though it is with a real regret that he parts from

Ancenis itself.

Ancenis is one of those blessed spots possessing a château; it is

endowed with a wonderfully picturesque situation, and, moreover, is

capable of catering for the inner man in so satisfactory a manner that

one can but put it down in his books as one of the spots to be favoured.

The Barons of Ancenis were a long and picturesque line, and their local

fame has by no means perished. The old-time château, constructed in the

fifteenth century, was the masterwork of a famous Angevin architect,

Jean Lespine by name. To-day this fine building, or what is left of it,

has become an Ursuline boarding-house. Much is still left to tell the

story of its former greatness, but it is not so accessible as one would

like.

The most that can be remarked is a great doorway flanked by two towers,

with overpowering machicolations, another smaller tower,--a _tourelle_,

the French themselves would call it,--and a ruined pavilion, where, in

1468, Francis, Duke of Brittany, signed a treaty with Louis XI. On the

market-house of Ancenis is superimposed a sort of a belfry which, seen

in conjunction with the low-lying river-bank, imparts a low-country

aspect to the town. The old streets of Ancenis give shelter to many fine

mediæval houses, of which the most notable is perhaps the old “house of

the Croix de Lorraine.”

Below Ancenis, navigation is not so difficult, but the river current

is more strong. For a long distance, on the right bank, extends a

dike, carrying the roadway beside the river for a matter of a hundred

kilometres. This is one of the charms of travel by the Loire. When you

see any animation on its bosom, save an occasional fishing-punt, neither

it nor its occupant usually very animated, it is one of those great

flat-bottomed ferry-boats, with a square sail hung on a yard amidships,

such as Turner always made an accompaniment to his Loire landscapes.

Conditions of traffic thereon have not changed much since those days.

Whenever one sees a barge or a boat worthy of classification with those

on the rivers of the east or north, or of the canals, it is only about

a quarter of the usual size, so, altogether, in spite of its great

navigable length, the waterway of the Loire is more valuable as a

picturesque and healthful element of the landscape than as a commercial

artery. Below Nantes is the “section maritime,” which from Nantes to the

sea is a matter of some sixty kilometres. Here the boats increase in

number and size. They are known as lighters, barges, and tenders, and go

down with the river current and return on the incoming ebb, for here the

river is tidal.

From this one gathers that the Loire, so noble and magnificent, is the

most aristocratic river of France, and so, too, it is with respect to

its associations of the past.

It has not the grandeur of the Rhône when the spring freshets from the

Jura and the Swiss lakes have filled it to its banks; and it has not the

burning activity of the Seine, as it bears its thousands of boat-loads

of produce and merchandise to and from market; it has not the prettiness

of the Thames, or the legendary aspect of the Rhine; but, in a way, it

combines something of the features of all, and has, in addition, a tone

that is all its own, as it sweeps the horizon through its countless

miles of ample curves, and holds within its embrace all that is best

of mediæval and Renascence France, the period which built up the later

monarchy and--who shall say not?--the present prosperous nation.

The Loire is essentially a river of other days. Truly, as Mr. James has

said, “it is the very model of a generous, beneficent stream.... A wide

river which you may follow by a wide road is excellent company.” The

Frenchman himself is more flowery. “It is the noblest river of France.

Its basin is immense, magnificent.” All of which is true, too. For a

good bit of local colour of this region, one should read Chapter V. of

“The Regent’s Daughter,” by Dumas, wherein the willing Gaston, in the

midday sunshine of a winter’s day, made his way from Nantes to Paris,

“travelling slowly as far as Oudon opposite Champtoceaux.” “At Oudon he

halted and put up at the Char-Couronne, an inn with windows overlooking

the highroad.” Some stirring events took place here, but the reader is

referred to the pages of Dumas for the details.

Oudon, however, will not detain the cursory traveller of to-day, even if

he deigns to visit it at all.

Champtoceaux, on the other hand, though only a small town of thirteen

hundred inhabitants, does awaken interest. Formerly it belonged to the

Counts of Anjou, and then to the Dukes of Brittany.

Its site is most picturesque; it stands on a mound some two hundred

feet above the Loire. There are two fine mediæval churches, and an old

château, which, with the ruins of the ancient fortified castle, now

forms a part of the domain of a M. de la Touche, who will kindly permit

the visitor to inspect the details of this ancient feudal stronghold.

The dismantled old walls are covered with moss and lichens, and

their picturesqueness is of that quality that painters love to put

on canvas. The wonder is that Champtoceaux has not become a new

artists’ sketching-ground, such as are so often discovered--or

rediscovered--throughout France. Perhaps it is because of its distance

from Paris, for your artist-painter, be he French, English, or American,

dearly loves the streets of the Latin Quarter, and, as a rule, prefers

Fontainebleau and its circle of artist colonies to going farther afield.

At last one beholds what a Frenchman has called the “tumultuous vision

of Nantes.” To-day the very ancient and historic city which grew up

from the Portus Nannetum and the Condivientum of the Romans is indeed a

veritable tumult of chimneys, masts and smokestacks, and locomotives.

But all this will not detract one jot from its reputation of being

one of the most delightful of provincial capitals, and the smoke and

activity of its port only tend to accentuate the note of colour, which

in the whole itinerary of the Loire has been but pale.

The former reputation of Nantes as a little capital where gaiety and

wealth came in abundance is correct for to-day, but a comparison is

interesting. Here is a reminiscence of old stage-coaching days, when

the post took four days to make the journey from Paris:

“The neighbourhood of the theatre is magnificent, all the streets being

at right angles and of white stone. One is in doubt as to whether

the Hôtel Henri IV. is not the finest inn in Europe.” (It must have

disappeared since those days, but really its reputation still lives in

any one of the three leading hotels.) “Dessein’s” (also disappeared) “at

Calais is larger, but is not built, fitted up, or furnished like this,

which is new. It cost nearly five hundred thousand francs, and contains

sixty bedrooms. It is without comparison the first inn of France, and

very cheap withal.

“The theatre must have cost a like sum, and, when its seats are full,

holds 120 louis d’or. The ground that the inn is built upon cost nine

francs a foot, and elsewhere in the city one may pay as much as fifteen

francs. This ground value induces them to build so high as to be

destructive of beauty.” Unquestionably this last observation was quite

true then, as it is now, but Nantes nevertheless fills very nearly every

qualification of a well-laid-out and attractive city.

To some Nantes will be reminiscent of Venice, or at least some Dutch

city, for its five river branches are continually crossing and

recrossing one’s path in most bewildering fashion, and bridges confront

one at every turn.

The city’s attractions are many, from its great cathedral and its

château-fortress, enclosing a beautiful edifice wherein once lived the

Duchess Anne, to its great hotels, cafés, and shops of modern times.

Five great events of history stand forth prominent in the memory of the

very name of Nantes: the struggle of John of Montfort against Charles

of Blois for the ducal power; the affairs of the League; the famous

Edict; the Cellamare conspiracy; and the rising of the Vendeans and the

rascally Carrier’s retaliation in Revolutionary days.

Each and every one of these were vivid and bloody enough to furnish

inexhaustible material for a novelist of the Dumas school, should he

rise in the future, for the half has not yet been used. It was in

the Place of Bouffay that that execution of the Breton conspirators

took place, of which we read in the graphic pages of Dumas. Gaston,

who sought to deliver his former companions, was posting along the

road to Nantes with their reprieve safely guarded. Before the age of

steam and electricity, news travelled slowly, and Sèvres, Versailles,

Rambouillet, Chartres, Mans, and Angers were then far apart. But the

faithful Gaston travelled fast, one of the bystanders at Rambouillet

calling to him: “If you go at that pace, you will kill more than one

team between here and Nantes.”

Gradually he learned that a “courier of the minister’s” had passed

that way. This was the beginning of what Dumas called the “tragedy

of Nantes.” The event was historical, and Dumas’s account was most

dramatic, yet did not differ greatly from the facts. Gaston arrived too

late. Talhouet was dead, and the Place of Bouffay reeked with the blood

of the conspirators, who, guilty though they were, had received the

pardon of the Regent. The cry of De Conedic, as he bent his head to the

block, still echoes down through history: “See how they recompense the

services of faithful soldiers! Ye cowards of Bretagne,” he cried, as

the sword of the executioner fell upon him. Ten minutes afterward the

square was empty. One of the corpses still held a crumpled paper in his

hand,--it was the pardon of the other four, for the bearer had arrived

too late. Thus finished “the tragedy of Nantes.”

Though this part of Brittany has the reputation of being the least

illiterate of any, as late as the beginning of the last quarter of

the nineteenth century might be seen at Nantes the sign of the public

scrivener, which read:

ÉCRIVAIN PUBLIQUE

_10 centimes par lettre_

Below Nantes the Loire basin has turned the surrounding country into a

little Holland, where fisherfolk and their boats, with sails of red and

blue, form charming symphonies of dull colour. In the drinking-places

along its shores there is a strange medley of peasants, seafarers,

and fisher men and women. Not so cosmopolitan a crew as one sees in

the harbour-side drinking-places at Marseilles, or even at Havre, but

sufficiently strange to be a fascination to one who has just come down

from the headwaters.

Gray and green is the aspect at the Loire’s source, and green and gray

it still is, though of a decidedly different colour value, at St.

Nazaire, below Nantes, the real deep-water port of the Loire. By this

time the river has amplified itself into a broad estuary, and is lost in

the incoming and outgoing tides of the Bay of Biscay. From its source

the Loire has wound its way gently, broadly, and with placid grandeur

through rocky escarpments, fertile plains, populous and luxurious

towns, all historic ground, by stately châteaux and through vineyards

and fruit-orchards. Now it becomes more or less prosaic and matter of

fact, though, in a way, no less interesting, as it takes on some of the

attributes of the outside world.

Here one gives the last glance to the Loire, as an inland waterway,

for, by the time Nantes is passed, it is of the sea salty. Here the

Sèvre Nantaise comes from the Department Deux-Sèvres and numerous other

streams broaden the lower river until it meets the bay at St. Nazaire,

where coasters and deep-sea fishermen take the place of boat-haulers and

vineyard-workers as picturesque accessories to the landscape.

Jacobites and their sympathizers will take pleasure in noting that it

was in the early days of St. Nazaire’s importance as a port that the

Young Pretender set sail thence in 1745, in a frigate provided by a Mr.

Walsh of Nantes.

It is only now that one realizes to the full the gamut through which

run the varying moods of the Loire, from the hard, sterile lands around

Le Puy through the pleasant Nivernais, the Orleanais, the vineyards of

Saumur, to the Sardinières and the salt works of the marshes of Bourg

de Batz and Croisic.

It was from Croisic that Talhouet, one of the Breton conspirators of

“The Regent’s Daughter,” threatened to set sail if discovered in their

dastardly plot against the Regent.

“I shall be off to St. Nazaire,” said he, “and from thence to Croisic;

take my advice and come with me. I know a brig about to start for

Newfoundland, and the captain is a servant of mine. If the air on shore

become too bad, we will embark, set sail, and adieu to the galleys.”

“Well, I for one,” said his companion, “am a Breton, and Bretons trust

only in God.”

South of the Loire, in that small fragment of territory which formerly

belonged to the old province, is a wonderful collection of old-time and

gone-to-seed towns hardly ever visited by the general run of tourists.

Paimbœuf and Pornic and Clisson are the three places which appeal

most strongly, and this chiefly by their accessibility to Nantes. To

the southwest is the Lake of Grand Lieu, which, according to an ancient

Armorican legend, was the former site of a city “flourishing, but

dissolute,” which was submerged for its sins by the command of God.

This sounds apocryphal, but the moral is plain.

Anciently the Retz country, lying just southward of the Loire, formed a

part of the ancient Breton province, and, although before the Revolution

and the rearrangement of provinces and departments anew this member had

been shorn away, yet Paimbœuf, on the south bank of the Loire, just

beyond Nantes, is of Breton nomenclature, known in French as Tête de

Bœuf. To-day it is but a relic of a former great port, now deserted;

St. Nazaire, its younger relative, with much more ample commercial

resources, has drawn its trade away, and its quays and docks are now

unoccupied, except by coasters and fishing-boats.

Paimbœuf has already become depopulated, and the former little

fishing port of Pornic daily takes on more and more importance.

Pornic itself has a charm which Paimbœuf entirely lacks. It is a

lively little fishing village of perhaps two thousand inhabitants. The

port, the bay, and the canal which empties into the salt waters of the

Atlantic form a delightful setting for artists’ foregrounds, let the

backgrounds be what they may. At present, it has taken on somewhat of

the aspect of a watering-place, but it is safe to say that it will

never become popular as such, in spite of the fact that a casino has

already made its appearance.

[Illustration: _Pornic_]

In addition to the charm of its situation, the chief attraction of

Pornic is its thirteenth and fourteenth century château, with its fine

towers and machicolations. Its history, like that of most others of its

kind, has been romantic, and by no means has it always had the placid

aspect which it has to-day. It was taken from Gilles de Retz by the

Dukes of Brittany during the civil wars, and to-day belongs to a M. de

Bourquency, who has restored it admirably.

At the foot of the château is a great cross of stone, called the Croix

of the Huguenots, erected, it is said, by converted Calvinists. At the

foot of this cross are buried the bones of over two hundred Vendeans

killed at Pornic.

Clisson is a small town of something less than three thousand

inhabitants, whose very name will conjure up memories of the great

Constable Olivier de Clisson. There is much here of interest, but the

history of the town, the château, and of De Clisson himself are so

interwoven with the affairs of state and warfare of the nation that the

outline even may not be given here. The ruins of the old-time château

are a wonderfully impressive reminder of other days, other ways. As a

whole, it is a grand ruin only, although an architect or archaeologist

may build up somewhat of an approach to the former glorious fabric. The

great central tower has not even preserved its walls entire, but what

is left stands to-day as one of the most imposing examples of a great

feudal keep yet extant. Clisson has some right to be considered up to

date, in that some enterprising inhabitant has introduced an electric

light plant. In spite of this, however, the donjon is one of those

architectural splendours of the world which, like the Coliseum at Rome

and Melrose Abbey, should be seen by moonlight in order to be rightly

appreciated.

[Illustration: _Donjon of Clisson_]

The chapel, in which was celebrated the marriage of Duke Francis II.

and Margaret of Foix, the keep, the dungeons, the ramparts, and the

chief apartments occupied by the constable himself have been preserved,

and make Clisson well worth the half-day it will take to go there from

Nantes.