FINISTÈRE--NORTH
The northernmost part of the peninsula of Finistère has not the
abounding or varied interests of the south. Its monuments of other days
are not so many or so remarkable, and the sterner conditions of life
seem to have had a sobering effect upon manners and customs.
Brest and its wonderfully ample harbour has by no means the attractions
of Vannes or of Nantes for the bird of passage, though its commercial
and strategic value is great, and its history vivid and eventful. In
spite of all this, there is little that is interesting to-day in its
straight streets and rectangular blocks.
This fortified and exceedingly animated town owns to eighty odd thousand
inhabitants, and is so pervaded by military and naval organization that
there is very little local colour, very little atmosphere of the past
hanging about it to-day. To find this, one has to go back to Faou, to
Plougastel or Landerneau or Landivisiau, all within a radius of twenty
kilometres or so.
The great bay of Brest is a swarming waterway, upon which the little
excursion steamers, tugboats, great cruisers and battle-ships,
torpedo-boats and torpedo-boat destroyers, and yet other craft built to
catch torpedo-boat destroyers, are all apparently entangled inexplicably
each in the wakes of all the others.
The entrance to this harbour is known as the Goulet, and is lighted
by five lighthouses, which at night send out their twinkling rays of
red, green, and white in most kaleidoscopic fashion,--all Greek to a
landsman, but as clear as day to the Breton pilots who bring the great
ships in and out of this narrow waterway. In the ninth century, Brest
was already in existence, in spite of its modern aspect to-day, and
belonged to the Counts of Léon. Its future was as varied as the history
of Brittany.
It opened its ports to the army of Charles VIII. in 1489, in spite of
the efforts of Duchess Anne to prevent such a proceeding. How far she
succumbed will be recalled when one realizes that two years later her
marriage with this prince was the first step which united the province
of Brittany for ever with France. Brest from this time took on a new
importance, until Cardinal Richelieu came to designate it as one of the
principal arsenals of France, and then, in 1631, came the creation of
the great dockyards.
Of architectural monuments, Brest still has the Church of St. Louis
(1688-1778) and the twelfth and thirteenth century castle. As an
ecclesiastical monument, the church is quite unworthy of attention,
though it has some interesting tombs and monuments.
The castle is an admirable example of mediæval fortification, with some
remarkable accessory details in its construction. The isolated donjon
tower was in other days a sort of independent citadel, and formed a
last refuge for the besieged occupants of the castle, should its outer
walls give way to the invaders. The Tower of Azenor and the Tower of
Anne of Brittany, so named for the respective princesses, are admirably
preserved parts.
The local museum and library have fine collections. There are fifty-six
thousand volumes in the library, and the collection of paintings
contains many Breton subjects by modern masters.
The dockyard--navy-yard in the language of the United States, _port
militaire_ in French--is closed to the general public, but a marvellous
detailed bird’s-eye view of the city, the docks, and the roads is
obtained from the platform of the Pont Tournant.
Nineteen kilometres from Brest is Landerneau, and the junction of the
railway lines to Kerlouan and Folgoët in the north, and to Quimper
and Concarneau in the south. Landerneau from the twelfth to sixteenth
centuries had a distinct feudal administration.
The folk of Landerneau have opinions of their own, as witness the
remark, made at Versailles under the regency by a Breton noble hailing
from this place: “The Landerneau moon is larger than that at Versailles.”
Again there is a Breton proverb which runs thus: “There will always be
something to talk about in Landerneau.” Mostly this is used when a widow
marries again, which may be taken to mean much or little, as one chooses.
Landerneau has a fine little tidal harbour, and its streets and wharfs
are busy with the hum of coastwise traffic and river life, and, with its
Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury and its “best and cleanest inn in the
bishopric” (Hôtel de l’Univers), as a traveller of a century or more ago
once wrote, it has no lack of interest for travellers.
[Illustration: <u>_Landerneau_</u>]
One is not likely to be met with a statement by his host, as was the
century-old traveller, that a respectable man begs to know if he may eat
at the same table, and accordingly one will not have to reply, “With all
my heart,” for most likely there will be twenty at the common table, and
all will sit down to a meal of all the good things of life, “sea food”
and golden cider and apple sweetmeats predominating.
It is all excellent, however, and the abundance of deliciously cooked
fish will make one think it were no hardship to make a lenten sojourn
here. A great church and a good hotel are indeed all-sufficient
attractions for a market-town of perhaps eight thousand souls.
The town borders upon a picturesque little river, the Elorn, which
finally flows into the harbour of Brest. From the fifth century until
the sixteenth, it was far and away a more important place than its now
more opulent neighbour at the river’s mouth. Then it was the chief town
of Léon, the domain of the De Rohans, one of the ancient Breton baronies.
At the entrance of one of the principal streets--Rue Plouedern--are
two curious ancient pieces of sculpture,--a lion and a man armed with
a sword, bearing the inscription “Tire Tve.” They came from an old
house which existed here in the sixteen hundreds, and are fitting
examples of that curious mediæval symbolism which so often crops out in
domestic and religious architecture. Although the chief of Landerneau’s
ecclesiastical monuments is the sixteenth-century edifice dedicated to
St. Thomas of Canterbury, the Church of St. Houardon is a contemporary
work of some pretension; its base Renaissance portico was added at a
later time. The arms and emblems of the De Rohans are conspicuous in
both edifices.
July fifteenth is the great fête-day hereabout, when the horse-races,
boat-races, and illuminations attract the peasantry from the inland
country and the workmen from the dockyards at Brest.
Five kilometres away is the Chapel of St. Eloi of the sixteenth century.
This sainted personage is represented throughout Finistère with the
attributes of a bishop and of a horseshoer. Horses are placed under his
protection, and the Pardon of St. Eloi is celebrated in various parts
with much merrymaking, and always with much firing of guns. A motor-car
is not beloved here, and if one incidentally or accidentally come upon
a festival of St. Eloi, he had best forthwith make tracks in retreat.
The actual religious ceremony consists of a mounted cavalier riding
up to the chapel door and making a sort of salute or obeisance three
times from the saddle without putting foot to the ground, after which
he deposits on the altar a packet of horse-hair, or even the tail of a
horse.
In the Forest of Landerneau, six kilometres southwest, is the Château of
“La Joyeuse Garde,” celebrated in the romance of the chivalry of King
Arthur’s time, wherein King Arthur, Lancelot of the Lake, and Tristan of
Lyonnesse played so great a part.
Landivisiau, on the main railway line from Paris to Brest, has a
remarkable church under the protection of St. Turiaff,--which in Breton
is Tivisian,--who was Archbishop of Dol in the eighth century.
This fine church is a sixteenth-century work, and exhibits all the notes
of the early period of the Renaissance, but, in spite of this, the
richness of its portal, its bell-tower, its fine spire, and its nave
and choir rebuilt in the best of late Gothic, make it a building to be
remarked among the churches of Brittany, which, as a rule, have not the
ornateness and luxuriance of ornament of those of Normandy and other
parts of France.
The cemetery of Landivisiau has a remarkable ossuary, supported by most
fantastic shapes, among them a skeleton armed with two arrows, a woman
in an unmistakably Spanish costume, and a most diabolical Satan.
The fair-day at Landivisiau is the great celebration of these parts. It
is not so ambitious as many of those held elsewhere, but it will give
the visitor the opportunity of making an intimate acquaintance with the
Bas Bretons in a manner not possible in the larger towns.
The dress of the people is peculiar, with the great baggy trousers of
the men, the coifs of the women, and the general display and love of the
finery of bright colours which seem inherent with a people living upon
the seacoast.
In general, their features are heavy and their expression more or less
sullen, although this does not often indicate bad temper. Unquestionably
their carriage indicates hard labour, and the furrows and ridges of
their countenances come only from continuous contact with the open air.
Still, their bodies are stout and broad, and men and women alike have
none of the softness and languor of the southern provinces, albeit the
Armorican climate is mild throughout the year.
[Illustration: <u>_Calvary, Plougastel_</u>]
Opposite Brest, just across the estuary of the Elorn, is Plougastel,
famous for its melons and its green peas, and, above all, for its
picturesque calvary.
The whole peninsula of Plougastel-Daoulas is a vast market-garden for
Brest, and, for that matter, for the hotels at Paris. The verdure and
vegetable growth is in striking contrast to the barren fringe of rocky
coast-line, and therein lies one of the charms of the whole aspect of
nature as it is seen here.
Nothing in Brittany is more picturesque than the little villages of
Kerérault, Roc’hquérezen, Roc’huivlen, and Roc’hquillion. This is a
commonplace perhaps to those who know the region well, but it will not
be to strangers, and so it is reiterated here.
The Chapel St. John of Plougastel is perhaps two kilometres away. It is
here, on the twenty-fourth of June of each year, that its pardon brings
so great a throng of visitors that they really have to bring their
eatables with them or starve, thus making a fast-day of a feast.
In the cemetery is that great calvary which has so often been pictured,
the most considerable work of its kind in existence.
It was erected 1602-04, in memory of a plague which fell upon the land
in 1598.
In recent times it has been restored. On the front is an altar
ornamented with statues of St. Sebastien, St. Pierre, and St. Roch. The
frieze shows a multitude of bas-reliefs, illustrating the life of Jesus,
and the risers of the steps are a series of quaintly carved little
people, over two hundred in number. On the plinth is a risen Christ and
a tablet bearing the date of erection of the work. It is a marvellous
expression of religious devotion, and far surpasses other wayside
shrines in Brittany, and indeed in all the world.
The inhabitants of Plougastel have preserved their ancient costumes with
little or no modern interpolation. Particularly is this to be noted
among the young girls, on a Sunday, as they come from the mass, and also
on the fifteenth of August, when there is a great religious procession.
The “Pardon of Plougastel” is known also as the “Birds’ Pardon,” for a
great bird fair is opened St. John’s Day.
On the same side of the Goulet of Brest, that narrow inlet which is the
entrance from the sea to the bay, is Le Conquet. It sits at the very tip
of Finistère, just above the Pte. St. Mathieu, and its great lighthouse,
which, with a thirty-second eclipse, sends its rays some twenty miles
out to sea.
Le Conquet has but fifteen hundred inhabitants, and its isolated
population apparently has not many friends, else the place would
be filled to overflowing in the summer months, which it is not. Its
two hotels, St. Barbara and Hôtel de Bretagne, are all that could be
expected, and more, hence the paucity of visitors to this charming bit
of “land’s end” is the more remarkable.
Anciently Le Conquet was a strong fortified place, and it underwent a
great number of sieges, and was burned by the English in 1558. Eight
houses alone of the present habitations of the town survived the flames.
The port is frequented only by the fishing-smacks, which land vast
quantities of lobsters and shrimps.
There is also an ancient pottery here, the most ancient in all
Finistère. Its pots and pans are found in all the homesteads hereabouts,
and such tourists from all parts as actually do come here carry
numberless specimens away with them.
The modern church, after the ogival manner, is far more satisfactory
than most modern ecclesiastical monuments. There is a fifteenth-century
portal, however, and some contemporary statues, which save it from being
wholly a modern work.
The coast-line round about is the rough, abrupt ending of the Léon
plateau, jagged and deeply serrated like the jaws of a shark, as the
native tells one with respect to about all of the Breton coast-line.
Fine beaches do exist here and there, but in the main it is a stern and
rock-bound shore that buffets the Atlantic’s waves in Finistère.
Three times a week one can make the journey by steamboat to Ouessant,
which English sailor-folk--those who go down to the sea in great
liners--know as Ushant. The Île Molène and the Île Ouessant are the
principal members of the group, and are even more stern and rock-bound
than the mainland.
“Very little comfort on the boat,” you will be told at the port-office,
where you make inquiry as to the hour of departure. Any but good sailors
and true vagabond travellers had best leave the journey out of their
itinerary, although it has unique interest.
There are numerous isles and islets to pass on the way, and the Chaussée
des Pierres Noires is a roughly strewn ledge which breathes danger in
the very spray continually flying over it. Molène is a kilometre long
and rather more than half as wide. If ever the population of a sea-girt
isle had to take in one another’s washing in order to make a living,
this is the place, for nearly six hundred men, women, and children make
their habitation upon the isle.
Needless to say there are some things of the twentieth-century
civilization of which they know not, such as automobiles, tram-cars, or
locomotives. There is not even a donkey engine on the island, and there
are no bicycles or perambulators, hence there is something for which to
be thankful. Considerable quantities of vegetables are exported, the
population living apparently on fish, and the “farms” are divided into
plots so small as to be almost infinitesimal.
The island is sadly remembered for the part it played in the wreck of
the great South African liner, the _Drummond Castle_, in recent years.
The inhabitants of the isle, poor in this world’s goods though they
were, did much to succour the survivors, an act which is writ large in
the history of life-saving.
The isle of Ouessant itself has nearly three thousand population, and
boasts a market and a hotel, besides numerous hamlets or suburbs. The
isle is eight kilometres long, and perhaps three and a half wide, and is
known to the government authorities both as a canton and as a commune.
Pliny knew of this rock-bound isle, the foremost outpost of France,
and called it Uxantos, though it was known to the ancient Bretons as
Enez Heussa. Practically, the island is a table-land with an abundance
of pure water, and the soil very productive so far as new potatoes and
an early crop of barley go. The cultivation is mostly in the hands of
the women, the men being nearly all engaged in the fisheries, or as
sailors. Ouessant is a little land of windmills, though in no way does
it resemble Holland. For the most part, they are sturdy stone buildings,
and work but lazily, many of them being dismantled, as if there were
not enough for them to do. Some years ago a fort was erected here, and
a garrison of colonial troops billeted upon the island. It is a sad job
at best to be a soldier in a colonial outpost such as this, and whether
the observation is just or not, it is made, nevertheless, that the
appearance of the garrison of Ouessant is as though it were made up,
literally, of the scum of the earth.
As for history, the Île d’Ouessant is by no means entirely lacking. It
was evangelized in the sixth century by St. Pol Aurelian, who built a
chapel here at a spot known as Portz Pol.
In 1388, the English ravaged the island, and the former seigniory was
made a marquisate in 1597, in favour of Réné de Rieux, the governor of
Brest, whose descendants sold their birthright to the king in 1764.
The glorious battle of Ouessant--at least, the French call it “_la
glorieuse bataille_,” and so it really was--took place in 1778 in the
neighbouring waters between a French fleet under the Comte d’Orvilliers
and the English Admiral Keppel.
As may be supposed, these far-jutting, rocky islands have been the scene
of many shipwrecks. There is a proverb known to mariners which classes
these Breton isles as follows:
“Who sights Belle Île sights his refuge,
Who sights Île Groix sights joy,
Who sights Ouessant sights blood.”
When a sailorman of Ouessant is lost at sea, his parents or friends
bring to his former dwelling a little cross of wood, which serves the
purpose of a corpse, and the clergy officiate over it, and his friends
weep over it as if it were his true body.
Finally a procession forms, and, with much solemnity, this little cross
of wood, after having been placed in a casket, is deposited at the foot
of a statue of St. Pol, a sad and glorious symbol of grief and also of
hope.
The women of Ouessant, whether in mourning or not--and they mostly are
in mourning--wear a costume of black cloth, cut their hair short and
wear a square sort of cap. For the most part, the inhabitants--all
those, in fact, who are natives, and there are but few mainlanders
here--speak only Breton.
The Lighthouse de Créac’h, a white and black painted tower, with a
magnificent light flashing its rays twenty-four miles out at sea, is a
monument to the parental French government, which neglects nothing in
the way of guarding its coasts by modern search-lights, quite the best
of their kind in all the known world. There is another light here known
as the Stiff Lighthouse, which carries eighteen miles.
Near the lighthouse is the tiny chapel of Our Lady of Farewells, a place
of pilgrimage on the day of the local pardon (1st September).
On the mainland, just north of Brest and Le Conquet, on the way to the
Channel, is St. Rénan, the site of an ancient hermitage founded by an
anchorite who came from Ireland some time in the eighth century. There
are many quaint sixteenth-century houses here, and a large market-house
of the spectacular order.
[Illustration: <u>_Lighthouse of Créac’h, Ouessant_</u>]
Ploudalmézeau is an important town of Lower Léon with a Hôtel
Bretagne--as might be expected--also most excellent--also as might be
expected--except for its sanitary conveniences, which, to say nothing
of not being up to date, are practically non-existent. It is very
disconcerting of a rainy autumn morning to have to go down to the back
yard _puits_--as a pump or well is variously known--in order to perform
one’s ablutions.
The comparatively modern church is far more magnificent than one would
expect to find in so small a town. It contains a curious statue of
the Virgin with a Breton coif, and also a fine modern fresco by Yan
d’Argent. A thirteenth-century sculptured cross is to be seen in the
churchyard.
Folgoët has an important local fair, and is celebrated throughout all
Brittany for the pilgrimage to its magnificent shrine of Our Lady of
Folgoët, one of the most beautiful ecclesiastical monuments of the
province.
Toward the middle of the fourteenth century there lived in the
neighbouring forest a poor idiot named Salaun, better known as the
forest fool; in Breton, Folgoët. After his death, there appeared written
on the leaves of a great white lily, in letters of gold, the admonition
to the people to build a great church here to the glory of Our Lady, and
this was begun in 1409, and consecrated in 1419; it became a collegiate
church in 1423. It has neither transepts nor apse, but is in every
other particular a remarkably beautiful work. There are many interior
furnishings of great value.
Folgoët is at its best on the great day of the pardon, on the eighth of
September.
St. Pol de Léon, Roscoff, and Morlaix call the hurried tourist off to
the northward, though why a tourist ever should be hurried is something
the true vagabond never can understand.
Roscoff has much to endear it to any one. It has not the loneliness or
even the quaintness of some of the daintily set seacoast towns of the
South, but its unique attractions are so many and varied that one loves
it for itself alone, quite as much as if it were a celebrated artists’
sketching-ground, and far more than one would were it a really “popular”
resort.
First of all, it is celebrated for its early vegetables, due principally
to the excellence of its soil, and secondly to the mildness of its
climate.
Because of its temperate climate, Roscoff might be called the Mentone
of the North, though it is not yet overrun by invalids and bath-chairs.
Summer and winter, it is a watering-place, with fir-trees replacing the
palms of the South. The visitor should remark the enormous fig-tree in
the Capuchins’ enclosure, the grounds of an ancient convent (1621),
which is now private property, and costs the sum of twenty-five
centimes to see.
The Church of Our Lady of Croaz-Baz, with its fine domed tower dating
from 1550, is one of the chief ecclesiastical monuments of Brittany.
[Illustration: <u>_Roscoff_</u>]
Among the many quaint and curious houses of the town is one known as the
house of Mary Stuart. In its interior court are seven arcades supported
by columns, quite like a convent cloister, a disposition of parts which
must be purely local, as other examples are to be seen elsewhere in the
town. Another memory of the Scottish queen, whose last, long, sad adieu
to France is one of the links that never breaks, is the Chapel of St.
Ninian, built in 1548 as a souvenir of her landing when she first came
to France as the betrothed of the Dauphin. It is a most romantically
disposed structure, though with no architectural details of worth except
a small turret at an angle jutting over the lapping waves.
Roscoff has a Chapel des Adieux, where the wives and mothers of the
fishermen go to pray as the men embark for the fishing.
Offshore, a quarter-hour distant by boat, is the Isle of Batz, separated
from Roscoff only by a narrow strait, with a current so swift that the
passage is only possible in the best of weather. It does not look so
very perilous an undertaking at other times, but the Roscoff sailorman
certainly does know how to handle a boat, and when he says “No,” it’s
best not to attempt to persuade him to the contrary. He will not mind a
wetting himself,--if you pay him a fair price for the undertaking,--but
he will probably want, and be entitled to, a good, fat fee for rescuing
his passenger from drowning.
The Isle of Batz, like most places in Brittany, has its own legend.
It is to the effect that St. Pol, coming in 530 from Britain to this
low, gray, melancholy islet, met a dragon, which, having ravaged the
neighbouring mainland country, had fled hither in order to escape the
fury of the peasant-folk.
St. Pol, as became one who had the interests of his fellow men at heart,
forthwith killed the monster, and conveyed the news to the people
awaiting his return by rapping on the ground with his baton (_batz_).
The rise and fall of the tide at the Isle of Batz shows remarkable
fluctuations, ten metres, something more than thirty feet, being noted
between high and low water.
Its coast-line has great banks of sand, a delight to the bather in
salt water, but the rock formations are by no means so remarkable as
those on most of the Breton isles. The soil is arid and there is not
much luxuriant vegetation. There is a population of over twelve hundred
souls, but few apparently have any ambition to migrate to the mainland,
scarce a rifle-shot distant. In the island church is preserved the
stole of St. Pol, of Byzantine silk. If genuine, it has attained a
greater age than most confections of its class. An ancient Roman chapel
or temple existed here in former times, and was succeeded by a monastery
founded by St. Pol, now in ruins and mostly buried in the sands.
St. Pol’s renown became such that a Breton king made him Archbishop
of Léon, giving him special care and control of the city bearing his
name. These rights came down to the holy man’s successors, and the
place became more religious than politic, as one reads in the old-time
chronicles. The riches which had been acquired attracted the Normans,
who devastated the cathedral church in 875. In the fourteenth century,
Duguesclin occupied the town in the name of Charles V. The religious
wars of the sixteenth century diminished the prosperity of the town, and
a bloody submission was forced upon the Revolutionary rebels here in
1793.
St. Pol is somewhat doubtfully claimed as the native place of the
celebrated sixteenth-century sculptor, Michel Colomb (1512).
The Chapel of Creizker or Creis-ker, with its astonishing bell-tower
piercing the sky at a height of nearly 250 feet, owes its origin to
a young girl of Léon, whom St. Kirec, Archdeacon of Léon in the sixth
century, had cured of paralysis. The present structure is, of course,
more modern. Albert le Grand fixes the date in the fourteenth century,
and this is probably correct. There are innumerable evidences of the
best of Gothic workmen, and there is much decorative embellishment
which, though not according to the accepted Gothic forms, is certainly
not Renaissance.
The ancient cathedral merits rank with the Chapel of Creizker, and is
perhaps even a more consistent piece of work, though it represents three
distinct epochs. The two towers are considerably less in height than
that of the Creizker, but they are beautifully spired. The interior
contains innumerable decorative accessories, making it rank with those
cathedrals of France making up that third series, of which Nantes,
Coutances, Narbonne, and Angers are the best examples.
In the choir is the tomb of St. Pol, and his skull, an arm bone, and a
finger are encased in a little coffer for the veneration of the devout.
There is a series of sixty-nine delicately sculptured choir-stalls
dating from 1512, and, although not rivalling such great works of their
kind as one sees at their best at Amiens, Albi, or Rodez, they are
sufficiently elaborate to deserve attention.
Innumerable tombs are set about the choir, many of them curiously and
characteristically sculptured.
There is also a tiny bell which passes for having belonged to St. Pol.
On the days of pardon the notes of this ancient bell still ring out over
the heads of the faithful, who believe that they will cure any malady of
the head or hearing.
[Illustration: MA DOUEZ]
In one of the chapels of the Cathedral of St. Pol de Léon is an ancient
painting. It depicts a head with three visages, with the legend in
Gothic-Breton characters, “_Ma Douez_” (_Mon Dieu_). It represents, of
course, the Trinity, but, like many religious symbols, is more grotesque
than devout.
Morlaix, the ancient Mons Relaxus of Roman times, is the metropolis of
the northwestern Breton coast. It achieved no great importance, until
it came under the sway of the Breton dukes, and became one of their
principal residences. The inhabitants of Morlaix declared for the League
in the period of the religious wars, and the castle was besieged and
carried by the troops of the king under Marshal d’Aumont, in 1594.
Being at the head of the great bay of Morlaix, or, rather, just above
it, at the juncture of the rivers Jarlot and Quefflent, the city enjoys
a novel situation, and contains many curious contrasting effects of the
old and new order of things.
The Viaduct of Morlaix, by which the railway traverses the town, is
really an imposing sight, and is reckoned as the chief of its class
in all France. The natives show an astonishing vagueness or ignorance
with regard thereto. You will be told that it was the work of the
Romans,--“very ancient, look you,”--and again that it was one of the
works of the indefatigable Vauban, who must really have worked in his
sleep, or through understudies, if all the works attributed to him
throughout France be genuine. Vauban must have been to France what
Michelangelo was to the universe,--according to the genial, though
skeptical, Mark Twain.
The Church of St. Martin in the Fields is the chief ecclesiastical
monument of Morlaix, in point of antiquity at least, as it dates from
the ancient priory foundation of 1128, by Hervé, Count of Léon.
The Church of St. Melaine originated also in the fifteenth-century
priory of the same name, founded by Guyormarc’h de Léon.
The local museum, which is an unusually splendid establishment for a
town the size of Morlaix, possesses a collection of modern paintings,
including a great number of Breton scenes, forming a wonderfully
interesting exposition of Breton manners and customs.
There are innumerable old houses in wood and stone here, and they put
Morlaix in the rank with Lisieux, in Normandy, for its picturesque and
tumble-down effects of the domestic architecture of other days.
One of the finest examples of a great house of its time is that called
Pouliguen, which has a fine carved wood staircase that no one can afford
to miss seeing.
[Illustration: <u>_Carved Wood Staircase, Morlaix_</u>]
The harbour of Morlaix opens out widely into the channel, and is
commanded by the Château du Taureau, in reality a granite fortress,
one of the military defences of the north coast. St. Jean du Doigt
and the Point of Primel lie some twenty kilometres north of Morlaix,
directly on the coast. The former is the scene of one of the most
picturesque of pardons and is celebrated throughout Brittany.
[Illustration: <u>_Procession of Sailors, St. Jean du Doigt_</u>]
Its name comes from its church (1440-1513), in which the index finger
of the right hand of St. John the Baptist is kept. The churchyard has
a fine Gothic entrance gateway and a funeral chapel of the sixteenth
century. Within the same enclosure is also an elaborate fountain
surrounded by a Renaissance construction of much beauty. It was planned
by Anne of Brittany, who brought an artist from Italy to design the
work. The Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt takes place on the twenty-fourth
of June of each year. Decidedly it is not to be omitted from one’s
itinerary, if it be possible to include it.
It is one of the strangest survivals of the belief in an ancient holy
relique yet existing in France, and annually attracts great hordes of
the devout from all parts of Brittany and France, to say nothing of
strangers from oversea.
A good motor-car is indispensable to enable one to flee from the throng
after it is all over, for the railway lies at least a dozen miles away,
and local conveyances are scarce, poor, and expensive.