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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CÔTES DU NORD
THE north coast of Brittany, the present-day Department of the Côtes du Nord, is the great stretch of coast-line between Morlaix on the west to the Bay of Mont St. Michel at Dol. Its large towns are few in number, but the whole region is unusually prolific in the memory of deeds of a historic past, and accordingly it has become the favourite touring-ground of a great number of French and English summer visitors who, it is regretfully stated, have become responsible for a good deal of the claptrap and many of the catchpenny devices.
It is possible to avoid casinos, tea-rooms, and golf-links, but they are more abundant here in the neighbourhood of Dinan, St. Malo, and Dinard than in most other parts of Continental Europe. This is a pity, for the region is one of the most delightfully picturesque anywhere, although there is little of the grandeur of desolation about it.
A great national road runs northwesterly from Guingamp to Lannion and Tréguier, two outposts of the Côtes du Nord so far off the beaten track that they are not as yet overrun with the conventional tourists. There is little at either place to amuse one, except the local manners and customs, but they are quaint and interesting beyond belief, and the wonderful combinations of sea and sky, which will make the artist’s heart leap for joy.
Lannion boasts of six thousand inhabitants, most of whom play at bowls on Sunday or a feast-day, and other days engage in the sundry humble pursuits of the usual Breton large town.
The name Lannion first appeared in the twelfth century, when the seigniory of Lannion formed a part of the domain of the house of Penthièvre, which was united with that of Brittany in 1199.
There are three quaint and charming hotels at Lannion, at any of which you will get the best of local fare at prices ranging from 120 to 220 francs per month—all found. One will not go wrong at any of them, and one does not differ greatly from another, in spite of the difference in price. There is an abundance of what is commonly known as good cheer, by which is really meant good fare, and there are comfortable beds, a sound roof over one’s head, and genial hosts, of course.
This estimable person is literally everywhere at once, showing the guests to their rooms, presiding at the table, or, at least, at the serving of it, and generally overseeing everything that goes on.
“Allons, messieurs, à table,” is called, in a melodious voice, instead of the ringing of the usual brain-racking bell, and one by one travelling salesmen, the permanent guests, and the mere tourists seat themselves at the long table, which literally groans—like those in the historical novels—with the best of country cookery. There is nothing Parisian about it; there are no ices, no forced fruit, and no savoury messes with mushrooms and truffles, but there is the abundant and excellent local fare of sea food, hung mutton, new potatoes and asparagus, and little wood strawberries in heaps, and that delightful golden cider, which, if it be not an improvement on the Norman variety, is just as good, and a delightful summer drink.
The fine location of Lannion, on the right bank of the estuary of the little river Leguer, accounts for much of the local charm, and the habit that the population has of grouping itself picturesquely about the quay-side—without the least provocation—accounts for a good deal more.
There are many old houses in the town, and other more pretentious architectural monuments, offering enough variety to the artist or lover of architecture to occupy him a long time.
The port is a harbour of refuge, of which there are not many on the north coast of Brittany, and the traffic in salmon and sardines is considerable, though not rivalling in bulk that of the greater ports in the southwest.
Tréguier has much the same attractions as Lannion, though its population is but half as large. Its origin was some huts which anciently grouped themselves around the monastery of Trecar, founded by St. Tugdal in the sixth century. It has an imposing cathedral, a really great religious edifice, and one which for the beauty of its parts is scarcely excelled by that of Quimper itself.
The history of Tréguier was very lively, from the time of the Norman invasion of Brittany down through the troublous days of the Revolution.
The men of Tréguier, one learns from history, accepted the law of the “rights of man” but coldly, and indeed M. le Mintier, Bishop of Tréguier, was one of those churchmen barred from the National Assembly by the manifesto. He fled to Jersey.
Tréguier is the native place of Ernest Renan (1823-92), and his quaint, timbered house may well be considered a literary shrine of the very first rank.
Convents, where women may find a quiet refuge away from the world, are not so numerous as they once were in France. “Boarding-houses kept for unprotected women by nuns, with a supposed Christian devotion and a profound appreciation of ready money,” was the way in which an English writer once spoke of them, and it was most unfair. Certainly, the writer of those lines never knew—and she professed to know France—the Convent of the Cross at Tréguier, where women can live in quiet seclusion, “all found,” for a matter of seventy-five francs a month. To those interested, the above may be worth investigation.
Not far off is the Manor of Kermartin, where, in 1255, St. Yves, the patron saint of advocates, was born.
On the nineteenth of May a procession sets out from the Tréguier cathedral for this shrine, to render homage to the patron of the men of law. On the eve of the nineteenth all mendicants and vagabonds presenting themselves at the manor are fed and lodged, which makes the perpetuation of the ceremony one of real benefit to humanity, though its endurance is brief.
St. Yves is the only canonized Breton saint. He was born on the seventh of October, 1253, and accompanied Peter of Dreux, reigning duke, to the seventh crusade.
In the Breton tongue his praises are sung as follows:
N’hen eus ket eur Zant evel Sant Erwan.”
This in French comes to the following:
Il n’y a pas un Saint comme St. Yves.”
The last will and testament of St. Yves is preserved in the sacristy of the Church de Minihy, and also his breviary. His tomb is in the cemetery, surmounted by an arcade through which the faithful pass, crawling upon their knees when they seek his aid.
Not many travellers in France have ever even heard of Seven Isles, situated five kilometres or more off the coast near Tréguier. The corsairs of Jersey and Guernsey took refuge upon this little archipelago in the olden time, and long maintained a form of government quite of their own making, and even erected fortifications, of which that on the Île aux Moines has still some suggestion of strength.
Usually quite deserted, there are two seasons of the year when the isles take on a population of residents from the mainland entirely out of keeping with their size and number: in February for seaweed gathering, and from June to September for the gathering of sea-mosses, or jargot, as the natives call it. One who would experience something out of the ordinary could not do better than make this little excursion. The passage from the mainland does not look so very terrible to the stranger, but not even the hardy fishermen will attempt it if the sky is the least threatening. He says simply, “Only go out in very fine weather,” and sits tight and prays and whistles for that same fine weather, though he evidently does not expect it to come very soon, for with every bit of fleecy cloud that crosses his vision, he exclaims: “Big storm soon!”
Paimpol is situated at the head of a well-sheltered bay on the banks of an infinitesimal little river known as Quinic. There is nothing to mark Paimpol as a tourist resort, and accordingly it is almost an ideal resting-place for one wearied with the onrush of the world. It is not even a bathing-place, as it well might be. Its long Rue de l’Église is its principal thoroughfare, and through it all the small traffic of the town circulates at a most sedate pace.
The church dates from the thirteenth century, and is a lovely old structure with admirable Gothic pillars and arches in its nave, and a fine fourteenth-century rose window.
The port of Paimpol has a most interesting rise and fall of life, particularly at the season of the setting out and the return of the Iceland fishermen. In the trade in codfish caught off the Icelandic coasts, this place occupies the first rank, being the home port of those who fish in Icelandic waters, and all along the quays of the sad little town of Paimpol (sad, because there are so many widows there,—the lone partners of those who have lost their lives at sea) are to be seen the Iceland schooners. Everything in the town smacks of the memory of Iceland: the schooners, the ex-votos in the churches, the widows, the sturdy but gloomy fisherfolk themselves, and the stones in the churchyard. “The Iceland fog enshrouds everything,” the native tells you, but still the work goes on, and each year, with the coming of the spring days, the exodus begins, after a winter’s hard work at refurbishing and refitting of the little two-masters and three-masters of the fishers. It is here that one may hear that Breton sailor’s prayer, which is so devout and full of faith: “Mon Dieu protège nous, car la mer est si grand et nos bateaux si petits.”
Cod, whale, mackerel, and herring are all marketable products to the nets of the Paimpolans.
The Isle of Bréhat is near Paimpol, lying just off the coast. If one seek to arrange a passage, thereto, he goes by public carriage, and not by boat, until he gets to the tip of the Pointe Arcouest, when he transfers himself and his luggage to a sailboat, and travels as one did before the age of steam.
The Isle of Bréhat is another of those rocky islets which dot the coast of Brittany, and look not only as if they were barren and uncultivated, but as if they were also uninhabited. All the same, their appearance from a distance is misleading. There are close upon a thousand inhabitants on the parent isle and the attendant flock of little islets sheltered under its wing. In the olden time, the island was a strong place of war, with batteries and fortifications against which the English, the Leaguers, and the Royalists tried their strength in turn.
The isle is what the sailor-folk roundabout call “a good port of refuge,” for there are divers little sheltered harbours to which ships of all classes can run from the storms of the open sea.
The principal town is known as Bréhat, and possesses a church dating from 1700, a tiny hotel, and an inn or two, mostly catering to local customers. If one would leave the mainland, and its questionable attractions of civilization behind, and live the simple life to the full, he can do it here to the most exquisite degree,—if he does not mind the sea-fogs of the winter.
Guingamp, lying inland in the rich valley of the Trieux, is the market-town of the arrondissement of the same name. It is of feudal origin, and was the ancient capital of the countship, later the duchy, of Penthièvre, and of the ancient Goëllo land.
Guingamp Castle is a great square building, flanked by four massive towers, of which one has been practically destroyed.
The Church of Our Lady of Good Help, of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, is a magnificent work of its era, with an elaborately furnished interior.
The Pardon of Bon Secours is Guingamp’s gayest event of all the year. In numbers, it is one of the largest in Brittany, and is held on the Saturday before the first Sunday in July. On this occasion the statue of Our Lady, within the porch of the church, is clad in a silken robe, and receives the pilgrims, who refresh themselves with water previously consecrated at its source. With the fall of the sun commences a continual round of national dances, inspired by the lonesome, sharp, shrill wail of the binious, played in much the same way as are the Scotch bagpipes, except that their music is even more shrill and heartrending—if possible. At nine o’clock the statue of the Virgin is brought to the public square, solemnly conveyed by an immense procession, and three great bonfires are lighted. At midnight a high mass terminates the celebration, and some of the pilgrims depart, and others remain for the banquet which invariably follows.
On the eighth of September, 1857, the Madonna of Guingamp received the crown of gold from the chapter of St. Peter’s at Rome, on behalf of the Pope, a distinction offered to images of the Virgin uniting the three traits of antiquity, popularity, and miracle-working.
“La Pompe,” or the Fontaine, in hammered lead, is one of the chief artistic curiosities of Guingamp. It is a remarkable work in every way, and dates from 1588, since which time it has only been repaired—not reconstructed. Its preservation is wonderful, and it is an embellishment of which even a greater town might well be proud.
Aside from the fragment of the castle, there are no mediæval gateways or walls to remind one of the military importance of the place in former days. A century and a quarter ago, a traveller wrote: “Enter Guingamp by gateways, towers, and battlements of the oldest military architecture, every part denoting antiquity, and in the best preservation.” All this, unhappily, has disappeared, and one has to go to Vitré and Fougères to see military architecture in Brittany.
Eastward from Guingamp toward St. Brieuc, one passes—the traveller by road or rail seldom stops—Chatelaudren. It is a conventional Breton small town, but it is a market-town, nevertheless. It has not much of interest for any one unless he be a keen observer of manners and customs, hence it is but a way station between the two larger towns.
St. Brieuc is a city, although it has no tram-cars to dodge and no restaurants or Hôtels Étrangers, which is a good thing for the native and the tourist alike.
In reality its half-dozen hotels rise to the distinction of being known as “establishments,” yet they have lost none of their local flavour. St. Brieuc is the metropolis where the summer visitors—Parisians all—of the beaches come to buy the little necessaries and luxuries which a mere watering-place fails to supply. Then, too, one who is rusticating, even in a delightful spot like Val André, lacks notably the inspiration coming from a more or less frequent contact with a large centre, and so he hies himself to a market-town, gets the fare of the country at a hotel for travelling salesmen, and has a bit of the transmitted gossip of the capital over a bock at the principal café; after this—voilà! the seaside again for a time.
This may not be the Anglo-Saxon way of treating a similar situation, but it is exactly after the French method.
St. Brieuc is the seat of a bishopric, suffragan of the metropolitan see of Brittany at Rennes. Its origin is due to a missionary who came with eight disciples at the end of the fifth century to evangelize Armorica. As a place of pilgrimage,—the tomb of St. Brieuc having become a shrine,—it soon began to draw throngs from all parts, and the importance of the city which grew up around the memory of the missionary was soon assured.
The cathedral of St. Brieuc was begun by St. William Pinchon before the middle of the thirteenth century, and was soon finished.
Its exterior presents the severe and austere, though beautiful, Gothic of its time, but the accessories of its interior arrangements show plainly the debasement of the later interpolations, although there are some really excellent details hidden away amid a profusion of mediocrities, notably the tomb of St. William, a fine Way of the Cross by a local sculptor, and a low, hanging gallery at the base of the choir, which is a remarkably beautiful and effective adjunct to a great church. The exterior is more impressive, though its two principal doorways have been badly restored or rebuilt at some time since the completion of the edifice. The great, gaunt, donjon-like towers are the chief features of beauty and distinction, and tell the story of the whole fabric in quite an unassailable manner.
At the town hall is a museum which has some good modern art works, including a fragment of Rodin’s Portes de l’Enfer and some notable paintings of Breton subjects.
In the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue Fardel are many old houses, one of the most notable being the hotel of the Dukes of Brittany, begun in 1572 by Yvon Collou. James II. of England lodged here when he came to St. Brieuc in 1689.
The carved and decorated fronts of these old wooden houses lend a quaintness and charm to the streets of St. Brieuc, in strong contrast to the modernity of its hotels and cafés. There is considerable and varied local industry at St. Brieuc, and this gives the city some importance as a manufacturing centre, but the chief events of its commercial life are the great fairs held in July and September, the latter founded in the fifteenth century by Marguerite of Clisson.
The environs of St. Brieuc are charmingly diversified, from the wide open stretches of farming country at the south to the wastes of rock and sand flanking the great Bay of St. Brieuc.
Le Légué is the port of St. Brieuc, and the coastwise traffic is considerable. The quays and docks, ship-houses and careening wharfs lend a novel and interesting aspect to a background of thickly wooded river-banks. The seaward entrance of the channel is protected by a fifth-class light. The port is the first in rank in the Côtes du Nord for the fitting out of the Newfoundland and Iceland fishing-boats.
The Tower of Cesson, three kilometres or more from St. Brieuc, is a simple circular tower, surrounded by a double protecting fosse cut perpendicularly into the rock. The walls are quite twelve feet in thickness on the lower of its four floors. It was built by Duke Jean IV. in 1395, and, after much strife and bloodshed, extending over two centuries, was laid in ruins by Henry IV. in 1598.
On the shores of the Bay of St. Brieuc are innumerable little beaches which are healthful breathing-spots for large numbers of Parisian folk, who come thither between June and September of each year.
These are not exactly riotous resorts of fashion, but still there are some evidences of the distractions of the world that make most of them appear as little parochial Parises. There are two spots on the western shore of the bay to which this does not apply, however, Etables and Binic.