Brittany & Its Byways Part 11

From Auray by rail to Quimper, where we took the diligence to Pont l'Abbe, an old town formerly of some importance, in the midst of a fertile, rich country. The costume worn at Pont l'Abbe and along the Bay of Audierne is very singular. The cap, or "bigouden," is composed of two pieces: first, a kind of skull-cap, or serre-tete, fitting tight to the head over the ears, then a little round bit, resembling, the young people said, a "pork-pie"

hat, made of starched linen, pinched into a three-cornered peak, the middle peak embroidered and tied on by a piece of tape fastening under the chin; the hair is turned up, "en chignon," over the skull-cap. The body of the dress has a large "piece" of red or yellow, and sleeves to match. The men wear several very short coats, one over the other, the shortest trimmed with fringe; sometimes sentences are embroidered with coloured woollens round the edge. It was market day; the women were sitting, with distaff and spindle, on each side of the entrance to the Halle. Some of them have short bead-chains with a ring, attached to the left shoulder, to stick their distaffs in when not at work. There was abundance of fruit and vegetables, potatoes, and sardines, which, with bigoudens and other articles of dress, formed the princ.i.p.al commodities for sale. Pont l'Abbe and its Port, Loctudy, carry on an extensive trade with Jersey, and large quant.i.ties of potatoes are exported to that island. There were some Jersey merchants at the table-d'hote.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 50. Peasant Girl. Pont l'Abbe.]

The church of Pont l'Abbe has only one aisle. There is a fine rose window over the west entrance, of great lightness and richness, with a smaller one at the left; at the east end is another rose window of larger dimensions, the mullions forming geometric patterns, but differing in design from the other. The French architects always took great pains in the decoration of this part of the church, and these wheel windows really rival those of Rouen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 51. Apse of the Church, Loctudy.]

Attached to the church, are the cloisters of the Carmelite convent to which the church formerly belonged, built in the beginning of the fifteenth century by Bertram de Rosmadec, who had so much contributed to the completion of the cathedral at Quimper. The square is surrounded by an interlaced circular arcade, forming trefoiled pointed arches, all in excellent preservation. The access to the cloisters is through the conventual building, now a private house and garden, the proprietor kindly granting us permission.

We drove to Loctudy, on the mouth of the Pont l'Abbe river opposite the little island of Tudy, called after an English saint of that name. Fleeing from the persecutions of the Picts and Scots who desolated his country, he founded here, at the end of the fifth century, a considerable monastery, afterwards destroyed by the Normans.

At Loctudy is a curious Romanesque church, one of the best preserved in Brittany, which dates from the Templars of the twelfth century. It has a nave with aisles going all round the choir, and three round apsidal chapels at the end. The five arches on each side of the nave are horse-shoe shaped, and the choir is surrounded by the same number of high narrow arches, resting on columns with grotesque capitals of complicated design. The three chapels behind are seen through the opening; on one of the capitals is sculptured the cross of the Templars. The whole building is spoiled by whitewash.

"Chevaliers en ce monde cy Ne peuvent vivre sans souci; Ils doivent le peuple defendre, Et leur sang pour la foi espandre."

EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 52. Torche of Penmarch.]

We engaged a rough kind of vehicle, much like a butcher's cart, to visit the Torche de Penmarch, a rocky promontory, so called from its fancied resemblance to a horse's head, forming the southern extremity of the department of Finistere. The Torche is a ma.s.s of rocks separated from the mainland by a chasm called the "Saut de Moine," because an Irish saint, named Viaud, jumped across it on his landing. In rough weather, the noise made by the sea dashing against its sides and rushing through the crevices of the rocks, is said to be heard at Quimper, a distance of twenty-one miles. A line of rocks runs all along the coast, marked by a lighthouse at Penmarch; we proceeded to another group of rocks near which M. de Chatellier, a proprietor and antiquary of this country, has built a house for painting and enjoying the scenery. One of our party clambered down to see the "Trou d'Enfer," a tremendously deep hole in the rocks, the bottom covered with a pink sort of sea-weed, and the water as clear as crystal.

The whole country is a dreary sandy level, with salt-marshes, over which we pa.s.sed to the ruined church of St. Fiacre, and close by is that of St.

Guenole, both situated near the sea. The countryman who showed us the church, knelt reverently down at the threshold and put up a short prayer before he entered the sacred building. The general devoutness and strong faith of the Bretons is most impressive and genuine, mixed, no doubt, with great superst.i.tion; but, as Wesley says, "Heaven makes allowance for invincible ignorance, and blesses the faith notwithstanding the superst.i.tion."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 53. Ship Sculptured on the Walls. Church of St. Guenole, Penmarch.]

St. Guenole consists of an unfinished square tower, with crocketed pinnacles and a porch of considerable size, under a large mullioned window of the fifteenth century. On each side of the porch are rude sculptures of ships and fishes, not uncommon in these parts, set there to show the church has been built with the thank-offerings of the fisher population of the district. In our tour we met with several churches with this sign, evidences of the piety of the fishermen; indeed, at Dunkirk, when the church was burned down in the sixteenth century by the French, it was entirely rebuilt by the contribution called "le filet saint," from an ancient custom among the fishermen of having one net so called, the produce of which was set apart for the church.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 54. Church of St. Guenole, Penmarch.]

Towards the lighthouse are the ruins of the old town of Penmarch, much celebrated in the maritime history of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries; its commerce extended even to Spain, and the riches of its inhabitants were so surpa.s.singly great, that they drank out of silver cups, and the lords of a manor near the Torche furnished the silk required to line the road traversed by religious processions, their wealth being due to the "viande de careme," that is to say, to the cod fishery. But the discovery of Newfoundland deprived them of this lucrative monopoly, and the ravages of Fontenelle le Ligueur completed their ruin. All now is a scene of desolation. Penmarch has been called the Palmyra of Brittany.

Guy Eder Fontenelle, the Leaguer, who spread terror and devastation throughout Brittany in the sixteenth century, was a member of the Beaumanoir family; the name he adopted was that of one of the family estates. He was born in the Chateau of Beaumanoir (near Evran), and his elder brother early foresaw his guilty career. He escaped from college and united himself with a set of young men as lawless as himself; they formed themselves into a band, which soon became the dread of all Brittany. They ravaged the whole of Treguier and Cornouaille, surprised the chateaux of Coetfrec and others, took the church of Carhaix, which they fortified, and the towns of Paimpol, Lannion, and Landerneau, which they pillaged, Penmarch and Pontcroix, whence they carried off an immense booty and 300 vessels, with which they scoured the seas; and lastly, Douarnenez and the Island of Tristan (in 1595), whence fruitless attempts were made to dislodge them. For three years Fontenelle made this island his head-quarters, issuing from his stronghold to devastate the country. He murdered above fifteen hundred peasants at Plougastel, sank an English ship, without allowing her crew a moment to save themselves, imprisoned and tortured at Douarnenez all who fell into his hands. His victims never survived his cruelties more than three or four days, when their bodies were cast out into the bay to the fishes. These were only a few of his atrocities. As he called himself one of the leaders of the League in Brittany, the Duke de Mercur, its chief, indignant at the barbarities perpetrated in its name, caused Fontenelle to be imprisoned, but he was liberated on paying a ransom; and, fearing he would give Douarnenez over to the Spaniards, Fontenelle was included in the pacification of Mercur with Henry IV. But four years later he was implicated in the conspiracy of Biron; on which occasion all his old crimes were raked up against him, and he was condemned to be dragged on a hurdle, and broken alive upon the wheel, which sentence was executed on the Place de Greve at Paris in 1602.

In consideration of the ill.u.s.trious house to whom he belonged, the king granted that in the act of condemnation he should not go by his own name.

We next went to see the church of Saint Nonna in the town, the largest of the numerous churches in the parish of Penmarch. Ships are sculptured in front of the tower, as at St. Guenole. On the left of the porch is a pretty window, the mullions formed by three fleur de lis. In the church is a curious old painting styled, "Procession du vu de Louis XIII."

Portraits of the King, the Dauphin (Louis XIV.), Anne of Austria, and Cardinal Richelieu, are introduced, and a view of the church of St. Nonna is in the background.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 55. Fleur-de-Lise Window, Church of St. Nonna, Penmarch.]

On our way home we pa.s.sed, on the left, at Kerscaven, two menhirs, one curiously furrowed and shaped like a half-opened fan.

We had a pretty drive from Pont l'Abbe, with occasional views of the Bay of Audierne, extending from Penmarch to the Pointe du Raz. Midway the horse, going down a steep hill, fell, and we all found ourselves upon the road, but happily unhurt. We met numbers of peasants returning from the fair at Pontcroix; and our driver, a butcher by trade, coolly stopped the vehicle, to discourse with them on the price of stock, and to handle the sheep they had bought. Our drive was enlivened with occasional peeps of the Bay of Audierne till we reached the little port of that name, the view of which is very pretty. Audierne is approached by a bridge across the river or estuary. At its entrance is a lighthouse, and on the right a sandy bay, with bathing-machines in the season.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 56. Pointe du Raz.]

The town consists of three streets of cut granite houses, with the name of the builder and the date of their construction inscribed over the door.

Fishing is the occupation of the inhabitants, and the table-d'hote at our comfortable, clean, little inn was plentifully supplied with magnificent john dorys, large red mullet, langoustes, and fish of every description.

From Audierne we took a carriage to visit the Pointe du Raz, a promontory so famous for its rocks and wrecks. We went through a treeless country; near a pretty bay, on the left, is the chapel of Notre Dame-de-Bon-Voyage, destined chiefly for sailors, after which the country becomes more wild, barren, and cheerless. We pa.s.sed over a bridge which no Breton would dare to cross at night, for fear of being flung by the spirits into the river.

According to their belief, a hare appears on the bridge, and terrifies the horses, who throw their rider, and the traveller is dragged by the phantom into the muddy river, where he is kept till morning's dawn, when he is allowed to pursue his way, exhausted with cold, and half dead with fright.

They are very superst.i.tious here, as in all Cornouaille. A writer says, "every nation of the earth has its superst.i.tions and absurdities, but Brittany has those of all other nations united." An old woman in a village hard by, said our driver, has never been seen inside the walls of a church; the people say she has sold herself to the evil one, and no one dares go near or speak to her.

On the left is the pretty steeple of the church of Plogoff, situated on an eminence, and dedicated to Saint Colledoc, a Welsh bishop of the sixth century, contemporary of King Arthur, and a.s.sociated with many of the doings of Queen Guinevre and the knights of the Round Table. Lescoff is the last village we pa.s.sed through before-after driving over a barren plain-we arrived at the lighthouse, built thirty years back at the Pointe.

We walked thence to the Pointe, a gigantic and magnificent ma.s.s of rocks, eighty feet above the level of the sea. We met with a good-natured woman, who led the young people over the rocks to look down the "Enfer de Plogoff." They had a slippery scramble to reach the hole, a kind of tunnel through which the sea rushes with great violence, so much more terrible than that of Penmarch, that the noise has been compared to the distant roaring of some thousands of wild beasts issuing from the depths of a forest. In the mean time, we remained seated on the bank enjoying the view. On the south lay the Bay of Audierne, extending in the form of a crescent, the promontories of Penmarch and Raz forming the extreme points.

The currents, and the numerous rocks of the bay, render it a dangerous coast, formerly peopled by barbarous wreckers, who despoiled the shipwrecked mariners as our Cornish men of old. Opposite the Raz, about seven miles distant, is the Island of Sein, and to the right, the Baie des Trepa.s.ses. The island of Sein was anciently the seat of an oracle, interpreted by nine Druidesses, who were versed in every art and science.

Moreover, they appear to have been accomplished needlewomen; for a Breton chronicler, giving an account of the coronation of an early king (Erech) at Nantes, describes his mantle as embroidered by these priestesses with figures of Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music. Their skill in divination caused them to be a.s.sociated with the fairies; and Morgan-_i.e._ "born of the sea"-one of these priestesses, who lived in the first century of the Christian era, was famous among the British fairies.

"Avec succes cultivait la magie, Morgan de plus, etait a.s.sez jolie."

Chateaubriand celebrates Velleda, the last of the Druidesses of Sein, tall in stature, her eyes blue, with long fair floating hair, dressed in a short black tunic, without sleeves, bearing a golden sickle suspended from a brazen girdle, and crowned with a branch of oak. Here King Arthur was brought by Merlin to recover of his wounds. The inhabitants of the island were celebrated for their ferocity as wreckers.

The pa.s.sage between the island and the point or Bec du Raz-"qu'aucun n'a pa.s.se sans mal ou sans crainte"-is very dangerous, owing to the number of rocks and the violence of the currents; hence the well-known prayer of the Breton sailor, "Mon Dieu, secourez-moi pour traverser le Raz, car mon navire est pet.i.t et la mer est grande." Having no wish to run the risk of being detained at the island by rough weather, we did not attempt the pa.s.sage.

The Baie des Trepa.s.ses, over which we looked on the right, is so called from the Celtic legend that the Druids embarked in this bay after their death, to be buried in the island of Sein:-

"Autrefois, un esprit venait, d'une voix forte; Appeler chaque nuit un pecheur sur sa porte; Arrive dans la baie, on trouvait un bateau Si lourd et si charge de morts qu'il faisait eau, Et pourtant il fallait, malgre vent et maree, Les mener jusqu'a Sein, jusqu'a l'ile sacree."

BRIZEUX.

The bay also derives its name from the numerous shipwrecks that have taken place on its rocks, and from the number of corpses that have been floated there by the currents from ships foundered in the gulf comprised between the entrance of Brest, the Ouessant Islands, and Sein. The whole extent of the coast of Brittany is one long wall of rocks, placed as it were to protect it from the inroads of the sea and from foreign invasion. Heaped one over the other, they resemble the bastions of a citadel, the advanced rocks extending out to sea, jutting up in every direction in endless reefs. Or its line of coast may be compared to the jagged teeth of a comb, with a second line of defence in the rocks further out to sea.

On the desolate sh.o.r.e of the Baie des Trepa.s.ses is a piece of water, the etang de Laoual, site of the city of Is-submerged by Divine vengeance, according to popular tradition, in the fifth century-a place of great commerce, arts, riches, and also of luxury. Gradlon, or Grallo, the king, alone attempted to stem the torrent. Built in the vast basin which now forms the Bay of Douarnenez, it was protected from the ocean by a strong d.y.k.e, the sluices only admitting sufficient water to supply the town. King Gradlon kept the silver key (which opened, at the same time, the great sluice and the city gates) suspended round his neck. His palace was of marble, cedar, and gold; in the midst of a brilliant Court sat enthroned his daughter Dahut, a princess who "had made a crown of her vices, and had taken for her pages the seven capital sins." Taking advantage of the sleep of her father, Dahut one night stole the silver key, and instead of opening the city gate, by mistake unlocked the sluices. The King was awakened by St. Guenole, who commanded him to flee, as the torrent was reaching the palace. He mounted his horse, taking his worthless daughter behind him. The torrent was gaining upon him fast, when a voice from behind called out, "Throw the demon thou carriest into the sea, if thou dost not desire to perish." Dahut felt her strength failing her; the hands that convulsively grasped her father's waist relaxed their hold; she rolled into the water, disappeared, and the torrent immediately stopped its course. The King reached Quimper safe and sound, and that town became afterwards the capital of Cornouaille.

So runs the legend. That a great city once existed in the Bay of Douarnenez admits of no doubt. Besides the religious chronicles of the country, which have preserved the memory of its existence, in the sixteenth century, remains of old edifices were standing at the entrance of the bay, old paved roads have been traced, and walls found under water near the Pointe du Raz.

The tradition of a town thus swallowed up is common among the Celtic race.

In Wales, the site of the submerged city is in Cardigan Bay; in Ireland, in Lough Neagh:-

"On Lough Neagh's banks, where the fisherman strays, At the hour of eve's declining, He sees the round towers of other days Beneath the waters shining."-MOORE.

One of our party went out fishing to the Pointe, and returned well laden with his spoils.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 57. Front of the Church, Pontcroix.]

The road from Audierne to Douarnenez pa.s.ses by Pontcroix, a little town on the same river (Goazien) as Audierne, along which the road runs-a charming drive. It has a magnificent Romanesque church of the twelfth (probably of the fifteenth) century, with a remarkable porch, richly embroidered in quatrefoils and trefoils. A tower in the centre, with octagonal spire is second to none in Cornouaille, except that of Quimper. The arches of the nave are horseshoe, the transepts very narrow. Under the altar of the Lady Chapel is a "Cene," half the size of nature, sculptured in ivory and marble, of marvellous workmanship.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 58. Wheel of Sacring Bells, Notre Dame de-Comfort, near Douarnenez.]

Eleven miles from Douarnenez we stopped to see the pretty little chapel of Notre Dame-de-Comfort, in a hamlet of that name, with light open-work steeple. Attached to one of the arches, on the left of the choir, is a wooden wheel, hung round with bells, to which is attached a long string.

It is erroneously called "the wheel of fortune;" but is, in fact, the old wheel of sacring bells in use before the single bell was adopted. The boy who showed us the chapel pulled the string which was fastened to a hook near the altar, and the wheel revolved and rang a merry peal. Formerly there was a little wooden figure attached to the wheel, which performed the same office. The road runs round a hill, along an estuary formed by the river, and suddenly the beautiful lake, called the Bay of Douarnenez, bursts on the sight, of a blue as lovely as the Italian seas.

The dirty little town of Douarnenez is charmingly situated to the south of the bay, the hills clothed with trees to the water's edge. The Pointe du Raz forms the western boundary of the bay, and it is shut in to the north by the peninsula of Crozon; its extreme point, Pointe de la Chevre, advancing nearly midway into the bay. The tide here falls eighteen feet.