Legends & Romances of Brittany Part 4

Ty en Corygannt ('The House of the Korrigans') is situated in the same department, while near Penmarch, in Finistere, at the other end of the province, we find Ty C'harriquet ('The House of the Gorics' or 'Nains'). Other mythical personages are also credited with their erection, most frequently either the devil or Gargantua being held responsible for their miraculous creation. The phenomenon, well known to students of folk-lore, that an unlettered people speedily forgets the origin of monuments that its predecessors may have raised in times past is well exemplified in Brittany, whose peasant-folk are usually surprised, if not amused, at the question "Who built the dolmens?"

Close familiarity with and contiguity to uncommon objects not infrequently dulls the sense of wonder they should otherwise naturally excite. But lest we feel tempted to sneer at these poor folk for their incurious att.i.tude toward the visible antiquities of their land, let us ask ourselves how many of us take that interest in the antiquities of our own country or our own especial locality that they demand.[12]

_Fairy Builders_

For the most part, then, the megaliths, in the opinion of the Breton peasant, are not the handiwork of man. He would rather refer their origin to spirits, giants, or fiends. If he makes any exception to this supernatural attribution, it is in favour of the saints he reverences so profoundly. The fairies, he says, harnessed their oxen to the mighty stones, selected a site, and dragged them thither to form a dwelling, or perhaps a cradle for the infant fays they were so fond of exchanging for human children. Thus the Roches aux Fees near Saint-Didier, in Ille-et-Vilaine, were raised by fairy hands, the elves collecting "all the big stones in the country" and carrying them thither in their ap.r.o.ns. These architectural sprites then mounted on each other's shoulders in order that they might reach high enough to place the mighty monoliths securely in position. This practice they also followed in building the dolmen near the wood of Rocher, on the road from Dinan to Dol, say the people of that country-side.

But the actual purpose of the megaliths has not been neglected by tradition, for a venerable farmer at Rouvray stated that the fairies were wont to honour after their death those who had made good use of their lives and built the dolmens to contain their ashes. The presence of such a shrine in a country-side was a guarantee of abundance and prosperity therein, as a subtle and indefinable charm spread from the saintly remnants and communicated itself to everything in the neighbourhood.[13] The fairy builders, says tradition, went about their work in no haphazard manner. Those among them who possessed a talent for design drew the plans of the proposed structure, the less gifted acting as carriers, labourers, and masons. Ap.r.o.n-carrying was not their only method of porterage, for some bore the stones on their heads, or one under each arm, as when they raised the Roche aux Fees in Retiers, or the dolmen in La Lande Marie.[14] The s.p.a.ce of a night was usually sufficient in which to raise a dolmen. But though 'run up'

with more than Transatlantic dispatch, in view of the time these structures have endured for, any charge of jerry-building against their elfin architects must fall to the ground. Daylight, too, frequently surprised the fairy builders, so that they could not finish their task, as many a 'roofless' dolmen shows.

There are many Celtic parallels to this belief. For example, it is said that the Picts, or perhaps the fairies, built the original church of Corstorphine, near Edinburgh, and stood in a row handing the stones on, one to another, from Ravelston Quarry, on the adjacent hill of Corstorphine. Such is the local folk-tale; and it has its congeners in Celtic and even in Hindu myth. Thus in the Highland tale of Kennedy and the _claistig_, or fairy, whom he captured, and whom he compelled to build him a house in one night, we read that she set her people to work speedily:

And they brought flags and stones From the sh.o.r.es of Cliamig waterfall, Reaching them from hand to hand.[15]

Again, the Round Tower of Ardmore, in Ireland, was built with stones brought from Slieve Grian, a mountain some four or five miles distant, "without horse or wheel," the blocks being pa.s.sed from hand to hand from the quarry to the site of the building. The same tradition applied to the Round Tower of Abernethy, in Perthshire, only it is in this case demonstrated that the stone of which the tower is composed was actually taken from the traditional quarry, even the very spot being geologically identified.[16] In like manner, too, was Rama's bridge built by the monkey host in Hindu myth, as recounted in the _Mahabharata_ and the _Ramayana_.

Tales, as apart from beliefs, are not often encountered in connexion with the monuments. Indeed, Sebillot, in the course of his researches, found only some dozen of these all told.[17] They are very brief, and appear for the most part to deal with fairies who have been shut up by the power of magic in a dolmen. Tales of spirits enclosed in trees, and even in pillars, are not uncommon, and lately I have heard a peculiarly fearsome ghost story which comes from Belgium, in which it is related how certain spirits had become enclosed in a pillar in an ancient abbey, for the saintly occupants of which they made it particularly uncomfortable. Mr George Henderson, in one of the most masterly and suggestive studies of Celtic survivals ever published, states that stones in the Highlands of Scotland were formerly believed to have souls, and that those too large to be moved "were held to be in intimate connexion with spirits." Pillared stones are not employed in building dwellings in the Highlands, ill luck, it is believed, being sure to follow their use in this manner, while to 'meddle' with stones which tradition connects with Druidism is to court fatality.[18]

_Stones that Travel_

M. Salomon Reinach tells us of the Breton belief that certain sacred stones go once a year or once a century to 'wash' themselves in the sea or in a river, returning to their ancient seats after their ablutions.[19] The stones in the dolmen of Esse are thought to change their places continually, like those of Callernish and Lewis, and, like the Roman Penates, to have the gift of coming and going if removed from their habitual site.

The megalithic monuments of Brittany are undoubtedly the most remarkable relics of that epoch of prehistoric activity which is now regarded as the immediate forerunner of civilization. Can it be that they were miraculously preserved by isolation from the remote beginnings of that epoch, or is it more probable that they were constructed at a relatively late period? These are questions of profound difficulty, and it is likely that both theories contain a certain amount of truth. Whatever may have been the origin of her megaliths, Brittany must ever be regarded as a great prehistoric museum, a unique link with a past of h.o.a.ry antiquity.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] That it was Neolithic seems undoubted, and in all probability Alpine--_i.e._ the same race as presently inhabits Brittany.

See Dottin, _Anciens Peuples de l'Europe_ (Paris, 1916).

[7] But _tolmen_ in Cornish meant 'pole of stone.'

[8] Ostensibly, at least; but see the remarks upon modern pagan survivals in Chapter IX, p. 246.

[9] Which might be rendered:

All here is symbol; these grey stones translate A thought ineffable, but where the key?

Say, shall it be recovered soon or late, To ope the temple of this mystery?

[10] Not to be confused, of course, with the well-known island mount of the same name.

[11] A Scottish sixteenth-century magical verse was chanted over such a stone:

"I knock this rag wpone this stone, And ask the divell for rain thereon."

[12] The writer's experience is that unlettered British folk often possess much better information concerning the antiquities of a district than its 'educated' inhabitants. If this information is not scientific it is full and displays deep personal interest.

[13] _Collectionneur breton_, t. iii, p.55.

[14] See _Comptes rendus de la Societe des Antiquaries de France_, pp.

95 ff. (1836).

[15] J. G. Campbell, _Superst.i.tions of the Scottish Highlands_.

[16] Small, _Antiquities of Fife_.

[17] _Traditions de la Haute-Bretagne_, t. i, p. 26.

[18] Henderson, _Survivals in Belief among the Celts_ (1911).

[19] _Cultes, Mythes, et Religiones_, t. iii, pp. 365-433.

CHAPTER III: THE FAIRIES OF BRITTANY

Whatever the origin of the race which conceived the demonology of Brittany--and there are indications that it was not wholly Celtic--that weird province of Faery bears unmistakable evidence of having been deeply impressed by the Celtic imagination, if it was not totally peopled by it, for its various inhabitants act in the Celtic spirit, are moved by Celtic springs of thought and fancy, and possess not a little of that irritability which has forced anthropologists to include the Celtic race among those peoples described as 'sanguine-bilious.' As a rule they are by no means friendly or even humane, these fays of Brittany, and if we find beneficent elves within the green forests of the duchy we may feel certain that they are French immigrants, and therefore more polished than the choleric native sprites.

_Broceliande_

Of all the many localities celebrated in the fairy lore of Brittany none is so famous as Broceliande. Broceliande! "The sound is like a bell," a far, faery chime in a twilit forest. In the name Broceliande there seems to be gathered all the tender charm, the rich and haunting mystery, the remote magic of Brittany and Breton lore. It is, indeed, the t.i.tle to the rarest book in the library of poetic and traditional romance.

"I went to seek out marvels," said old Wace. "The forest I saw, the land I saw. I sought marvels, but I found none. A fool I came back, a fool I went; a fool I went, a fool I came back; foolishness I sought; a fool I hold myself."[20]

Our age, even less sceptical than his, sees no folly in questing for the beautiful, and if we expect no marvels, nor any sleight of faery, however desirous we are, we do not hold it time lost to plunge into the enchanted forest and in its magic half-gloom grope for, and perchance grasp, dryad draperies, or be trapped in the filmy webs of fancy which are spun in these shadows for unwary mortals.

Standing in dream-girt Broceliande of a hundred legends, its shadows mirrored by dim meres that may never reflect the stars, one feels the lure of Brittany more keenly even than when walking by its fierce and jagged coasts menaced by savage grey seas, or when wandering on its vast moors where the monuments of its pagan past stand in gigantic disarray. For in the forest is the heart of Arthurian story, the shrine of that wonder which has drawn thousands to this land of legend, who, like old Wace, trusted to have found, if not elfin marvels, at least matter of phantasy conjured up by the legendary a.s.sociations of Broceliande.

But we must beware of each step in these twilit recesses, for the fays of Brittany are not as those of other lands. Harsh things are spoken of them. They are malignant, say the forest folk. The note of Brittany is scarce a joyous one. It is bitter-sweet as a sad chord struck on an ancient harp.

The fays of Brittany are not the friends of man. They are not 'the good people,' 'the wee folk'; they have no endearing names, the gift of a grateful peasantry. Cold and hostile, they hold aloof from human converse, and, should they encounter man, vent their displeasure at the interruption in the most vindictive manner.

Whether the fairies of Brittany be the late representatives of the G.o.ds of an elder day or merely animistic spirits who have haunted these glades since man first sheltered in them, certain it is that in no other region in Europe has Mother Church laid such a heavy ban upon all the things of faery as in this strange and isolated peninsula. A more tolerant ecclesiastical rule might have weaned them to a timid friendship, but all overtures have been discouraged, and to-day they are enemies, active, malignant, swift to inflict evil upon the pious peasant because he is pious and on the energetic because of his industry.

_The Korrigan_

Among those forest-beings of whom legend speaks such malice none is more relentless than the Korrigan, who has power to enmesh the heart of the most constant swain and doom him to perish miserably for love of her. Beware of the fountains and of the wells of this forest of Broceliande, for there she is most commonly to be encountered, and you may know her by her bright hair--"like golden wire," as Spenser says of his lady's--her red, flashing eyes, and her laughing lips. But if you would dare her wiles you must come alone to her fountain by night, for she shuns even the half-gloom that is day in shadowy Broceliande.

The peasants when they speak of her will a.s.sure you that she and her kind are pagan princesses of Brittany who would have none of Christianity when the holy Apostles brought it to Armorica, and who must dwell here under a ban, outcast and abhorred.

_The Seigneur of Nann_[21]

The Seigneur of Nann was high of heart, for that day his bride of a year had presented him with two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, both white as May-blossom. In his joy the happy father asked his wife her heart's desire, and she, pining for that which idle fancy urged upon her, begged him to bring her a dish of woodc.o.c.k from the lake in the dale, or of venison from the greenwood. The Seigneur of Nann seized his lance and, vaulting on his jet-black steed, sought the borders of the forest, where he halted to survey the ground for track of roe or slot of the red deer. Of a sudden a white doe rose in front of him, and was lost in the forest like a silver shadow.