The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 19

I recollect that, at the time of your examination on your thesis before the Faculty of Letters of the University of Rennes, one of my colleagues, my friend Professor Dottin, put to you this question:--

'You believe, you a.s.sert, in the existence of fairies? Have you seen any?'

You answered, with equal coolness and candour:

'No. I have made every effort to do so, and I have never seen any.

But there are many things which you, sir, have not seen, and of which, nevertheless, you would not think of denying the existence.

That is my att.i.tude toward fairies.'

I am like you, my dear Mr. Wentz: I have never seen fairies. It is true that I have a very dear lady friend whom we have christened by that name [fairy], but, in spite of all her fair supernatural gifts, she is only a humble mortal. On the other hand, I lived, when a mere child, among people who had almost daily intercourse with real fairies.

That was in a little township in Lower Brittany, inhabited by peasants who were half sailors, and by sailors who were half peasants. There was, not far from the village, an ancient manor-house long abandoned by its owners, for what reason was not known exactly. It continued to be called the 'Chateau' of Lanascol, though it was hardly more than a ruin. It is true that the avenues by which one approached it had retained their feudal aspect, with their fourfold rows of ancient beeches whose huge ma.s.ses of foliage were reflected in splendid pools. The people of the neighbourhood seldom ventured into these avenues in the evening. They were supposed to be, from sunset onwards, the favourite walking-ground of a 'lady' who went by the name of _Groac'h Lanascol_, the 'Fairy of Lanascol'.

Many claimed to have met her, and described her in colours which were, however, the most varied. Some represented her as an old woman who walked all bent, her two hands leaning on a stump of a crutch with which, in autumn, from time to time she stirred the dead leaves. The dead leaves which she thus stirred became suddenly shining like gold, and clinked against one another with the clear sound of metal. According to others, it was a young princess, marvellously adorned, after whom there hurried curious little black silent men. She advanced with a majestic and queenly bearing.

Sometimes she stopped in front of a tree, and the tree at once bent down as if to receive her commands. Or again, she would cast a look on the water of a pool, and the pool trembled to its very depths, as though stirred by an access of fear beneath the potency of her look.

The following strange story was told about her:--

The owners of Lanascol having desired to get rid of an estate which they no longer occupied, the manor and lands attached to it were put up to auction by a notary of Plouaret. On the day fixed for the bidding a number of purchasers presented themselves. The price had already reached a large sum, and the estate was on the point of being knocked down, when, on a last appeal from the auctioneer, a female voice, very gentle and at the same time very imperious, was raised and said:

'A thousand francs more!'

A great commotion arose in the hall. Every one's eyes sought for the person who had made this advance, and who could only be a woman. But there was not a single woman among those present. The notary asked:

'Who spoke?'

Again the same voice made itself heard.

'The Fairy of Lanascol!' it replied.

A general break-up followed. From that time forward no purchaser has ever appeared, and, as the current report ran, that was the reason why Lanascol continued to be for sale.

I have designedly quoted to you the story of the Fairy of Lanascol, my dear Mr. Wentz, because she was the first to make an impression on me in my childhood. How many others have I come to know later on in the course of narratives from those who lived with me on the sandy beaches, in the fields or the woods! Brittany has always been a kingdom of Faerie. One cannot there travel even a league without brushing past the dwelling of some male or female fairy. Quite lately, in the course of an autumn pilgrimage to the hallucinatory forest of Paimpont (or Broceliande), still haunted throughout by the great memories of Celtic legend, I encountered beneath the thick foliage of the Pas-du-Houx, a woman gathering f.a.ggots, with whom I did not fail, as you may well imagine, to enter into conversation.

One of the first names I uttered was naturally that of Vivian.

'Vivian!' cried out the poor old woman. 'Ah! a blessing on her, the good Lady! for she is as good as she is beautiful.... Without her protection my good man, who works at woodcutting, would have fallen, like a wolf, beneath the keepers' guns....' And she began to narrate to me 'as how' her husband, something of a poacher like all the woodcutters of these districts, had one night gone to watch for a roebuck in the neighbourhood of the b.u.t.te-aux-Plaintes, and had been caught red-handed by a party of keepers. He sought to fly: the keepers fired. A bullet hit him in the thigh: he fell, and was making ready to let himself be killed on the spot, rather than surrender, when there suddenly interposed between him and his a.s.sailants a kind of very thick mist which covered everything--the ground, the trees, the keepers, and the wounded man himself. And he heard a voice coming out of the mist, a voice gentle like the rustling of leaves, and murmuring in his ear: 'Save thyself, my son: the spirit of Vivian will watch over thee till thou hast crawled out of the forest.'

'Such were the actual words of the fairy,' concluded the f.a.ggot-gatherer. And she crossed herself devoutly, for pious Brittany, as you know, reveres fairies as much as saints.

I do not know if _lutins_ (mischievous spirits) should be included in the fairy world, but what is certain is that this charming and roguish tribe has always abounded in our country. I have been told that formerly every house had its own. It (the _lutin_) was something like the little Roman household G.o.d. Now visible, now invisible, it presided over all the acts of domestic life. Nay more; it shared in them, and in the most effective manner. Inside the house it helped the servants, blew up the fire on the hearth, supervised the cooking of the food for men or beasts, quieted the crying of the babe lying in the bottom of the cupboard, and prevented worms from settling in the pieces of bacon hanging from the beams. Similarly there fell within its sphere the management of the byres and stables: thanks to it the cows gave milk abounding in b.u.t.ter, and the horses had round croups and shining coats. It was, in a word, the good genius of the house, but conditionally on every one paying to it the respect to which it had the right. If neglected, ever so little, its kindness changed into spite, and there was no unkind trick of which it was not capable towards people who had offended it, such as upsetting the contents of the pots on the hearth, entangling wool round distaffs, making tobacco unsmokeable, mixing a horse's mane in inextricable confusion, drying up the udders of cows, or stripping the backs of sheep. Therefore care was taken not to annoy it. Careful attention was paid to all its habits and humours. Thus, in my parents' house, our old maid Filie never lifted the trivet from the fire without taking the precaution of sprinkling it with water to cool it, before putting it away at the corner of the hearth. If you asked her the reason for this ceremony, she would reply to you:

'To prevent the _lutin_ burning himself there, if, presently, he sat on it.'

Further, I suppose there should be included in the cla.s.s of male fairies that _Bugul-Noz_, that mysterious Night Shepherd, whose tall and alarming outline the rural Bretons see rising in the twilight, if, by chance, they happen to return late from field-work. I have never been able to obtain exact information about the kind of herd which he fed, nor about what was foreboded by the meeting with him.

Most often such a meeting is dreaded. Yet, as one of my female informants, Lise Bellec, reasonably pointed out, if it is preferable to avoid the _Bugul-Noz_ it does not from that follow that he is a harmful spirit. According to her, he would rather fulfil a beneficial office, in warning human beings, by his coming, that night is not made for lingering in the fields or on the roads, but for shutting oneself in behind closed doors and going to sleep. This shepherd of the shades would then be, take it altogether, a kind of good shepherd. It is to ensure our rest and safety, to withdraw us from excesses of toil and the snares of night, that he compels us, thoughtless sheep, to return quickly to the fold.

No doubt it is an almost similar protecting office which, in popular belief, has fallen to another male fairy, more particularly attached to the seash.o.r.e, as his name, _Yann-An-od_, indicates. There is not, along all the coast of Brittany or, as it is called, in all the _Armor_, a single district where the existence of this 'John of the Dunes' is not looked on as a real fact, fully proved and undeniable.

Changing forms and different aspects are attributed to him.

Sometimes he is a giant, sometimes a dwarf. Sometimes he wears a seaman's hat of oiled cloth, sometimes a broad black felt hat. At times he leans on an oar and recalls the enigmatic personage, possessed of the same attribute, whom Ulysses has to follow, in the _Odyssey_. But he is always a marine hero whose office it is to traverse the sh.o.r.es, uttering at intervals long piercing cries, calculated to frighten away fishermen who may have allowed themselves to be surprised outside by the darkness of night. He only hurts those who resist; and even then would only strike them in their own interest, to force them to seek shelter. He is, before all, one who warns. His cries not only call back home people out late on the sands; they also inform sailors at sea of the dangerous proximity of the sh.o.r.e, and, thereby, make up for the insufficiency of the hooting of sirens or of the light of lighthouses.

We may remark, in this connexion, that a parallel feature is observed in the legend of the old Armorican saints, who were mostly emigrants from Ireland. One of their usual exercises consisted in parading throughout the night the coasts where they had set up their oratories, shaking little bells of wrought iron, the ringing of which, like the cries of _Yann-An-od_, was intended to warn voyagers that land was near.

I am persuaded that the worship of saints, which is the first and most fervent of Breton religious observances, preserves many of the features of a more ancient religion in which a belief in fairies held the chief place. The same, I feel sure, applies to those death-myths which I have collected under the name of the Legend of the Dead among the Armorican Bretons. In truth, in the Breton mind, the dead are not dead; they live a mysterious life on the edge of real life, but their world remains fully mingled with ours, and as soon as night falls, as soon as the living, properly so called, give themselves up to the temporary sleep of death, the so-called dead again become the inhabitants of the earth which they have never left. They resume their place at their former hearth, devote themselves to their old work, take an interest in the home, the fields, the boat; they behave, in a word, like the race of male and female fairies which once formed a more refined and delicate species of humanity in the midst of ordinary humanity.

I might, my dear Mr. Wentz, evoke many other types from this intermediate world of Breton Faerie, which, in my countrymen's mind, is not identical with this world nor with the other, but shares at once in both, through a curious mixture of the natural and supernatural. I have only intended in these hasty lines to show the wealth of material to which you have with so much conscientiousness and ardour devoted your efforts. And now may the fairies be propitious to you, my dear friend! They will do nothing but justice in favouring with all their goodwill the young and brilliant writer who has but now revived their cult by renewing their glory.

RENNES, _November_ 1, 1910.

BRETON FAIRIES OR _FeES_

In Lower Brittany, which is the genuinely Celtic part of Armorica, instead of finding a widespread folk-belief in fairies of the kind existing in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, we find a widespread folk-belief in the existence of the dead, and to a less extent in that of the _corrigan_ tribes. For our Psychological Theory this is very significant. It seems to indicate that among the Bretons--who are one of the most conservative Celtic peoples--the Fairy-Faith finds its chief expression in a belief that men live after death in an invisible world, just as in Ireland the dead and fairies live in Fairyland. This opinion was first suggested to me by Professor Anatole Le Braz, author of _La Legende de la Mort_, and by Professor Georges Dottin, both of the University of Rennes. But before evidence to sustain and to ill.u.s.trate this opinion is offered, it will be well to consider the less important Breton _fees_ or beings like them, and then _corrigans_ and _nains_ (dwarfs).

_The 'Grac'hed Coz'._--F. M. Luzel, who collected so many of the popular stories in Brittany, found that what few _fees_ or fairies there are almost always appear in folk-lore as little old women, or as the Breton story-teller usually calls them, _Grac'hed coz_. I have selected and abridged the following legendary tale from his works to ill.u.s.trate the nature of these Breton fairy-folk:--

In ancient times, as we read in _La Princesse Blondine_, a rich n.o.bleman had three sons; the oldest was called Cado, the second, Meliau, and the youngest, Yvon. One day, as they were together in a forest with their bows and arrows, they met a little old woman whom they had never seen before, and she was carrying on her head a jar of water. 'Are you able, lads,' Cado asked his two brothers, 'to break with an arrow the jar of the little old woman without touching her?' 'We do not wish to try it,'

they said, fearing to injure the good woman. 'All right, I'll do it then, watch me.' And Cado took his bow and let fly an arrow. The arrow went straight to its mark and split the jar without touching the little old woman; but the water wet her to the skin, and, in anger, she said to the skilful archer: 'You have failed, Cado, and I will be revenged on you for this. From now until you have found the Princess Blondine all the members of your body will tremble as leaves on a tree tremble when the north wind blows.' And instantly Cado was seized by a trembling malady in all his body. The three brothers returned home and told their father what had happened; and the father, turning to Cado, said: 'Alas, my unfortunate son, you have failed. It is now necessary for you to travel until you find the Princess Blondine, as the _fee_ said, for that little old woman was a _fee_, and no doctor in the world can cure the malady she has put upon you.'[76]

_'Fees' of Lower Brittany._--Throughout the Morbihan and Finistere, I found that stories about _fees_ are much less common than about _corrigans_, and in some localities extremely rare; but the ones I have been fortunate enough to collect are much the same in character as those gathered in the Cotes-du-Nord by Luzel, and elsewhere by other collectors. Those I here record were told to me at Carnac during the summer of 1909; the first one by M. Yvonne Daniel, a native of the ile de Croix (off the coast north-west of Carnac); and the others by M.

Goulven Le Scour.[77]

'The little ile de Croix was especially famous for its old _fees_; and the following legend is still believed by its oldest inhabitants:--"An aged man who had suffered long from leprosy was certain to die within a short time, when a woman bent double with age entered his house. She asked from what malady he suffered, and on being informed began to say prayers. Then she breathed upon the sores of the leper, and almost suddenly disappeared: the _fee_ had cured him."'

'It is certain that about fifty years ago the people in Finistere still believed in _fees_. It was thought that the _fees_ were spirits who came to predict some unexpected event in the family. They came especially to console orphans who had very unkind step-mothers. In their youth, Tanguy du Chatel and his sister Eudes were protected by a _fee_ against the misfortune which pursued them; the history of Brittany says so. In Leon it is said that the _fees_ served to guide unfortunate people, consoling them with the promise of a happy and victorious future. In the Cornouailles, on the contrary, it is said that the _fees_ were very evilly disposed, that they were demons.

'My grandmother, Marie Le Bras, had related to me that one evening an old _fee_ arrived in my village, Kerouledic (Finistere), and asked for hospitality. It was about the year 1830. The _fee_ was received; and before going to bed she predicted that the little daughter whom the mother was dressing in night-clothes would be found dead in the cradle the next day. This prediction was only laughed at; but in the morning the little one was dead in her cradle, her eyes raised toward Heaven.

The _fee_, who had slept in the stable, was gone.'

In these last three accounts, by M. Le Scour, we observe three quite different ideas concerning the Breton fairies or _fees_: in Finistere and in Leon the _fees_ are regarded as good protecting spirits, almost like ancestral spirits, which originally they may have been; in the Cornouailles they are evil spirits; while in the third account, about the old _fee_--and in the legend of the leper cured by a _fee_--the _fees_ are rationalized, as in Luzel's tale quoted above, into sorceresses or _Grac'hed Coz_.

_Children Changed by 'Fees'._--M. Goulven Le Scour, at my request, wrote down in French the following account of actual changelings in Finistere:--'I remember very well that there was a woman of the village of Kergoff, in Plouneventer, who was called ----,[78] the mother of a family. When she had her first child, a very strong and very pretty boy, she noticed one morning that he had been changed during the night; there was no longer the fine baby she had put to bed in the evening; there was, instead, an infant hideous to look at, greatly deformed, hunchbacked, and crooked, and of a black colour. The poor woman knew that a _fee_ had entered the house during the night and had changed her child.

'This changed infant still lives, and to-day he is about seventy years old. He has all the possible vices; and he has tried many times to kill his mother. He is a veritable demon; he often predicts the future, and has a habit of running abroad during the night. They call him the "Little _Corrigan_", and everybody flees from him. Being poor and infirm now, he has been obliged to beg, and people give him alms because they have great fear of him. His nick-name is Olier.

'This woman had a second, then a third child, both of whom were seen by everybody to have been born with no infirmity; and, in turn, each of these two was stolen by a _fee_ and replaced by a little hunchback. The second child was a most beautiful daughter. She was _taken_ during the night and replaced by a little girl babe, so deformed that it resembled a ball. If her brother Olier was bad, she was even worse; she was the terror of the village, and they called her Anniac. The third child met the same luck, but was not so bad as the first and second.

'The poor mother, greatly worried at seeing what had happened, related her troubles to another woman. This woman said to her, "If you have another child, place with it in the cradle a little sprig of box-wood which has been blessed (by a priest), and the _fee_ will no longer have the power of stealing your children." And when a fourth child was born to the unfortunate woman it was not stolen, for she placed in the cradle a sprig of box-wood which had been blessed on Palm Sunday (_Dimanche des Rameaux_).[79]

'The first three children I knew very well, and they were certainly hunchbacked: it is pretended in the country that the _fees_ who come at night to make changelings always leave in exchange hunchbacked infants.

It is equally pretended that a mother who has had her child so changed need do nothing more than leave the little hunchback out of doors crying during entire hours, and that the _fee_ hearing it will come and put the true child in its place. Unfortunately, Yvonna ---- did not know what she should have done in order to have her own children again.'

_Transformation Power of 'Fees'._--At Kerallan, near Carnac, this is what Madame Louise Le Rouzic said about the transformation power of _fees_:--'It is said that the _fees_ of the region when insulted sometimes changed men into beasts or into stones.'[80]