BRETON LEGENDS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN.
The steadfastness of Breton Catholicity is proverbial. From the far-away time when the disciples of the good St. Patrick, among whom, says the Breton legend, “he was like a nightingale among wrens, or a beech-tree among ferns,” first planted the cross in Armorica, up to that last crusade in defence of it wherein only yesterday, as it were, Lamoricière and Pimodan and their gallant comrades sacrificed themselves as chivalrously as any knight of old on the fatal field of Castelfidardo, the Breton has never wavered in his faith. Evil example has not availed to weaken it; persecution has only made it stronger; the poisoned arrow of the scoffer, deadlier than the Moor’s, has fallen blunted on the armor of its tranquil simplicity. When all France beside, with few exceptions, had sunk into indifferentism or infidelity, Breton peasant and Breton gentleman still held fast to their fathers’ creed, still doffed their hats as reverently as of yore to wayside cross or Madonna, still knelt as devoutly side by side in the little rustic chapels which so cover the land “that,” says a sympathetic writer, “it seems fertilized by so many holy shrines.” Some idea may be had of the number of the religious monuments of Brittany from the fact that when, at the Restoration, the proposition was mooted to replace the wayside crosses which the iconoclastic frenzy of the Revolution had overturned, it was found that 1,500,000 francs would be needed to restore those in the department of Finisterre alone.
Indeed, it may be said that the Revolution in Brittany took the form not so much of a political struggle as of a religious proscription. It was not the royalist so much as the Catholic who was there the object of partisan fury. To the butchers of the Temple, the mad idolaters of Reason, religion was a crime even greater than loyalty. “It was,” says the author already quoted,[[134]] “a conflict between the guillotine and a people’s faith—a merciless conflict, in which the guillotine blunted its knife and was baffled.” Catholic Brittany offered but a passive resistance to her persecutors, but it was a resistance none the less stubborn, unflinching, unconquerable. On her knees with clasped hands she defied the noyades of Carrier and the bayonets of Hoche. “Nothing,” says M. Souvestre, “could alter the freshness of her faith. She gave way neither to anger nor to fear. The red cap might be put upon her head, but not upon her thoughts.
“‘I will throw down your belfries,’ said Jean Bon-Saint-André to the mayor of a village, ‘so that you will have no longer any reminder of your effete superstitions.’
“‘You will still have to leave us the stars,’ returned the peasant, ‘and we can see them farther than our belfries.’”
Nevertheless, the threat was carried out, at least so far that the churches were closed, the celebration of Mass was made a crime, the priests were hunted like wild beasts, and the faithful were reduced to much the same straits as their English co-religionists under Elizabeth, or as Irish Catholics under the Penal Laws. Among the many shifts they were put to to evade their savage pursuers, the coast population were often driven to take to their boats and put to sea, where, under favor of the midnight, the faithful pastor offered Mass upon a raft. Surely the people who could resort to such measures rather than forego the exercise of their faith must have been devoted to it.
It may seem strange that so brave and hardy, nay, so fiery, a race as the Bretons should submit so tamely to provocation so bitter. Unlike La Vendée, Brittany never, as a province, made any effectual head against the Revolution, which made so ruthless an onslaught upon all that Breton and Vendean held most sacred. The uprising in Upper or Western Brittany which broke out just as the Vendean insurrection was about being crushed, and which is known to history as the Chouannerie, or war of the Chouans, was but a desultory guerilla warfare, confined for the most part to that division of Brittany which has preserved fewest of the Breton characteristics. The only important engagement which took place in Lower Brittany during the Revolution was the surprise of Fort Penthièvre by Hoche, when “the sickle sweep of Quiberon Bay” reaped its harvest of slaughter; and there the royalists were in the main composed of emigrés, nobles, and Chouans from Western Brittany. Even the brothers Cottereau, nicknamed Chouan,[[135]] who gave its name to this insurrection, were not Bretons, but from Maine. Doubtless had not De la Rouarie’s plot miscarried through treachery and the premature death of that far-seeing and audacious schemer, the result might have been otherwise. As it was, the counter revolution took in Brittany and La Vendée very different directions. In the former it was the hostility of the “patriots” to the church that was most deeply felt and most bitterly resented; while the Vendeans fought for their faith, indeed, and their army bore the name of “Catholic and loyal,” but they fought at least as directly for their king. We have not space to philosophize upon this curious distinction, further than to point out that Brittany, so far as the bulk of its population is concerned, has always been rather Catholic than royalist. It is not so very long ago that a Frenchman was nearly as much of an alien as the hated Saozon or Saxon[[136]] himself to the man of Tréguier or the Léonnais; even two centuries of submission to an enforced and distasteful union scarcely sufficed to make the Breton look upon the French king as other than a usurper. In this, as in devotion to the faith, which the same apostle brought to both, and in readiness to give up all for it, the parallel between Brittany and that other great Celtic colony, Ireland, is of the closest kind. True, the union of Brittany and France, like that of England and Scotland, was effected through marriage,[[137]] and not, as in the Irish union, by force and fraud. But it was none the more popular for that; and though all overt opposition was effectually crushed with the overthrow of the League, headed by the ambitious and self-seeking though gallant Duc de Mercœur, in the early part of the seventeenth century, there still remained a smouldering fire of resentment and dislike which only lately, if ever at all, has been extinguished. And from that time, too, to quote M. Souvestre again, of the two sovereign powers on which the feudal edifice was based, the nobility and the church, the latter alone preserved its authority in Brittany. Deceived and disappointed in his worldly leaders, it seemed as though the Breton peasant turned more implicitly to his spiritual guides. Certain it is that in no Catholic land, not even in Ireland, has the priesthood retained more ascendency, nor, if we may trust writers who cannot be accused of partiality, deserved it more.
The spirit of devotion breathes all through the Breton’s daily life. No important act is begun without its appropriate religious ceremonies. Is it a house or a barn that he has built?—he will use neither till they have been blest, as in Aubrey de Vere’s “Building of the Cottage”:
“Mix the mortar o’er and o’er,
Holy music singing;
Holy water o’er it pour,
Flowers and tresses flinging.
Bless we now the earthen floor;
May good angels love it!
Bless we now the new-raised door,
And that cell above it!”
He thinks, with the poet,
“Better to roam for ay than rest
Under the impious shadow of a roof unblest.”
In little acts as in great ones it is the same. The knife does not cut the loaf until it has made over it the sign of the cross; the children tell their ages by the number of Easters they have made; the sowing of the grain is preceded by a solemn procession. “The barren field,” says the Breton proverb, “grows fertile under the stole of the priest.” In all his thoughts the religious idea is uppermost. “I was walking in the fields,” says M. de la Villemarquée, “reading a book, when a peasant accosted me. ‘Is it,’ said he, ‘the Lives of the Saints you are reading?’” And the strongest idea a Breton can give you of the truth of any book is that it was written and printed by a priest.
It is not surprising, therefore, that among a people of such simple and fervid faith devotion to the Blessed Virgin should especially have flourished. The popular impulse towards the expression of piety which displayed itself in France in the sixteenth century, and which soon covered the land with Calvaries and Chapels of Notre Dame, was nowhere more outspoken or lasting than in Brittany. Mme. Marie de Bon Secours, mère des pêcheurs—Mme. Mary of Good Help, mother of fishermen—is invoked as heartily on the coast of Tréguier as Notre Dame de tous les remèdes—Our Lady of All-Healing—on the mountains of Cornouailles. And, as might be looked for in an impressionable and imaginative race, this devotion has entwined itself with many quaint and curious legends. It is a general belief in Brittany—as, indeed, it is among the peasantry elsewhere in France, and we believe in some parts of Spain—that our Lord and his Blessed Mother visited their country in propria persona after the Resurrection. Ask a peasant of Vannes, for example, the origin of the galgals, or heaps of pebbles which diversify the monotony of his vast Landes, and he will tell you that the Blessed Virgin carried them there in her apron. The folk-lore of the country turns largely upon her intervention for the protection of those who call upon her. Two of the most curious of these legends we propose to give our readers from M. Souvestre’s very interesting collection entitled Le Foyer Breton. So far as we know they have not been rendered into English except in a mutilated and imperfect version styled Popular Legends and Tales of Brittany, which is simply the translation of a German adaptation of Souvestre’s book, and in which the essentially Catholic features of the original are for the most part studiously eliminated. This process of “evangelizing” Catholic literature is familiar enough from Dies Iræ down; it is to be regretted that Catholic publishers are sometimes found willing to father and to circulate such counterfeits.
The first of our legends is one current in the country of Tréguier—the Lower Breton still divides his beloved province, not into the departments fixed by the Revolution, but as of old into the four bishoprics of Léon, Tréguier, Vannes, and Cornouailles—and is known as Les Trois Rencontres, or, as we shall call it,
THE THREE BEGGARS.
Once upon a time, in the days when Jesus Christ and his Mother came often to visit Lower Brittany, when along the roads there were as many cells of holy hermits as there are now new houses with a manger and a branch of mistletoe by the door, there lived in the bishopric of Léon two young lords as rich as heart could wish, and so handsome that even their mother could not have wished them better-looking. They were called Tonyk and Mylio.
Mylio, who was the elder, was going on sixteen, while Tonyk was but fourteen. Both had taken lessons from masters so able that there was nothing to hinder them from becoming priests at once, if they had been old enough and had had a vocation.
Now, Tonyk was pious, ever ready to help the poor and forgive injuries. Money stayed no longer in his hand than anger in his heart; while Mylio would give to no one more than his due, and even haggled over that, and if anybody offended him he never rested until he had avenged himself to the utmost of his power.
As God had taken their father from them while they were still in long clothes, the widow, who was a woman of great virtue, had brought them up herself; but now that they were well grown, she deemed it time to send them to an uncle of theirs at a distance, from whom they might look for good counsel as well as a great inheritance. So one day, making each of them a present of a new hat, shoes with silver buckles, a purple cloak, a well-lined purse, and a horse, she bade them be off to the house of their father’s brother.
The two lads set out, glad enough of the chance to see strange lands. Their horses went so fast that at the end of some days they found themselves in another kingdom, where the trees and grain were unlike any they had seen at home. But one morning, as they were passing a cross-roads, they spied a poor woman sitting by the cross, her face buried in her apron. Tonyk pulled up his horse to ask her what was the matter. The beggar-woman told him with sobs that she had just lost her only son, who was her all, and that she was thrown upon the charity of Christians.
The lad was greatly touched; but Mylio, who had stopped some paces off, cried out with a jeering air:
“You are not going to swallow everything the first whimpering old woman tells you? That creature is there only to trick travellers out of their money.”
“Hush, my brother,” replied Tonyk, “hush, in God’s name! Your words make her cry still harder. Do you not see that she has the years and mien of our own mother, God bless her!”
Then, bending forward and handing his purse to the beggar-woman, “Take it, poor woman,” he said; “I can only help you, but I will pray to God to console you.”
The beggar-woman took the purse, and, kissing it, said to Tonyk:
“Since your lordship has wished to enrich a poor woman, you will not refuse to take from her this nut, which holds a wasp with a diamond sting.”
Tonyk took the nut, thanked the beggar-woman, and went his way with Mylio.
The two soon came to the edge of a wood, where they saw a little child, nearly naked, who was prying about in the hollows of the trees, and singing the while an air sadder than the chants of the Mass for the Dead. Often he stopped to slap his little frozen hands together, saying in a kind of sing-song, “I’m so cold! I’m so cold!” And then they could hear his teeth chatter.
At this sight Tonyk felt like crying, and he said to his brother:
“For pity’s sake, Mylio, do you see how this poor little innocent suffers from the cold?”
“He is a great baby, then,” said Mylio. “I, for my part, do not find the wind so cold.”
“Because you have on a velvet vest, and over that a cloth coat, and over that again your purple cloak, while he is clad only in the air of heaven.”
“Well, what of it?” said Mylio. “He is only a little peasant.”
“Alas!” replied Tonyk, “when I think that you might have been born in his place, my brother, my heart bleeds and I cannot see him suffer so.”
With these words he drew rein, called the little boy, and asked him what he was doing there.
“I am looking for the winged needles[[138]] that sleep in the crannies of the trees,” answered the child.
“And what wouldst thou do with these winged needles?” said Mylio.
“When I have enough of them I will sell them in the city and buy a coat which will keep me warm as if it was always sunshine.”
“Hast thou found any yet?” went on the young noble.
“But one,” replied the child, showing a little cage of rushes within which he had shut the blue fly.
“Very good, I will take it,” broke in Tonyk, throwing him his cloak. “Wrap thyself up in that precious cloth, little one, and add every evening in thy prayers a Hail Mary for Mylio and another for her who bore us both.”
The two brothers went on their way, and Tonyk at first suffered much from the wind for want of the cloak he had given away; but when they had got through the wood the wind fell, the air grew milder, the fog lifted, and a vein of the sun[[139]] shone along the clouds.
Just then they came to a meadow where there was a spring, and by the side of it an old man in rags carrying upon his shoulder the sack of the seekers for bread.[[140]] When he saw the two cavaliers he called to them in a supplicating voice. Tonyk went up to him.
“What would you, father?” he asked, lifting his hand to his hat out of respect for the beggar’s age.
“Alas! dear sir,” replied he, “you see how white my hair is and how wrinkled my cheeks. I am grown so weak from age that my legs can no longer carry me; so I must needs die in this spot, unless one of you will sell me his horse.”
“Sell thee one of our horses, bread-seeker!” cried Mylio with a scornful air. “And wherewith wilt thou pay us?”
“You see this hollow acorn?” said the beggar. “It holds a spider which can spin webs stronger than steel. Let me have one of your horses, and I will give you the spider and the acorn for it.”
The elder of the two lads burst out laughing.
“Do you hear, Tonyk?” he cried, turning to his brother. “By my baptism! there must be two calves’ feet in this man’s sabots.”[[141]]
But the younger replied gently: “The poor man can offer only what he has.” Then, getting off his horse and going up to the old man, “I give you my horse, my good man,” said he, “not because of the price you put on it, but in remembrance of Him who has said that the seekers for bread were his elect. Take it as your own, and thank God, who has made use of me to offer it you.”
The old man murmured a thousand blessings, got upon the horse with the lad’s help, and was soon out of sight across the meadow.
But Mylio could not forgive his brother this last almsgiving, and it led to an outbreak.
“Big mouth!”[[142]] he cried to Tonyk, “you ought to be ashamed of the plight your folly has brought you to. You thought, no doubt, that, once stripped of everything, you would be let share my money, my horse, and my cloak; but do not hope it! I want the lesson to do you good, that by feeling the hardships of prodigality you may be more thrifty hereafter.”
“It is indeed a good lesson, my brother,” Tonyk answered mildly, “and I am perfectly willing to take it. I never thought to have any part in your money, your horse, or your cloak; so go your way without troubling yourself about me, and may the Queen of the angels guide you!”
Mylio deigned no answer and set off on a trot, while his young brother kept on afoot, watching him from afar and bearing him no grudge in his heart.
They came thus to the opening of a narrow pass between two mountains which lost themselves in the clouds. It was called the Cursed Pass, because a Rounfl, or ogre, dwelt upon the cliffs, and there lay in wait for travellers as a hunter lies in wait for the game. He was a giant, blind and without feet, but of so quick an ear that he could hear the worm working underneath the ground. His servants were two eagles he had tamed, one white and the other red (for he was a great magician), and he sent them out to seize his prey when he heard it coming. So the people of that country, whenever they had to go through the pass, carried their shoes in their hands, like the girls of Roscoff when they go to the market of Morlaix, scarce daring to breathe for fear the ogre should hear them. Mylio, who had no warning of this, rode in on his horse, and the giant was aroused by the noise of the hoof-strokes on the flint.
“Ho, there! my eagles,” cried he, “where are you?”
The white eagle and the red eagle ran to him.
“Go get me for my supper what is going by,” cried the ogre.
Like two balls from a gun they plunged to the bottom of the pass, seized Mylio by his purple cloak, and bore him away to the ogre’s dwelling.
At this moment Tonyk reached the mouth of the pass. He saw his brother carried off by the two birds, and with a cry ran towards him; but the eagles and Mylio were out of sight in the clouds which covered the highest mountain.
The lad stood for a moment rooted to the spot and beside himself with grief, staring at the sky and the cliff as steep as a wall; then he sank upon his knees with clasped hands and cried:
“Almighty Lord, Creator of the world, save my brother Mylio!”
“Trouble not God the Father for such a trifle,” replied three small voices which he heard all at once near by.
Tonyk turned round wonder-stricken.
“Who spoke then, and where are you?” he asked.
“In your waistcoat pocket,” replied the three voices.
The lad felt in his pocket, and pulled out the nut, the acorn, and the little cage of rushes, wherein were the three insects.
“Is it you, then, who wish to save Mylio?” said he.
“Yes, yes, yes!” replied they in their three different voices.
“And how will you go about it, my poor nobodies?” said Tonyk.
“Open our cages and you will see.”
The lad did as they asked; then the spider made up to a tree, against which she began a web shining and strong as steel; then she got upon the winged needle, who wafted her gently into the air, while she went on with her web, whose threads were far enough apart to make a kind of ladder, reaching higher and higher as they went up. Tonyk followed them up this wonderful ladder until he had reached the top of the mountain. The wasp flew in front of him, and together they came to the giant’s house.
It was a cave hollowed in the rock and as high as a church. In the middle of it sat the ogre, without eyes or legs. He kept rocking himself to and fro like a poplar, while he sang these words to an air of his own:
“The Léonard’s flesh I love to eat,
Fed is he on the fattest of meat;
The man of Tréguier tastes beside
Of sweet new milk and pancakes fried;
But Vannes and Cornouailles who could eat,
Bitter and tough as their coarse buckwheat?”
All the while he sang this song he got ready slices of pork to roast Mylio, who lay at his feet, his legs and arms tied upon his back like a chicken trussed for the spit. The two eagles held a little aloof, near the chimney, and one set the turn-spit while the other stirred up the fire.
The noise the giant made in singing, and also the care he gave to getting ready his slices of pork, had kept him from hearing the approach of Tonyk and his three little servants. But the red eagle spied the lad; he darted upon him, and was about to make off with him in his claws when the wasp pierced his eyes with her diamond dart. The white eagle ran to help his brother, and his eyes were put out too. Then the wasp flew to the ogre, who had sprung up on hearing the cries of his two domestics, and fell to piercing him with her sting without let or truce. The giant roared like a bull in August. But it was in vain for him to dash his arms about like the sails of a windmill; he could not catch the wasp for want of eyes, and no more, for want of feet, could he get away.
At last he dropped face down upon the ground to escape the sting of fire; but the spider at once came up and wove about him a net which held him fast. In vain he called his two eagles to his aid. Mad with pain, knowing the ogre was helpless, they wished to avenge their long slavery; with flapping wings they rushed upon their former master and sought to tear him to pieces under his net of steel. At each stroke of their beaks they tore away a shred of flesh, and never stopped till they had picked his four bones clean. Then they lay down upon the carcass of the ogre, and, as the magician’s flesh was indigestible, they never got up again, but burst there on the spot.
As to Tonyk, he had untied his brother’s bonds, and, after embracing him with tears of joy, led him out of the ogre’s house to the edge of the cliff. The winged needle and the wasp were soon at hand, harnessed to the little cage of rushes, now changed to a coach. Praying the two brothers to take seats, while the spider posted herself behind like the lackey of some great house, the equipage went off with the speed of the wind.
Tonyk and Mylio in this way crossed with the utmost ease meadows, mountains, and villages (for in the air the roads are always in good order) until they were come to their uncle’s castle.
There the carriage alighted and rolled towards the drawbridge, where the brothers saw their two horses waiting for them; but at Tonyk’s saddlebow hung his purse and cloak; only the purse was bigger and much better lined, and the cloak was all embroidered with diamonds.
The wondering lad would have turned to the carriage to ask the meaning of this; but the carriage was gone, and in place of the wasp, the winged needle, and the spider there stood only three angels dazzling with light.
The two brothers, confounded, fell upon their knees. Then one of the angels drew near Tonyk and said to him:
“Be not afraid, dear youth; for the woman, the child, and the old man thou didst succor were no other than the Virgin Mary, Jesus her Son, and St. Joseph. They have given us to thee that thou mightest make the journey without danger, and, now that it is ended, we go back to Paradise. Bethink thee only of what has happened to thyself, and let this be a warning.”
With these words the three angels spread their wings and flew off like three swallows, chanting the hosannah which is sung in the churches.
The motive of this tale, it will be observed, is the beauty of charity, and it is perhaps another form of the ancient legend of St. Julian which is found, in one shape or another, in the traditions of many peoples. But charity and hospitality are pre-eminently Breton as they are Irish virtues. With a “God save all here!” the beggar walks unbidden and unrepulsed into the first cabin he comes to, and takes his seat, as one expected, by the fireside or at the table. No one dreams of turning him away, for he is the guest of God. The following legend also turns on the same virtues; but it is peculiar in introducing a personage almost unique in Breton tradition—viz., a wicked priest. “In our pious Armorica,” says M. Souvestre, “the respect accorded to the priesthood partakes of worship. The tonsure is a crown which gives a right to royal homage.” But in proportion to the veneration paid to the good priest is the contempt and detestation visited upon the derelict, as the few “constitutional” curés whom the Revolution found among the Breton and Vendean clergy were made fully aware. The reader of Carleton’s Tales and Legends of the Irish Peasantry may discover here another element of likeness in the kindred race.
MAO, THE LUCKY.
Christians who wish a powerful protectress in heaven cannot do better than address themselves to Notre Dame de tous remèdes (Our Lady of All-Healing), near the City of the Beech.[[143]] She has in that place the richest chapel that the hand of man ever built. All inside it is filled with golden statues; the belfry, which is brother to that of Kreisker, has more windows in it than there are holes in a Quimper waffle, and there is near the church a fountain of masonry whose waters wash away all evil of soul and body.[[144]] Our Lady of All-Healing is one of the four great Pardons of the Virgin Mary in Lower Brittany. The others are at Auray, at Bois du fou (Fol-goat, or Madman’s Wood), and Callot.
It was to Our Lady of All-Healing that Mao stopped to pray. Mao was on his way from Loperek, a pretty parish between Kimerc’h and Logoma. He had neither kith nor kin, and his guardian had put in his hand a frappe-tête[[145]] with three silver crowns, telling him to seek his fortune where he would.
After saying at the foot of the great altar all the prayers his nurse and the rector had taught him, Mao left the church to go his way. But as he was about passing through the hedge he saw a crowd of folks gathered about a dead body lying on the grass at the door of the priest’s house; and he was told it was a poor bread-seeker who had given up his soul the night before, and whom the priest refused to bury.
“Was he, then, a pagan or a wretch who had denied his baptism?” asked Mao.
“He was a true sheep of God’s fold,” made answer all who were there; “and even when hunger pressed him sore he would have taken neither the three ears of corn nor the three apples which custom permits the wayfarer to pluck.”
“Why, then, does the rector deny him the holy water and the consecrated earth?” asked the youth.
“Because poor Stevan left nothing to pay for the prayers of the church,” replied the spectators.
“What!” cried Mao, “is there a priest in this country, so hard-hearted that he shuts the door on the poor while living and will not open to them when dead? If it is money is wanted, here are three crowns. ’Tis all I have in the world; but I give it with all my heart to open to a Christian the consecrated earth.”
The unworthy priest was called; he took the three crowns, rattled off the prayers for the dead in as little time as it takes a carrier’s horse to eat his truss of hay, dumped poor Stevan into a hole in the ground, and went off to see that the sucking pig which was a-cooking for his dinner was properly done on both sides.
As for Mao, he made a cross with two branches of yew, planted it on the grave of the poor seeker of bread, and after saying a De Profundis went on his way to Camfront.
But after a time Mao grew hungry and thirsty, and bethought him that he had nothing left of what his guardian had given him to buy food and drink. So he set about finding some mulberries or wild sorrel or wild plums, and all the while he hunted for them he kept looking at the birds who were picking away in the thickets, and saying to himself:
“Those birds there are better off than baptized creatures; they want neither for inns nor butchers, nor bakers nor gardeners; God’s heaven is all their own, and the earth spreads itself before them like a table always served; the little insects are their game, the seeds are their fields of standing corn, hips and haws their dessert; they have the right to take everywhere without paying or as much as saying by your leave. So the little birds are gay, and they sing all day long.”
Turning these thoughts in his mind, Mao slackened his pace, and at last sat down under a great oak and fell fast asleep.
But, lo and behold, all of a sudden while he slept there came to him a saint, all dressed in shining stuffs and crowned with a halo, and the saint said to him:
“I am the poor seeker of bread, Stevan, to whom thou hast opened the gates of Paradise by buying for his body a consecrated grave. The Virgin Mary, whose faithful servant I was on earth, has just had me made a saint, and she has let me come back to thee as the bearer of good tidings. Believe no longer that the birds of the air are happier than baptized souls, since for these the blood of the Son of God has been shed and they are the favorites of the Trinity. Hear, then, what the Three Persons have done to reward thy piety:
“Near by, beyond the meadows, is a manor which thou wilt know by its red and green weathercock. There lives a lord named Tréhouar, who is the father of a daughter as lovely as the day and as gentle as a babe in the cradle. Go and knock this evening at his door, and say that thou comest for what he well knows; he will receive thee, and the rest thou wilt learn thyself. Remember only, if thou hast need of help, thou must say,
“Come, dead beggar, come quick to aid
Here am I all helpless stayed.”
With these words the saint vanished and Mao awoke.
His first care was to thank God for the safeguard he had sent him; then he took his way towards the meadows in order to seek the manor-house. As night was falling, he had at first some trouble to find it; but he saw at length a flight of pigeons and followed them, sure they could lead him only to a noble house.
Sure enough, he spied at last the red and green weathercock peeping above some trees loaded with black cherries—for that is the country where they grow. It is the mountain parishes which send all the wild cherries you see laid out on straw at the Pardons of the Léonnais, and which lovers bring to the pennérèz[[146]] in their great felt hats. Mao crossed the lawn set out with walnuts, knocked at the smallest door he could find in the manor-house, and said, as the saint bade him, that he came for what they knew.
The gentleman was told at once. He came shaking his head, for he was old and feeble, but leaning upon his granddaughter, who was young and fresh; so that to look at them you would have said it was a ruined wall held up by a blooming honeysuckle.
Both, with the utmost politeness, bade the young man come in; he was given a carpet-covered stool by the old man’s arm-chair, and served with sweet cider while supper was getting ready.
Mao wondered greatly at this greeting, and could not keep his eyes off the young girl as she ran about getting everything ready and singing like a lark. The more he looked the prettier he found her, and his heart beat like a clock.
“Alas!” he thought, “he alone may call himself happy who will be able to talk with the pennérèz of the manor behind the gable.”[[147]]
At last, when supper was over, the grandfather had Liçzenn (that was the young girl’s name) clear away the things, and said to Mao:
“We have given you of our best and according to our means, young man, but not according to our wish, for the house of Tréhouar has long suffered from a grievous wound. Once upon a time we reckoned here as many as twenty horses and forty cows; but the fiend has made himself master of cattle-sheds and stables; cows and horses have vanished one after another and as often as they have been replaced, until I have sunk all my savings. All our prayers to conjure away the destroying spirit have been in vain; we have had to resign ourselves, and for lack of live-stock my lands are now lying fallow. I had some hopes of my nephew Matelinn, who has gone to the French wars; but as he never came back I have caused it to be given out through the country, at sermons and elsewhere, that the man who freed the manor should have Liçzenn to wife, and my whole estate after me. But all who have come here to this end and watched in the stable have disappeared like the cows and horses. I pray God you may have better hap.”
Mao, whom the remembrance of his vision emboldened to take the risk, answered that, with the grace of the Virgin Mary, he hoped to overthrow the hidden demon. With that he asked for some fire to keep his limbs from getting stiff, took his frappe-tête, and besought Liçzenn to think of him in her prayers.
The place to which they brought him was a great shed divided into two parts for the cows and the horses; but it was wholly empty, and spiders had spun their webs upon the feed-racks. Mao lit a fire of furze upon the great stones which served for pavement, and betook himself to his prayers.
For the first quarter of an hour he heard only the crackling of the flame; for the second quarter of an hour he heard only the wind whistling sadly through the cracks of the door; for the third quarter of an hour he heard only the little death’s hammer[[148]] which sounded in the wood-work; but at the fourth quarter a muffled sound was heard under the pavement, and at the end of the building in the darkest corner he saw the largest stone rise slowly and a dragon’s head come out of the ground; it was as big as a cheese-trough, flat like a viper’s, and all about its forehead flashed a row of parti-colored eyes.
The animal set two paws with red claws upon the edge of the pavement, looked at Mao, and left his hole with a hiss.
As he drew near Mao could see his scaly body unroll itself, coming out from under the stone like a great cable from the hold of a ship.
Although the lad was bold enough, yet his blood ran cold, and as he felt the fumes of the dragon’s breath he cried:
“Come, dead beggar, come quick to aid!
Here am I all helpless stayed.”
That very instant the shining shape he had summoned stood by his side.
“Fear nothing,” said he; “the wards of the Mother of God will always prevail against the monsters of the earth.”
So saying, Stevan stretched forth his hand, spoke some words of the language they talk in heaven, and instantly the dragon rolled over on his side, struck dead.
At sun-up next morning Mao went and woke all the people of the manor and took them to the stables; but at sight of the dead beast the boldest fell back ten paces.
“Have no fear,” the young man said to them; “the Virgin Mary has helped me. The monster that devoured the cattle and their keepers is now but lifeless clay. Go fetch cords and drag him hence to some deserted quarry.”
They did as he bade them, and when the dragon had been dragged from his lair the entire body went twice round the buckwheat-thrashing yard.
Overjoyed to be freed from so dangerous a foe, the grandfather kept his promise to Mao and gave him Liçzenn to wife. The young pennérèz was led to the church at Camfront, her right arm encircled, as usual, with a band of silver lace for each thousand francs in her dowry, and the story goes that she had eighteen.
Once married, Mao bought live-stock, hired servants, and the lands of the manor were soon worth more than ever. Then it was that the grandfather went to receive his reward from God, leaving all he owned to the young couple.
These last were happier than any other baptized creatures—so happy that every evening they could find nothing to ask of God, and could only thank him. But one day, just as they were sitting down to supper with their servants, who should come in with one of the maids but a soldier, so tall that his head touched the beams of the ceiling, and whom Liçzenn knew at once for her cousin Matelinn. He had come back from the French wars to marry the pennérèz, and, learning what had passed while he was away, great indeed was his wrath; but he took good care not to show it to the young couple, for he was a dissembler by nature.
Mao, nothing doubting, welcomed him with open arms; he gave him of the best in the manor, had the best room made ready for him, and rode with him everywhere about his fields, now covered with harvests.
But the taller Matelinn found the flax, and the heavier the wheat, the angrier he grew that all these things were not his, without speaking of his cousin Liçzenn, who seemed to him prettier than ever. So one day he got Mao to hunt with him on the downs of Logoma, and brought him to a far thicket where there was an abandoned windmill, against which bundles of furze had been piled for the baker of Daonlas; arrived there, he turned his eyes towards Camfront and said all of a sudden to the young man:
“Look! I can see from here the manor with its great court.”
“Which way?” asked Mao.
“Behind that little beechwood: don’t you see the windows of the great hall?”
“I am too short,” said Mao.
“You are right,” cried Matelinn, “and it is a great pity, for I see my cousin Liçzenn in the little paddock by the garden.”
“Is she alone?”
“No; she is talking to some gentlemen, who are whispering in her ear.”
“And what is Liçzenn doing?”
“Liçzenn is listening to them and twisting the strings of her apron.”
Mao stood on tip-toe.
“Oh! how I wish I could see,” he said.
“Nothing is easier,” replied Matelinn; “you have but to go up to the top of the mill, and you will be taller than I.”
Mao thought well of the advice and climbed the old ladder. When he was come to the top his cousin asked him what he saw.
“I see only trees which seem as near the earth as two-months corn,” answered he, “and houses which seem as little as shells left dry stranded on the shore.”
“Look nearer,” said Matelinn.
“Nearer I see only the sea with barks that skim the water like gulls.”
“Nearer yet,” continued the soldier.
“Nearer yet is the heather in bloom and the golden gorse.”
“But below you?”
“Below me!” cried Mao in a fright, “instead of the ladder to get down I see flames coming to devour me.”
And he saw truly, for Matelinn had taken away the ladder and set fire to the heaped-up piles of furze, so that the old mill was in the midst of a furnace.
In vain Mao begged the giant not to leave him to perish, in so cruel a manner; he turned his back and went off along the downs, whistling.
Then the young man, feeling himself near to stifle, repeated the invocation:
“Come, dead beggar, come quick to aid!
Here am I all helpless stayed.”
Instantly the saint appeared, holding in his right hand a rainbow one end of which sank in the sea while the other shed a heavy dew, and in the left hand Jacob’s ladder which joined heaven and earth. The rainbow put out the fire, while Mao climbed down on the ladder and made his way back to the manor without the slightest hurt.
At sight of him Matelinn was thunderstruck; sure that his cousin would denounce him to justice, he ran to get his arms and his war-horse, but as he was going out of the great court Mao went up to him and said:
“Have no fear, cousin; for no man on earth will know what has passed on the heath of Daonlas. Your heart was sickened that God had given me more prosperity than you; I wish to cure your heart. From to-day on, while I live, you will have the right to half of all that is mine, save my dearest Liçzenn. Go, then, cousin, and have no more bad thoughts against me.”
This agreement was drawn up by the notary in due form, and Matelinn had every month half of all the produce of the fields, the poultry-yard, and the cattle.
But this generosity of Mao only embittered the venom of his heart. For undeserved benefits are like wine drunk without thirst; they give neither joy nor profit. He no longer sought Mao’s death, for, Mao dead, he would lose the allotted share of his wealth; but he hated him as a caged wolf hates the master who feeds him.
What heightened his wrath was that all turned to gold for his cousin. Up to that time only a child was wanting to his happiness, and Liçzenn now brought him a handsome, hearty boy who was born without a tear. Mao sent word to all the gentlefolks for more than five leagues round, praying them to the christening feast; they came from Braspars, from Kimerc’h, from Loperek, from Logoma, from Faou, from Irvilhac, and from Saint Eloi—all mounted on well-caparisoned horses, with their wives or daughters on pillions behind them. The baptism of a prince of Cornouailles would not have drawn together more people of rank.
All were gathered in front of the manor, and Mao was come to get the new-born infant in Liçzenn’s chamber with those who were to hold it at the font and his nearest friends, when in comes Matelinn, wearing on his face a treacherous smile. At his entrance the sick mother gave a cry, but he drew near, twisting his shoulders, and with many compliments thanked her for the present she had made him.
“What present?” asked the poor woman in bewilderment.
“Have you not just added an heir to my cousin’s wealth?” said the soldier.
“And if I have?” said Liçzenn.
“A deed on parchment entitles me to half of all that shall belong to Mao, save your dearly-beloved self,” added Matelinn, “and I come, therefore, to claim my half of the new-born heir.”
All present cried out, but Matelinn repeated coldly that he must have his share of the infant, adding that if denied he would take it himself; and he showed a great knife for cutting up pork which he had brought with him for the purpose.
Vainly did Mao and Liçzenn beseech him with clasped hands and on bended knees to give up his right; the giant’s only answer was to whet his knife on the steel which hung from his girdle. At last he was in the act of tearing the child from the young woman’s arms when Mao bethought him all at once of the appeal to the dead beggar, and repeated it aloud. He had no sooner ended than the room was flooded with a heavenly light, and the saint was descried upon a cloud with the Virgin Mary by his side.
“I am here, good people,” said the Mother of God; “my faithful servant has had me come from the starry realms to judge between you.”
“If you are the Mother of God, save the child,” cried Liçzenn.
“If you are the Queen of Heaven, make them give me my due,” said Matelinn with effrontery.
“Listen to me,” said Mary. “You first, Mao, and you, Liçzenn, draw near with the babe. Until now I had given you only the joys of life; I wish to do more, and so I give you the joys of death. You will follow me into the Paradise of my Son, where neither sorrow nor treason nor sickness comes. As for you, Goliath, it is your right to share the new good which is given them, and you will die like them, but to descend twelve hundred and fifty leagues[[149]] into the kingdom of the evil one.”
With these words she held out her hand, and the giant was swallowed up in a gulf of fire, while the young husband and wife with their child bent towards each other like a family asleep, and disappeared, borne upon a cloud.
In the incomplete version referred to the beggar-man is changed into a spirit of the air like the genii of the Arabian Nights, the Blessed Virgin, it is needless to say, makes no appearance at all, and the beautiful touch at the end, possible only in a Catholic legend, by which Mao and Liçzenn receive the crowning reward of their virtue on being translated to Paradise, is altogether omitted; so that all that is truly significant and characteristic in the story is lost.