CHAPTER V.
Carhaix—Huelgoet.
Thus far we have spoken of the northern coast, where the busy inhabitants of the Côtes-du-Nord come most in contact with French traders, and travellers of different nations. Let us now turn towards the mountains, where the country is less fertile, the people are more isolated, and there is more character and local costume to be seen.
If we leave the Western Railway at Guingamp or Belle-Isle-en-Terre, we may follow the course of the streams which take their rise in the Monts d’Arrée, and, passing through Callac, reach Carhaix the same evening. We cross the purple mountains where the solitary shepherd in goat’s-skin coat (sketched on page [68]) tends his flocks on poor pastures, and where the, almost equally solitary, Englishman is busy with a fly-rod. At Callac, where comfortable quarters are to be obtained, many Englishmen stay for the fishing and shooting seasons; the streams are well stocked with fish, and there is little difficulty in getting permission for fishing.
The game laws are very strict in France, as is well known; the opening and closing of the shooting season varies every year, the prefect deciding the day in September when shooting may begin. The chasse courant, which includes hunting the wolf and the wild-boar, commences about a month later. The seasons close at the end of January, and whenever snow is on the ground. Altogether there is more attraction for the angler than for the sportsman in Brittany, and there is no better centre for the angler than Callac.
The aspect of the people and their dwellings in this neighbourhood is more simple and primitive than we have yet seen; and the features of the peasants are more strongly marked with the privations of generations. It is the same dull round of life, labour, and hardship, with a few gleams of sunshine in summer; and a Pardon and a blessing from the priest at the annual fête. There is the same story everywhere. “We move slowly; we do as our fathers did, and live contentedly as they lived.”
How did they live sixty years ago? An Englishman who spent some time in Brittany in 1818 says of the peasants:—“They are rude, uncivilised, simple, and dirty in their habits; they live literally like pigs, lying upon the ground and eating chestnuts boiled in milk as their principal food. Their houses are generally built of mud, without order or convenience, and it is a common thing in Brittany for men, women, children, and animals to sleep together in the same apartment, upon no resting-place but the earth covered with straw.”[[3]] This was written sixty years ago, but the mud houses are before us, and the description holds good to-day. Forty years later a writer in an English newspaper is sent to report upon the state of the agricultural labourer in Brittany; what does he find? “The Breton peasant,” he says,[[4]] “is still isolated from the towns by his language. He has kept himself apart, and mistrusts the outer world. His fare is black bread, made of buckwheat, or rye, oats or barley, boiled with milk. If he have a change in his diet, it is in the shape of potatoes. His life is an unbroken monotony. He never changes his manners, his habits, or his dress. He is a stranger in the large towns, where even his language is not understood, save by a few people who deal with him. He is as patient and quiet as a beast of burden; his daily hard labour seems to subdue even his affections, it leaves him no time for grief, no hours for the indulgence of remorse, no moment for despair.”
[3]. Stothard’s Brittany, 1820.
[4]. Blanchard Jerrold’s Letters to the Morning Post, 1853-60.
