The church and calvary of Guimiliau is in a quiet village a few miles to the south-west, a short drive from St. Thégonnec, crossing the railway. The church dates from the Renaissance, and is rich in carving and decoration; the interior is loaded with ornament, the eastern end being a mass of crude colours and florid decoration. In the south porch is some elaborate carving, and in the organ loft are some bas-reliefs on the oak panels. There is a baptistry of carved oak, consisting of a canopy with allegorical figures, supported on eight spiral pillars, around which are twisted vine leaves, fruit, flowers, and birds. The pulpit, dated 1677, is also a remarkable work of art. But in the churchyard, time-stained and crumbling to decay as usual, is the great object of our visit, a solid stone structure raised upon arches, upon which is a crowd of little carved figures in the costume of the sixteenth century, representing the various scenes of the Passion. There are saints in the niches at the corners, and high above is a crucifix, with the figures of Mary and St. John on either side. This monument dates from 1580, but many of the figures have been restored at a later date.
Altogether the calvaries of St. Thégonnec and Guimiliau, whether regarded from a picturesque or antiquarian point of view, are the most interesting monuments we have yet seen; interesting in their very loneliness, the object of so much thought and labour in the middle ages, left thus neglected and in ruin. The calvaries of Brittany seem little cared for, excepting as curiosities; but once a year, at Easter time, there are religious ceremonies connected with them, when special services are performed, and the various scenes depicted on the monuments are explained to the people. Then is the time to visit St. Thégonnec and Guimiliau, when the people are seen gathered round the sculptured crosses, in the same costumes and in the same attitude of faith as their forefathers.
From the time we left St. Thégonnec station until our return in the evening, after visiting these two calvaries, we have seen few people in the fields or on the roads. The busy city of Morlaix absorbs all available hands, and leaves the country towns almost deserted. When the railway was advanced at an enormous cost through a difficult country to the port of Brest, it was thought, naturally enough, that it would open up traffic en route; but here at St. Thégonnec no one comes. “I live,” says the station-master, “in a vast solitude, the monotony of which is only broken by the passing of five or six trains a day; scarcely any one comes near me; a stray tourist or two in the summer, and an occasional visit from a wolf in winter, one of which has killed my favourite dog.” This station-master, whose daughter was being educated at Morlaix, kept a brood of turkeys for distraction; but it was “a lonely life,” as he said, a solitude the more keenly felt because he was connected by a telegraph wire with the headquarters of the administration of the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest. “It was solitude without peace, for at any moment, day or night, the bell might ring.” It is difficult to realise that this is on the main line of railway between Paris and Brest!
POTATO-GETTING NEAR ST. POL DE LÉON.
There is no stranger or more suggestive contrast for the traveller in Brittany than to leave Morlaix on a summer’s morning and drive twelve miles in a north-westerly direction to St. Pol de Léon. It takes only three hours, but in that short journey we pass, as it were, from life to death, from the commercial activity of to-day to a stillness which belongs to the past. The passage is from wharves and warehouses, from crowded factories and the shrieking of steam, to open country, hill and dale, to the sea. In Morlaix the monuments are to commerce, in St. Pol de Léon to the church; in Morlaix there is activity and a certain amount of civilisation, in St. Pol de Léon, by contrast, there is stillness, poverty, and degradation. Our last view of Morlaix is of a stupendous railway viaduct, of comfortable villas and trim gardens; our first view of St. Pol de Léon across the open land is of three noble church spires standing out sharply against the sky. Ancient stone crosses and images of saints in glass cases are passed as usual on the roadside, before we approach Léon, “the Holy City,” which five centuries ago, when Morlaix was unknown, was an important bishopric and the centre of great ecclesiastical wealth. To-day its aspect is poor and dreary, even in sunshine; grey and cold in colour, and generally dirty.
But the cathedral with its spires and the tower of the church of Notre Dame de Creizker (nearly 400 feet high) are the absorbing points of interest, the reason of our journey to St. Pol.
The inhabitants, numbering about 7000, are principally agricultural, or are employed at the port; fishermen and knitting women, reserved and dignified in manner, living rough homely lives, disdaining many of the modern ways of Morlaix, but having a keen eye to commerce, which they carry on actively with far-away places, including Norway and Greenland.
As we saunter up the rough, ill-paved streets of the cathedral square, the men come out of the cafés and débits de tabac, and give us a rough but not unkindly greeting, as in the sketch. The principal occupation of our three friends is to cultivate potatoes, cabbages, onions, asparagus, and other vegetables for foreign markets; for this part of Brittany forms one vast market-garden, whence the cities of Western Europe are supplied. The inhabitants who live in the cathedral square have grown up in perpetual wonderment (expressed in their faces) at the summer procession of pilgrims to St. Pol de Léon; pilgrims in strange costumes, who dispense sous to their children, inquire for the keys of the tower of the Creizker, and then mount several hundred feet above them in the wind.