The cathedral dedicated to St. Pol is a fine example of early Gothic architecture, noble in proportions, rich in carving and sombre in colour, the dark green Kersanton stone giving a fine effect to the interior, in which some white-robed nuns are generally to be seen on their knees. The nave is thirteenth-century work, there is some florid carving on the south porch, and a fine rose window; above are two towers, with lofty lancet windows, and spires which remind us of churches in Normandy.
But the spire of Notre Dame de Creizker—literally, “Our Lady of the Middle Town”—which is higher than the cathedral towers, is the most interesting object in St. Pol; the central point round which the lives of the Léonnais radiate, a landmark seen far and wide by land and sea. This spire, built in the fourteenth century, in the reign of John IV., Duke of Brittany, is supposed to be the work of an English architect. The tower is of granite, richly ornamented with a projecting cornice, and its spire is pierced through to the sky. The beauty and magnificence of the churches of St. Pol de Léon are out of all proportion to the present importance—or unimportance—of the place. The inhabitants have little sympathy with the art of the sixteenth century, or with the Druidical remains they find in their fields, but they welcome travellers gladly in the nineteenth.
It is a wide plain round about St. Pol, from which the Gothic spires seem to reach to heaven, and where a human figure, standing in a field, points upwards with strange emphasis against the sky; a district peopled by classic-looking market gardeners, whose children walk in groves of cabbages five feet high, and play at hide and seek in their shadows.
Gurgoyle at Roscoff.
Three miles north of St. Pol is the little sea-port of Roscoff, historically interesting as the landing-place of the child princess Mary Queen of Scots, who passed through Roscoff on her way to Nantes in 1548. There are the ruins of a chapel founded by her, still standing on the seashore; in the church, with its open belfry tower, are some curious alabaster reliefs; and in the neighbourhood, in a convent garden, is a gigantic fig-tree, said to be two centuries old. Roscoff is now used as a bathing-place, and there is a constant passing to and fro in summer between this port and a little island three miles farther north, the Île de Batz, where a hardy population of fishermen and women ply their dangerous trade, with hardly any communication with the shore in winter. It is almost worth while to cross to the Île de Batz to see the “Druidesses,” as the women of the island are called, assembling on Sundays in their island church; and it might be worth while for a painter to make a longer stay in this neighbourhood, to make studies (if only for colour) of some of the curious figures to be seen in such out-of-the-way corners as Roscoff. Here is one of an old man with long hair and semi-nautical aspect, who sits in the evening on a stone seat in front of the cottage which he owns, facing the sea; a poor man to outward appearance, but an owner of the soil; his face is screwed and weather-worn, his clothes are patched in various shades of brown; his blouse is of a dark and greasy tinge; his working life has been spent in the fields or down at the port, but his final cause is undoubtedly to smoke; he has coloured by degrees, like a good old pipe, and his sabots have caught the true meerschaum tinge; he has smouldered at Roscoff for many years, and seems ready for burning, stacked against the wall like the fagots collected for winter fires. There is no difficulty in making a sketch, for this rich-toned “owner of the soil” of Finistère has a perfect contempt for strangers, and is as immovable as the gurgoyle sketched on the preceding page.
Let us now turn westward in the direction of Lesneven and Le Folgoet, to see one of the finest churches in Finistère. There are two roads to Lesneven, of which we would recommend the traveller to take the one to the north, near the sea. The country is for the most part dreary in aspect, but there are some curious wayside crosses on the route. There are a few fields of buckwheat, corn, and rye, banked up by high hedges, and skirted by pollard trees. It is one of those drives which should be taken leisurely by the antiquary or the archæologist; a route where there is little to remind us of the present, and much to bring before us the habits of the past. Every monument we pass on the road, every hovel at the roadside, and nearly every peasant in the fields, is of the pattern of a past age.
