On the railway we pass over an estuary at a great elevation, and on a greater part of the route to Châteaulin are on the spurs of the Monts d’Arrée. Travellers from Brest to Quimper should not be deterred from stopping at Châteaulin by the one line devoted to it in guide-books, viz. “a dirty little town in parklike scenery, with no good inns.”
The shores of the bay of Brest and the bay of Douarnenez are districts to be lingered in when the sun shines, for the days are really few when we may see the country to advantage. The luxuriance of foliage on the hills, the height of the grasses, the deep green in the valleys, and the enormous umbrellas carried by the peasants, should remind us that fine days are few.
Châteaulin is crowded once a year to visit the Pardon of Ste. Anne la Palue, a ceremony that generally takes place on the last Sunday in August. The modern chapel of Ste. Anne stands alone upon high ground, overlooking the bay of Douarnenez, near Plonévez-Porsay, a small village about eight miles west of Châteaulin. Crowds of people come from Brest by boat, and every road and pathway leading to the chapel is lined with people on the morning of the Pardon. The ceremonies are nearly the same as at Guingamp and at Ste. Anne d’Auray, but the camping-out of the people on the hillside above the sea (sometimes 10,000 in number), the processions of pilgrims, bare-footed, to the Holy Well of Ste. Anne, and other customs, are more curious than any to be seen elsewhere.
It is at the Pardon of Ste. Anne la Palue that the ceremonies of the church are rendered most picturesque from the surroundings, and where a greater variety of the ancient costumes of Cornouaille are to be seen. The trinkets, rosaries, and ribbons which are blessed and sold to the peasants are a modern importation from Angers or Lyons, but the embroidery round the dress of a beggar woman may be rare in colour and design. Nowhere else, excepting at Plougastel, shall we see such embroidered caps and bodices; nowhere, not even at Auray, such bronzed and wrinkled human creatures.
The procession of the priests and people takes place on Saturday, about three in the afternoon, when the banner of Ste. Anne la Palue is carried across the hills by girls dressed in crimson, gold-embroidered robes, with scarves of silver thread and headdresses of lace and tissue of gold.
These are pictures in sunshine which are rare at Pardon times, and of summer nights when camping under tents is no hardship; but what must the scene be at Ste. Anne la Palue in storm and rain, when thousands of pilgrims, old and young, have no shelter, when all colour and brightness has vanished, and the wind sweeps over the hills?
Let us now turn inland a few miles, following the course of the Canal de Brest, to Châteauneuf du Faou, a small town where Mr. Caldecott made sketches at a Pardon which was held in the rain. This visit, made in 1874, will be best described in the artist’s own words:—
“The courier for Châteauneuf du Faou left Châteaulin at 3 A.M. So we hire a phaeton, and proceed up the hilly road towards Pleyben. On the left is a beautiful vale with a pretty village by the side of the river which runs towards Brest. The scenery is like the borders of Wales, and the weather like that of Scotland; but the clean, elderly girls coming down the road are like themselves only.
