Four years later, on the 8th of August 1878, we arrive on a quiet, sultry evening at the same little inn at Châteauneuf. There is no one in the house but two little children and some fowls, and the streets are silent and almost deserted; but at a little distance from the inn we hear the heavy thud of flails, and going up a little green pathway across the road, where a grey cloud of dust rises between the trees, we come upon a scene of energy and determination which defies description. It is the last evening for threshing out a little patch of corn, and the whole strength of the establishment has been enlisted in the service, including the waiter, chef de cuisine, stable-boy, a farm labourer, and one or two professional “batteurs”; four on one side, five on the other, swinging and letting fall their heavy flails in turn, close to each others’ heads, with a precision and desperate energy wonderful to behold. Mr. Caldecott’s sketches, taken at the moment, in a cloud of dust, bring the scene before us most vividly; the garçon of the inn, the second in the row, all energy and excitement, putting his face into his work so to speak, urging on the rest by shouts and gestures, but still keeping steady time with his flail; opposite to him, last but one, is “Madame,” her face tied tightly over with a veil, as a protection from the dust; and, last in the line, the chef de cuisine, working as hard as the rest.
In the second sketch the leaders have changed position, the pace is quickened, and, from where we stand, the flails seem to fly dangerously close to the heads of the women. But no one flinches, and the strokes come down together as if from two operators instead of nine.
The grain is beaten out wastefully on the ground, and gathered into sacks by two old women, who put the straw afterwards into the pillows of the Hôtel du Midi.
CHAPTER VIII.
Quimper—Pont l’Abbé—Audierne—Douarnenez.
In the fruitful valley of the Odet and the Steir, where two rivers join in their southern course to the sea, there rise the beautiful spires of Quimper, the present capital of Finistère; a town containing about 13,000 inhabitants, now the centre of the commerce and industry of southern Finistère, and, it may be added, the most pleasant resting-place on our travels. If we approach Quimper for the first time by road over the hills, we shall form the best idea of the beauty of its situation and of the picturesqueness of its buildings. The first impression of the traveller who arrives by train, and is hurried in an omnibus along the straight quays lined with trees, to the Hôtel de l’Épée, on the right bank of the river Odet, is one of slight disappointment at the modern aspect of the town; but let him glance for one moment from above out of one of the back windows of the inn (opened for him by the bright-faced maiden sketched on page [104]), and the view of old roofs and cathedral towers will reassure his mind that neither in architecture nor in costume is this city likely to be wanting in interest. Quimper, the ancient capital of Cornouaille, with its warlike and romantic history of the middle ages, the centre of historic associations in the times of the War of the Succession, preserves many landmarks and monuments that will interest the traveller and the antiquarian. The fine Gothic cathedral has a richly sculptured porch with foliated carving of the fourteenth century, such as we saw at Le Folgoet. Above and between the two towers is an equestrian statue of the somewhat mythical King Gradlon, who held a court at Kemper in the fifth century, whose prowess is recorded in the early chronicles of Brittany, and in the romances of the Round Table. The episode of his hunting in the neighbouring forests, being miraculously fed by one Corentin, a hermit, and finally converted to Christianity, is recorded continually in song and story; and from this incident (related by Souvestre and sung by Brizeux) dates the foundation of the ancient bishopric of St. Corentin. The statue, like nearly every monument in Brittany, was partly destroyed during the Revolution in 1793.
In spite of railways, telegraphs, and newspapers, and the bustle of commerce that fills the streets and market of Quimper, some of the inhabitants of the neighbouring valleys find time, on St. Cecilia’s Day, to perform a pilgrimage to the cathedral and to sing songs in honour of St. Corentin. Thus we see how lovingly conservative Brittany clings to its monuments and legends, and how its people still dwell in the past. The story of King Gradlon may be a myth, but, like all legends and traditions, it has its origin in fact; and we who are not historians may be fascinated with the thought that the battered horseman, the object of so much interest to pilgrims in the past and to tourists in the present, is a link in a chain of facts, pointing backwards to a far-off time when, a little westward of the site of the present city of Quimper, on a promontory near Pont Croix, stood the ancient Celtic city of Is, remains of which are to be found to this day upon the shore.