Breton Folk: An artistic tour in Brittany

by Henry Blackburn

In Quimper we are in a pleasant valley, surrounded by gardens, orchards, and fields, and sheltered from the wind by clustering woods. The sun shines so warmly here that it is difficult to realise that a few miles to the west and south there are stretches of broad moorland leading to the boldest coast on the west of France. It is true that the people that come in from Pont l’Abbé, Audierne, and Douarnenez bear the impress of a seafaring life, and are different in style and costume to any that we have yet seen.

It is worth while for every one who stays in Quimper to see something of the coast, and to make a tour of at least two or three days to Pont l’Abbé, Penmarc’h, Pont Croix, the Pointe du Raz, and Douarnenez. In this short journey the traveller will see some of the finest coast scenery in Brittany, and people differing in character and costume from other parts of Finistère; a hardy fishing population, tempted to dangers and hardships by the riches to be found in the sea.

If the scenery which we have passed through on our way to Quimper resembled Wales, the district west of Quimper will remind us of Cornwall. We are, in fact, on the extreme edge of Brittany, corresponding to the Cornwall of England, Cornouaille, the Cornn Galliæ of the ancients, a dangerous, storm-blown coast, wild, desolate, and picturesque. We may go down the river from Quimper to Pont l’Abbé, or a shorter route by road a distance of twelve miles, the first part over hills and through cultivated lands, in the latter part over wide moorland, covered with gorse and edged with pines. This is a beautiful drive, but, to judge of the quiet, almost mediæval stillness of Pont l’Abbé, it should be approached by water on a summer’s evening, when, after a long and sometimes rather boisterous passage from the mouth of the river Odet, the little fishing-boat is rowed up the Pont l’Abbé river under the tower of its ancient castle. On the left, before entering the river, the little port of Loctudy is passed, where there is an ancient Romanesque church, well preserved, said to have been built by the Knights Templars in the twelfth century.

Pont l’Abbé with its dull, straight streets and deserted-looking houses, has no striking architectural features; but the costumes of the people are altogether unique in Brittany, and the interiors of their dwellings are as quaint and curious as any painter would desire. The women wear close-fitting caps of red or green, embroidered with gold thread, the hair being turned up at the back and fastened at the top; they wear skirts of blue or green with a border of yellow, and the men, short blue jackets and sashes.

In Pont l’Abbé we may see, what is so rare in these days, an old street in which the costume of the people harmonises with the date of the buildings, and in which the quiet of a past century seems never to have been disturbed. Walk down a narrow grass-grown street to the open square above the river, at the end of which is the western porch of the fine church of Pont l’Abbé, and the only two figures visible in the afternoon are a girl carrying a basket coming from the Carmelite convent, and a priest in black robes crossing the square. The church and convent were founded in 1383, and there is little here to mark the passage of years. The church has been completed and beautified since those early times, and afterwards wrecked by the Revolution; but the aspect of the square and of the cloisters of the convent are little altered. The interior of the church is remarkable for the grace and lightness of its pillars, and for the richness of its stained glass; the rose windows are said to rival in beauty those of Rouen. Notwithstanding that the church has but one aisle, that the ceiling is now painted blue, and that the carvings in stone and wood are sadly mutilated, it is an architectural monument of great interest.

Six miles south-west of Pont l’Abbé, across a dreary, marshy plain is the poor fishing town of Penmarc’h, built upon the dark rocks that form a barrier against the sea, on one of the wildest promontories of Cornouaille; a city whose riches in the fifteenth century were so great that, according to historians, “she could equip her three thousand men-at-arms, and shelter behind her jetties a fleet of eight hundred craft.” The original prosperity of Penmarc’h arose from the cod-fisheries, which were the source of immense wealth before the discovery of Newfoundland. The history of its invasion by the English in 1404, and the disasters in the sixteenth century, when the town was partly destroyed by an inroad of the sea, and afterwards sacked by Guy Eder Fontenelle at the time of the Wars of the League, is one of the most romantic and terrible in the history of Brittany. It is a place to see if only to mark the traces of this wonderful city, once containing 10,000 inhabitants. A few ruined towers and the foundations of streets mark the site of the ancient city, which is now inhabited by a scattered fishing population numbering in all about 2000, the men braving the elements in their little fishing-boats, the women and children collecting seaweed and tilling the poor soil. There is a mass of rocks separated from the land, called the Torche de Penmarc’h, which all visitors are taken to see, and where the waves break upon the shore with the sound of thunder.

We have said little of the ruins of the church of St. Guénolé and of the parish church of Ste. Nonna at Penmarc’h, with its stained glass and quaint stone carving, or of other relics of the ancient city, because in nearly every town in Cornouaille there is some object of interest to examine. Antiquarian travellers should stay at the Hôtel des Voyageurs at Pont l’Abbé, where they will be very comfortably housed, and can explore this district, interesting not only for the historic associations connected with Penmarc’h, but for Druidical remains which the winds of the Atlantic are laying bare every year on this coast. It is a dreary, wind-swept promontory, from which the quiet superstitious inhabitants are only too glad to retreat. No wonder they flock into Quimper, and sun themselves on the Place during the summer days!

On the road between Pont l’Abbé and Audierne we obtain fine views of the open landscape, with solitary figures here and there working in the fields, and occasional glimpses of the sea. It is a windy drive; the colour is sombre, and the clouds which come up in heavy masses from the sea cast deep shadows over the land.