On one occasion, we are told, Goezenou asked a farmer’s wife for some cream cheeses, but the woman, not wishing to part with them, declared that she had none. “You speak the truth,” said the Saint. “You had some, but if you will now look in your cupboard you will find they have been turned into stone,” and when the ungenerous housewife ran to her cupboard she found that this was so! The petrified cheeses were long preserved in the church of Goezenou—being removed during the Revolution, and afterward preserved in the manor of Kergivas.
Goezenou governed his church for twenty-four years, till he met with a violent death. Accompanied by his 370 brother St Magan, he went to Quimperlé to see the monastery which St Corbasius was building there, but he began to praise the architecture of his own church, and this so enraged the master builder that he dropped his hammer on the critic’s head. To add to the grief of St Magan, St Corbasius endeavoured to appropriate the body of the murdered Saint. He consented, however, to allow St Magan to have such bones as he was able to identify as belonging to his brother, whereupon St Magan prayed all night, and next morning spread a sheet for the bones, which miraculously arranged themselves into an entire skeleton, which the sorrowing Magan was thus enabled to remove.
St Winwaloe, or Gwenaloe
St Winwaloe, born about 455, was the son of Fragan, Governor of Léon, who had married a wealthy lady named Gwen. Their son was so beautiful that they named him Gwenaloe, or ‘He that is white.’ When the lad was about fifteen years old he was given to the care of a holy man, with whom he lived on the islet called Ile-Verte. One day a pirate fleet was sighted off the coast, near the harbour of Guic-sezne, and Winwaloe, who was with his father at the time, is said to have exclaimed, “I see a thousand sails,” and to this day a cross which marks the spot is called ‘the Cross of the Thousand Sails,’ to commemorate the victory which Fragan and his son won over the pirates, who landed but were utterly defeated by the Governor and his retainers. During the fight Winwaloe, “like a second Moses,” prayed for victory, and when the victory had been won he entreated his father to put the booty gained to a holy use and to build a monastery on the 371 site of the battle. This was done, and the monastery was called Loc-Christ.
Leaving his master after some years, Winwaloe settled on the island of Sein, but finding that it was exposed to the fury of every gale that blew from the Atlantic he left it and went to Landévennec, on the opposite side of the harbour at Brest. There he established a monastery, gathered round him many disciples, and dwelt there until his death, many years later. He died during the first week of Lent, “after bestowing a kiss of peace on his brethren,” and his body is preserved at Montreuil-sur-Mer, his chasuble, alb, and bell being laid in the Jesuit church of St Charles at Antwerp.
In art St Winwaloe is represented vested as an abbot, with staff in one hand and a bell in the other, standing beside the sea, from which fishes arise as if in answer to the sound of his bell.
CHAPTER XIII: COSTUMES AND CUSTOMS OF BRITTANY
Distinctive national costume has to a great extent become a thing of the past in Europe, and for this relinquishment of the picturesque we have doubtless in a measure to thank the exploitation of remote districts as tourist and sporting centres. Brittany, however, has been remarkably faithful to her sartorial traditions, and even to-day in the remoter parts of the west and in distant sea-coast places her men and women have not ceased to express outwardly the strong national and personal individuality of their race. In these districts it is still possible for the traveller to take a sudden, bewildering, and wholly entrancing step back into the past.