When a sailorman of Ouessant is lost at sea, his parents or friends bring to his former dwelling a little cross of wood, which serves the purpose of a corpse, and the clergy officiate over it, and his friends weep over it as if it were his true body.
Finally a procession forms, and, with much solemnity, this little cross of wood, after having been placed in a casket, is deposited at the foot of a statue of St. Pol, a sad and glorious symbol of grief and also of hope.
The women of Ouessant, whether in mourning or not—and they mostly are in mourning—wear a costume of black cloth, cut their hair short and wear a square sort of cap. For the most part, the inhabitants—all those, in fact, who are natives, and there are but few mainlanders here—speak only Breton.
The Lighthouse de Créac’h, a white and black painted tower, with a magnificent light flashing its rays twenty-four miles out at sea, is a monument to the parental French government, which neglects nothing in the way of guarding its coasts by modern search-lights, quite the best of their kind in all the known world. There is another light here known as the Stiff Lighthouse, which carries eighteen miles.
Near the lighthouse is the tiny chapel of Our Lady of Farewells, a place of pilgrimage on the day of the local pardon (1st September).
On the mainland, just north of Brest and Le Conquet, on the way to the Channel, is St. Rénan, the site of an ancient hermitage founded by an anchorite who came from Ireland some time in the eighth century. There are many quaint sixteenth-century houses here, and a large market-house of the spectacular order.
