The administrative government of Brittany, or rather of its present-day departments, like that of the rest of France, radiates from the capital of the department, which is the residence of the prefect, the tax-collector, the bishop, and, in general, of all heads of departments. The chief town is also the seat of the General Council and (with few exceptions) of the assize court.
The most ancient codified law of Brittany was known as the little book, but the manuscript copy has been lost. The most ancient work which recites the “customs” of this great province dates only from 1330. This curious document is known as the “Very Ancient Law,” and contains 336 articles. “The Ancient Law” was compiled and published at Nantes in 1549, and contains 779 articles.
Brittany has been, and perhaps ever will be, considered by Frenchmen an alien land, where, in its great plains and mountainous regions, in the valleys of its bubbling rivers, and on its rock-bound shores, the people, one and all, “speak a tongue so ancient and so strange that he who hears it dreams of a vanished race.”
Yes, Brittany is a land of menhirs, of legends and superstitions, but all this but makes a roundabout journey the more enjoyable, and one must really cross and recross it to its uttermost confines in order to realize its great variation of manners and customs, to say nothing of speech, for, even though the Breton tongue is dying out as a universal language, one still buys his post-card with a queer legend on its face, which looks like Dutch at first glance, but really is Breton.
In Madame de Sévigné’s time the ladies of Lower Brittany were famous for their beauty. In “Letter XLIV.,” written to her daughter, Madame de Sévigné said: “Many beauties of Lower Brittany were present at the great ball, the brilliant Mademoiselle de L——, a fine girl who dances very well.”
Breton Post-card
Things do not seem to have changed greatly to-day, and, although Madame de Sévigné wrote of court beauties only, in the Lower Province one frequently meets such beauty of face as one does not see everywhere in France. It must be owned that the figures, if not exactly found wanting, are often too ample. The sternness of the land, like the bleakness of Holland, has, apparently, added no end of grace to the features of the women, whatever may have been its hardening effect upon the men.
In Cornouaille, Latin Cornu-Galliæ, one finds almost the same name and the same derivation as in English Cornwall, and the topographical aspect is much the same in both instances. “The people of Cornuaille are faithful to tradition, and above all others merit the name of Bretons,” says J. Guillon.