To-day there is a modern hermit who lives near the tomb of the saint, and carves a sort of symbolical prophecy in stone for his own amusement and the marvel of tourists.
It is rather a cheap sort of a shrine, and one that is wholly visionary so far as its real significance goes, but it is a very satisfying one to most who view it, like the “Blarney Stone” and St. Patrick’s grave, which are frauds of the first water.
One comes to Rothéneuf—a little Breton coast village—by road, tramway, or carriage from Paramé, if he comes at all. Here just beyond the village itself the cliffs are curiously carved into all manner of human shapes,—the work of the aforesaid hermit, who, although he be not a young man, certainly is not so old as to have carved all the stones which here exist; at least they look much older, though the stress of weather may account for that.
Evidently there is a devotion for St. Budoc, and belief in his prophecy of the downfall of France is one day or another to become true. The old monk or priest—for in reality this hermit of to-day is a churchman—is evidently the chief disciple of the cult, for he perpetuates his version of this long-lost legend in his modern carvings.
The text of this old prophecy was vague and visionary, but enough has come down to place definitely the fact that a Napoleon was to rise and fall in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that the Church was to be parted from its children,—referring presumably to the Concordat of 1802.
No version of the prophecy exists in Celtic literature, but the monk Olivarius published, in Luxembourg in 1544, a version which was supposed to have been handed down from the old Celtic monk himself. Since that time contemporary literature has had various references thereto, the last apparently in 1904, when one appeared in Gaston Medy’s “Echo of the Marvellous.”
This last version, or promulgation, of the Celt’s prophecy carries us even into the future, 432 moons from the foundation of the present French republic, i. e. thirty-six years, which would be in 1906. “Woe to thee, great city,” is a phrase which is supposed to refer to the fall of Paris; whether as Rome fell, from an excess of glory, or into the hands of the invader, is not stated. At any rate, the event is to come to pass in the year of our Lord 1906, 432 moons from the beginning of the great Republique Française. Let all who will be mindful.
On the opposite bank of the Rance from St. Malo is Dinard-St. Énogat, occupying a magnificent site known in part as the Bec de la Valle. The country-houses of Dinard are famous, though they are built in that vague architectural style accepted the world over as being something appropriate to a species of residence less sumptuous than a palace or a château.
It is a pity that the word is not better understood by the people, and a pity, too, that most villas in France—and in England, for that matter—are abominable, queer chicken-coops, with names like Villa Napoli, Villa Saint Germain, Villa la Belle-Issue, Villa Belle-Rive, and Villa Bric-à-Brac. All these are found at Dinard, and more, and, as may be imagined, the summer life of this town of country-houses is in many respects as gay and bizarre as the architecture and names of the villas themselves.
The aspect of the waterside of the charming little place—for Dinard is charming, in spite of it all—belies these strictures somewhat, with the warm glow of the sinking sun gilding the roof-tops, as the emerald waters of the great bay ebb and flow beneath their feet.