Rambles in Brittany

by M. F. Mansfield

It is a moot question as to just how much of romance is in the make-up of the Breton character. Emotional the people are, but the emotion that leads them into the enthusiasm which they exhibit at their great religious festivals and pardons is more superstitious than romantic.

The druidism, or paganism, or whatever the religion (sic) of the ancient peoples of the Armorican peninsula may have been, bears not the least traditional resemblance to the fervour of the devotees of the pardons of to-day, but one can readily believe that the same spirit, if with a different motive, does exist even now.

The blessing of the boats, the birds, the cows, and what not, which takes place periodically at different points along the Breton coast,—for it is mostly along the coast that these observances take place,—smacks not a little of something that is of more psychological purport than mere religious devotion.

From whatever tradition these great religious observances have descended, there is no question of the sincerity of the participants, though there is a wide difference between the “sacred” and “profane” elements which meet on these occasions.

Brittany, perhaps as much as any other of the ancient provinces of France, has preserved its local customs and traditions, unblushingly indifferent to the changing conditions round about them. Of course there is no reason why religion and its observances should change with the march of time, but they do, nevertheless, in France as much as in any other land. Only in Brittany, apparently, do the congregations of men and women—for elsewhere the congregations are mostly women—of great churches approach to anything like the numbers that the churches were built to contain.

Throughout this land of calvaries, too, there will be found at all times of the day, and often at night, a tiny congregation of one, two, or perhaps a half a dozen, peasant or fisher folk kneeling before one of these wayside crosses, and invoking their God after the manner they have been taught, in a truly devout and sincere fashion, which is more than can be said of some parts, where the peasant, when on a visit to town on the market-day, rushes in and out of a church with hardly time enough devoted to the whole process even to have used the holy water.

Brittany may be a poor and impoverished province, and in many respects it has not the abundance of the good things of life which one finds in Touraine, Burgundy, or the Midi, but there is a general air of prosperity in the gay accoutrements of the men and women who shine forth on the occasions of the great pardons, showing a snug wardrobe stowed away somewhere.

As one leaves Normandy, at Pontorson, he enters Brittany—the land of calvaries. These fine monuments are not the calvaries which have made the old province famous,—the great stone crosses of Finistère,—but are for the most part unpretentious pieces of wood put together in the form of a cross, or a like symbol, rudely hammered out of a piece of iron by the local blacksmith.

One notes many of these simple crosses throughout Brittany; simple as compared with the more elaborate calvaries, though they may have one, two, or even more sculptured figures in the arms or branches of the cross. One of the most ancient of these, dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, is at Scaër in Finistère.

It is a question as to whether any of the great monumental calvaries of Brittany can be considered really artistic. They are imposing,—some of them even terrifying in their strange grandeur,—but all of them seem theatrical, however sincere and devout the motive for their erection may have been. The chief and most elaborate examples are those at Plougastel, near Brest, and St. Thégonnec in Finistère (dating from 1610).