Rambles in Brittany

by M. F. Mansfield

Of religion and priests, Brittany is full, but the people are not by any means priest-ridden, as many uncharitable and slack observers have asserted before now. No priest bids a Breton worship at any shrine. They do it of their own free will, and, though a churchman always officiates at the great pardons and festivals, the worshippers themselves are as much the performers of the ceremony as the priest.

In Brittany to-day the piece of money which passes current in most transactions, though in numbers it is infrequently handled by the traveller, is la pièce, the half-franc or ten-sous coin.

It is confusing when you are bargaining for a carriage to drive to some wayside shrine, to be told the price will be “deux pièces,” when—in Normandy—you have just formed the habit of realizing offhand that deux cent sous is the same thing as ten francs. It’s all very simple, when one knows what they are talking about, and the Breton likes still to think his institutions are different from those of the rest of France, and so he goes on bargaining in pièces, when in other parts they are counting in sous, which is even more confusing, or in francs.

Most of the farmhouses of Brittany are constructed of stone and wood, with their roofs covered with a straw thatch. Of course this is a dangerous style of building to-day, as the authorities admit. Indeed a decree has gone forth in some parts forbidding the erection of any new straw-thatched building, and again in other parts against using any structure so built as a dwelling-house. The law is not absolutely observed, but it is by no means a dead letter, and the homely and picturesque thatched roof has now all but disappeared, except from the open country.

To enter the Breton peasant’s farmhouse, one almost invariably descends a step. The interior is badly lighted, and worse ventilated, but, as it is mostly the open-air life that the peasant and his family lead, perhaps this does not so much matter. Usually the house is composed of but one room, with a floor of hard-trodden earth. This is the dining-room, kitchen, and bedroom of all the family. The ceiling is composed of great rough-hewn rafters, sometimes even of trunks left with the bark on, and from it are hung the knives and forks and dishes, as in a ship’s cabin.

Furniture has been reduced to the most simple formula. Two or three great closed and panelled beds or bunks line one side of the wall, with perhaps a wardrobe, where the “Sunday-best” of the whole household is kept. Beneath the great beds is a series of oaken chests, and there the household linen is stored. These, with a long table, with a bench and a wide passage on either side, the great, yawning fireplace, with its crane and the inevitable highly polished pots and pans, form the furnishings of this remarkable apartment. All this is homely and strange, but it is comfortable enough for the occupants, if one does not mind being crowded, and it is the typical dwelling throughout Brittany.