Rambles in Brittany

by M. F. Mansfield

Shrine of St. Roch, Auray

The port of Auray is more daintily and charmingly environed than most seaports. As it lies between the wooded, deep-cut banks of the little river, its intermingling of ships and salt water, and country-side, and sailor lads and rustic maidens, and all the motley population of the little town, is a marvellous thing to see.

The smack of antiquity is about it all, and the historic legend of its shrine of St. Anne—which lives as vividly to-day as ever it lived—most touchingly connects the present with the past.

One of the most celebrated, and certainly the most largely attended, of all the “pardons” of Brittany is that held at St. Anne of Auray, though Auray itself is something more than a mere place of religious pilgrimage, and a good deal more than a wayside station on the railway line where one leaves the train and hires a carriage for Carnac and Quiberon, though apparently not many tourists know it. In the first place, it is one of the largest and most characteristic of all the little Breton market-towns, is a deep-water port of a considerable size, and has a hotel which supplies one with the most ample and delightful meals that the traveller will find westward of Nantes.

This may be a mundane standard by which to judge of an old-world town’s appeal to interest, but it is all-sufficient, and the most marvellous attractions the world may have to offer will hardly be appreciated by a travel-worn and hungry traveller, and such should plan to arrive in town for the Monday dinner at the Golden Lion; also he should not hurry through the town merely for the sake of visiting the shrine of St. Anne, which is tawdry enough in its general aspect, except when it is thronged on the great days of the “pardon,” March seventh and July twenty-fifth.

The great festival of the Pardon of St. Anne of Auray is held in July, on the birthday of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Its origin dates back to 1623, when a peasant of the country-side, one Yves Nicolazic, was commanded by St. Anne, who appeared to him in a vision, to found a chapel in her honour in the fields of Bocenno, where, she said, an ancient shrine had existed nearly a thousand years earlier. Guided by explicit directions and a mysterious star, Yves found a precious image, which ultimately was transported and set up anew in the church built at Auray. This miraculous statue was lost during the Revolution, but a fragment was preserved and is included in the present shrine, which is surrounded by a modern edifice dating from the mid-nineteenth century.

Near by is the miraculous fountain, which, like others of its kind elsewhere, is exceedingly erratic as to the miracles it performs. It was beside this fountain, then but a humble little rock-gushing spring, but now neatly set about with a concrete basin, that St. Anne first appeared to Yves.

Each year, by train, by boat, by country cart, and on foot, pilgrims come from miles around, many of them camping out the night by the roadside, all, in spite of the solemn purport of their pilgrimage, in the gayest spirits. There is always a certain amount of discord to be encountered at all these great festivals,—beggars, deformed or ill with incurable disease, crippled or what not, all expectant of reaping a thriving harvest from the simple-minded frequenters of the shrine. Whether deserving or not, all of them appear to receive liberal alms, for the custom of giving alms is as much a component part of the event as any of the other observances, nor is it ever frowned upon or curtailed by the religious or civic authorities.

The order of the day includes the massing of the pilgrims at open-air services, the placing of candles before the shrine, the inspection of the relics of the saint, the drinking of, or bathing in, the miraculous fountain, and sermons and admonitions uncounted, all in the Breton tongue, incomprehensible to outsiders, but to be taken as salutary. The great feature is the procession of priests and pilgrims, the former in their brilliant vestments, many of the latter bearing tall, gaudily coloured candles and gay silken banners. Grouped around each banner will be found the Breton men and women from a particular section, each group differently clad from those of other sections, but all gay with brilliant colouring.

“Saint Anne, pray for us!” is the cry one would hear were it in English, or “Sainte Anne, priez pour nous” in French; in Breton, its sadness is indescribable, more like the wail of a banshee than anything else.