Usually the Bishop of Vannes delivers an exhortation, in the Breton tongue, of course, from the top of the Holy Steps, after which the throng—or, at least, such as are truly and sincerely devout—climb to the top on their knees. According to the printed notice at the foot, each step mounted on the bended knee, accompanied of course by a prayer, is good for a nine years’ absolution of a soul in purgatory. In the cloister behind the church is a great crucifix, in which the peasant pilgrims stick pins, each recording a prayer said or a vow made.
On the night of July twenty-sixth, St. Anne’s Day, a grand torchlight procession marches. The “Marche aux Flambeaux,” a celebrated painting by Jules Breton, now owned in America, well shows the effect of one of these great demonstrations, except that it lacks the weirdness of the sombre background of night itself.
This ends the great days of the pardon, but throughout the year pilgrims make their way to the shrine to say a prayer, or to drink or bathe in the waters of the fountain, or perhaps to carry a jugful home to some bedridden member of their families.
Among the offerings in fulfilment of vows made at the shrine of Ste. Anne d’Auray are a number of very ancient inscriptions, such as the following best illustrate:
“William Genin, bitten by a mad dog, vowed himself to St. Anne and obtained a perfect cure in 1631.”
“Helen Sausse, abandoned by her mother, vomited a two-headed snake and recovered her health.”
On the way from Auray to Plouharnel, Carnac, Quiberon, and Locmariaquer are worth one day or three, accordingly as one may feel inclined. The distance is not great; a dozen kilometres will cover the journey out, and a little more circuitous return route will take in a half-dozen or more old centres of a civilization of which all knowledge is lost in the night of time.
Whatsoever the great megalithic monuments of Carnac may mean, certain it is that they tell—or could tell if one could feel sure he understood it correctly—a story quite out of keeping with the manners and customs of to-day. Like the tall, gaunt windmills plentifully besprinkled hereabouts, these great stones rear their heads skyward in fashion most strange. Long rows of them, like files of soldiers, or like the trees of the forest, stand to-day for the curious to marvel at, as they stood so long ago that their origin is not to be definitely traced.
