It is a generally recognized fact that no special hardship is involved in modern travel; caravansaries have for the most part given way to inns which, if not exactly palatial, at least furnish creature comforts of a quality quite as good or a great deal better than those to which most travellers are accustomed at home. One may, and most likely will, miss his or her particular brand of tea or tobacco, but will find substitutes quite as excellent, and as far as the language question is concerned, why, that lies at one’s own door, unless one wants to go out as a disciple of Esperanto, the modern successor of Volapuk, dead years ago of sheer weight of consonants.
This book, then, is meant to ensure better knowledge on the part of the casual traveller of that delectable land which may be somewhat vaguely described as old France, of which Brittany and Normandy are as representative in their survivals as any other part.
CHAPTER II.
THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE
BRITTANY, the ancient province which underwent such a strife of warfare and bloodshed in the struggle against invaders, and finally against France, has become one of the most loyal of all the old-time divisions making up the present republic. Her struggle against a curtailment of her ancient rights and the attempts to conserve her liberties were futile, and when the Duchess Anne took Louis XII. for her second husband, Brittany became a part of the royal domain never to be separated therefrom.
It was Duguesclin who saved it for France, Duchess Anne who enriched it, Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Laennec, and Renan who made it illustrious in letters, and Duguay-Trouin, Jacques Cartier, Surcouf, Du Couëdic, and many besides who added to all this the spirit of adventure and romance with which the chronicles of Brittany have ever abounded.
Commonly it has been called a land of granite, an expression which has been consecrated by the usage of many years, but it is also a land most picturesque, melancholy, and dreamy, with immense horizons of sea and sky, and a climate strictly temperate throughout all the year.
“O landes, O forêts, pierres sombres et hautes,
Bois qui couvrez nos champs, mers qui battez nos côtes,
Villages où les morts errent avec les ventes,
Bretagne! d’où te vient l’amour de tes enfants.”
Brittany in early days had a parliament the most important in France. Armorica was its more ancient name, which in old Breton signified “near to the sea,” or “on the sea.”
From the beginning of the fifth century, for a matter of perhaps a hundred years, the peninsula was known as Armorique, and its people as Armoricans. After this time the name disappeared from general use, and Brittany and Breton came. From the sixth century onward the change became permanent, and such chroniclers as Gregory of Tours, for instance, always referred to Britannia, Britanniœ, Britanni, and Britones, in writing of the peninsula and its people.
When first peopled from Britain across the Channel, Brittany was the most thinly populated part of all Gaul. Each wave of immigration, as the Britons from across the water fled from the invading Saxons, added to the population of the land, until ultimately it became as a hundred Britons against ten Armoricans. At least, this is the way the French historians and antiquaries put it, and so Armorique became Brittany, and such is the origin of French Brittany, quite independent of the etymology of the word Breton itself.