Brittany & Its Byways

by Mrs. Bury Palliser

The house is a good specimen of a Breton dwelling; by the side of the fire, in the one room of which most of these cottages consist, fixed against the wall like the berth of a ship, stands the bedstead or "lit clos" of old oak, shut in by carved and well-waxed sliding panels, often inscribed with the sacred monogram. The two mattresses, paillasse, and "cossette de plume," are piled up to such a height as barely to admit of its tenants creeping into the bed. In front is the customary chest, containing the family wardrobe, answering the double purpose of a seat and the means of ascending into the bed. Often we have seen cupboards on each side of the large chimney with two shelves, which served as beds for the juvenile members of the family. Forms and a polished table complete the furniture; the last has frequently little wells hollowed in the top, used, instead of plates, to hold the soup. Over the table, suspended by pulleys, are two indispensable articles in a Breton dwelling—a large circular basket [pg 087] to cover the bread, and a kind of wooden frame or rack, round which the spoons are ranged. Forks they do not use. Festoons of sausages, with hams, bacon, candles, skins of lard, onions, horse-shoes, harness, all hang suspended from the ceiling, which consists of fagots of hazel suspended by cross-poles. The floor is of beaten earth. One narrow window admits the light, and there are no outhouses. The manure-heap is generally at the house-door, and the pigs and poultry seem on an equally intimate footing as they are in our Irish cabins. The Breton's cottage has often no garden, to occupy his leisure hours; and the men, after their daily work, resort to the cabaret to spend their time and their earnings. Agriculture is very backward in Brittany, but the land produces abundance of corn. It is thrashed out direct from the field, on a clay floor (aire). Beet-root and clover grow very luxuriantly, and in some fields the pretty red clover (Trifolium incarnatum) carpets the country with its crimson flowers.

Near the farmhouse of Kermartin is the parish church of Minihy-Tréguier, formerly a chapel founded by St. Ives and attached to the "manoir." The will of St. Ives is framed and hung up in the church, and his breviary is also preserved here; but the guide said it was now kept at the priest's house, as people were in the habit of taking away a leaf as a [pg 088] relic. Minihy, i. e. Monk's House, is a name given to those places which, through the intercession of some saint, had the right of sanctuary. They were marked with a red cross, and, how great soever the crime, were regarded as inviolable. In 1441 the right of sanctuary was restricted to churches; before, it was extended to towns and districts. Tréguier had the privilege within a radius of twelve miles from the town. St. Malo also possessed the right of sanctuary. Tréguier is one of the four bishoprics that formed the ancient divisions of Brittany. The others were Léon, Cornouaille, and Vannes. The "pays de Tréguier" answers exactly to the present department of the Côtes-du-Nord; Léon to the territory or arrondissement of Brest and Morlaix; Cornouaille has Quimper and Carhaix for its principal towns; and Vannes, the country of Celtic remains, is to the south.

Tréguier is prettily situated on a hill, at the confluence of the rivers Jaudy and Guindy; its principal building is the beautiful, imposing cathedral, with its elegant spire, begun in the thirteenth century by St. Yves, and dedicated to St. Tugdual, whose name, like St. Yves, is often given in baptism to the Breton children. St. Yves is buried here, and also Duke John V., who founded the Chapelle du Duc, and desired to be interred at the feet of St. Yves, for whom he had a special regard, and to whom he [pg 089] erected a magnificent tomb, for three centuries the object of veneration in Brittany. The Duke paid for it his own weight in silver (389 marks 7 oz.), in 1424, to Maistre Jacques de Hougue. The victories of his father John the Conqueror were chased in bas-relief round the tomb, which was destroyed in 1793. Duke John V. was a contemptible prince, who eight times changed his party from weakness rather than policy, and on whom Margaret de Clisson and her sons retaliated the cowardly seizure of her father, the Constable Clisson, by Duke John IV. One of the towers of the cathedral is called the tower of Hastings, but its date is evidently subsequent to that of the Norman freebooter. The cathedral has preserved its beautiful cloisters, the work of the fifteenth century, although it has been ravaged by the Normans of the ninth century, the English in the fourteenth, the Spaniards in the sixteenth, and by the Revolutionists of 1793. It was the port chosen by the Constable Clisson, 1387, for the invasion of England, an expedition proposed and projected by himself. His hatred against the English was so great, though educated in England, he was termed the "boucher des Anglais." When the Duke of Brittany gave Chandos the château of Gavre, which was within a league of Clisson's château of Blain (Loire Inférieure), "I will never," he exclaimed, "be the neighbour of the English," [pg 090] and accordingly he sallied out one morning and burnt the castle to the ground. Chandos complained to the Black Prince, who sent a letter of remonstrance to Clisson, but it was only replied by a challenge to the Prince to meet him in single combat. Clisson caused his own ship to be built at Tréguier, and had constructed a tower or framework of large timber, to be put together on his landing in England, for the lords to retreat to as a place of safety, and to be lodged therein securely in the event of a night attack. This tower, Froissart says, was so constructed, that when dislodged it could be taken to pieces, and many carpenters and other workmen were engaged, at very high wages, to go with it to England to superintend the putting of it together. Four thousand men-at-arms and 2000 cross-bowmen were in readiness for the expedition, with horses, vessels laden with wine, salted provisions, and other necessaries. All these formidable preparations were rendered useless by the arrest of the Constable the day before his embarkation. We went to the Cemetery, which has its ossuary, reliquary, or bone-house, an inseparable appendage to a Breton churchyard. It is the custom in Brittany, after a certain time, to dig up the bones of the dead, and preserve their skulls in little square boxes, like dog-kennels, with a heart-shaped opening through which the skull is [pg 091] visible. They are all ticketed with the names and dates of the deceased, as "Ci gît le chef de * * * D. c. D. (décédé) le * * * * *. Priez Dieu pour son âme."

21. Skull-box.

These boxes sometimes occupy prominent places inside the churches or porch, on window sills, the capitals of columns, and other ledges; but more often are ranged in the ossuaries or charnel-houses built in the churchyards to receive them, with a row of death's-heads carved in the stone outside. The large bones are also placed in the ossuaire. The rich are buried in "enfeux" or arched recesses in the chapels or abbeys they have founded.

We continued our carriage to Lannion, our driver not very clear of his way, and in Brittany the road is very difficult to be discerned; for on each side are high earthen banks, sometimes eight or ten feet high, and on the top of these are planted timber-trees, such as oak, elm, and ash, which often meet at the top, entirely intercepting the view, making these narrow lanes a perfect slough and most intricate to thread. Sometimes they are cut in irregular steps in the solid rock, and serve for the bed of a stream. Each field is also surrounded by these hedgerow-trees, which are cut every four or five years.

We drove to Perros Guirec, a lovely little watering-place built on a small promontory with a safe harbour, whence wheat, hemp, and cattle are exported to England; it is six miles from Lannion. A dangerous rock, called Roche Bernard, is at its entrance. The view is lovely. From Perros we scrambled over a hilly cart-road to Ploumanach, about three miles distant—a wonderful spot, huge round erratic blocks of pink granite flung over land and sea in the wildest confusion. The whole coast is one sea of boulders, a chaos of rocks of all sizes cover the soil in every direction, and in many places there is no soil at all, and the loose masses rest on a bare bed of rock, stretching, in unbroken extent, to a great distance. "A wanderer," says Mr. Trollope, "amid this strange and silent scene might fancy himself the only living thing in the midst of a world turned to stone. In every possible variety of uncouth form and capricious, strange positions, the endless masses were around us."

“All is rocks at random thrown,

Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone."”