“O landes! ô forêts! pierres sombres et hautes,
Bois qui couvrez nos champs, mers qui battez nos côtes,
Villages où les morts errent avec les vents,
Bretagne, d'où vient l'amour de tes enfants?” —Brizeux.
The Bretons are brave soldiers and good sailors; their disposition is hasty and violent, and even ferocious in anger. When the people of Nantes rose up in rebellion against Duke Francis, his brother-in-law, the Comte du Foix, sent to pacify them, said to him on his return from his mission, "J'aimerais mieux être prince d'un million de sangliers que de tel peuple que sont vos Bretons"—Brittany has always been the theatre of great virtues and great crimes.
On Sunday we went to the Welsh Baptist Chapel, to hear Mr. Jenkins preach in the Breton language. He has been there thirty years zealously labouring among the peasants, to convert whom he was sent by the Welsh Baptist Missionary Society. From his thorough knowledge of the French and Breton languages, he is eminently fitted for the task. He travels about the surrounding country preaching, and establishing schools, and has revised the Breton[9] translation of the New Testament for the Society, and circulated, by means of colporteurs, from eight [pg 101] to nine thousand Bibles, besides above 100,000 tracts. The task of acquiring the Breton language is less difficult for a Welshman, for the similarity between them is so great that the two people are able to make themselves understood to each other. The labours of Mr. Jenkins have lately awakened the attention of the Breton Roman Catholic clergy, who have publicly denounced him from their altars, but without causing him to slacken in the good work he has undertaken. Persecuted by a tyrannical priesthood, who hold dominion over a peasantry bigoted in proportion to their ignorance, his position is one of difficulty and danger; but he goes on with undrooping energy, convinced that, though the progress is slow, the good seed has not been sown in vain, and will, in due time, bear fruit, though those who first sowed it may have passed away. There were about a dozen Bretons at the evening service; they seemed to be constantly going in and out, as if unable to keep up their attention to so long a service. There are also English Protestant chapels at Morlaix and Quimper, and French at Brest and Lorient.
We saw a christening in the cathedral, of a child about eighteen months old; the mother wore a wonderful conical cap of lace.
A few houses from our hotel a ball was going on, given every week for the workpeople of the town. [pg 102] The clatter of their iron-pointed wooden shoes seemed quite to drown the music.
Next day we walked to the Fontaine des Anglais, so-called from the slaughter of a body of English at that place. Jealous of the prosperity of Morlaix, Henry VIII. sent a fleet up the river to attack the place, and the commander, being informed by a spy of the absence of the chief nobles at Guingamp, and of the townsmen at the fair of Pontivy, landed with a force which entered Morlaix, burnt it, and returned laden with booty to their boats. Six or seven hundred men, who were intoxicated, fell asleep in the wood, where they were attacked by the nobles, who had hastened from Guingamp to the assistance of the town, and were all massacred. The neighbouring fountain, said to have been tinged with the invaders' blood, received in memory of the event the name of "Fontaine des Anglais." It was on this occasion the town of Morlaix added to its arms, a lion (emblem of vigilance), encountering a two-headed leopard (for England), with the punning motto, "S'ils te mordent, mors-les" (Morlaix).
Emile Souvestre, author of 'Le Foyer Breton,' and 'Les Derniers Bretons,' the ablest portrayer of Breton manners, customs, and superstitions, was a native of Morlaix; he died in the Protestant Communion, 1854.