Brittany & Its Byways

by Mrs. Bury Palliser

43. Château of Josselin.

The château of Josselin stands by a river, on which side it presents piles of towers and fortifications [pg 212] covered with slate, a severe specimen of military architecture; while on the other side, the cour d'honneur, we see one of the handsomest châteaux of the Renaissance yet remaining in Brittany. This façade is richly ornamented with sculptures of varied and fanciful design. Immense gurgoyles, in the form of serpents, stretching from the roof to the base, pierced balustrades or galleries of lace-like delicacy, in which are introduced, according to the fashion of the period, the initial letters of the Vicomte Alain, A and V interlaced. The old Rohan motto, "À plus," and the escutcheon of gules, nine mascles or lozenges, occur in every part of this gorgeous [pg 213] front, and also on the finely-carved chimneypiece of the reception room (salle d'honneur). The whole of the château is in course of restoration by the Prince de Léon.

In the church of Josselin is the tomb of the Constable Clisson, with that of Marguerite de Rohan his wife; both statues were mutilated in the Revolution, but are now restored: they are of white marble on a black slab. Clisson is in armour, Marguerite has her hair plaited and confined in a network of pearls; she wears a long robe, with a surcoat above, furred with ermine. The motto, "Pour ce qu'il me plest (plait)," is in an oratory which belonged to Clisson, expressing his haughty and overbearing will. This same motto appears on his seal, affixed to a letter preserved in the archives of the empire, and he is recorded to have had it inscribed upon his Constable's sword, which, like Du Guesclin, he always wore unsheathed, to show he was ready at all times to fight the enemies of the crown.

There hangs in the church a picture of the finding of the image Notre Dame-du-Roncier, of which we relate the legend:—

Long before Josselin was a town, a poor labourer had remarked, on the spot where now stands the church of Notre Dame, a bramble bush, which the frost and snow of the roughest winters never deprived [pg 214] of its leaves, but it always remained fresh and green. Surprised at this strange phenomenon, he dug the soil under the bramble, and discovered a wooden statue of the Virgin. A marvellous light played round the head of the image. The man carried it home; but next morning, to his surprise, he found the statue under the same bush whence he had taken it. The miracle was repeated several times, and soon attracted crowds of devotees. A chapel was built to deposit the sacred image, houses followed next, and a little town gradually formed, which the Comte de Porhoët surrounded with walls, and Josselin, his son, endowed with his name, 1030. Such was the rise of Josselin. A celebrated pilgrimage still exists to Josselin on Whit Tuesday, resorted to by crowds of "aboyeuses" or barkers, people possessed with this kind of epilepsy, said to be hereditary in several families, and which is accounted for from the circumstance of a party of washerwomen having refused a glass of water to the Vierge du Ronçier, who went to them disguised in the garb of a beggar. The merciless creatures set their dogs upon the pretended mendicant, and thus brought down upon themselves and their posterity this fearful malediction. The disease is supposed to return periodically about Whitsuntide, and only to leave the afflicted when they are carried forcibly to the sanctuary of Notre Dame to press with their foaming [pg 215] lips the fragments still remaining of the ancient miraculous statue which was burnt upon the public Place in the time of the French Revolution.

We left Ploërmel at four o'clock in the morning for Montfort-sur-Mer, passing through Plélan; while the horses baited at a little auberge we got some hot coffee, and found a good fire in the kitchen. The landlady, shut in her "lit clos," did not disturb herself, but occasionally put out her head to give directions for our breakfast. On the left of the road is the forest of Paimpont, which formerly extended from Montfort to Rostrenan, a kind of neutral desert land, called Brocéliande, and famous, under that name, in the history of King Arthur. It was the theatre of the fairies' most wondrous enchantments. Here was the fountain of Youth and also that of Barenton, where they came every day to draw water in an emerald basin. Here, too, the enchanted Merlin has lain sleeping for centuries, enthralled by his pupil the fairy Viviana, who has cast a spell upon her master she knows not how to break.

Montfort, where we joined the railway, is celebrated for the legend of the duck and its ducklings, and was the residence of the De Montfort family until Guy Comte de Laval and Sire de Montfort married Françoise de Dinan, widow of the unfortunate Gilles de Bretagne, when the Montforts left [pg 216] their paternal demesne for the châteaux of Laval, Vitré, and Châteaubriant.

The railway took us to Rennes, an uninteresting modern French town, the old town was burnt down in 1720, and straight streets have risen up, with no traces of its having been once the ancient capital of Brittany. Indeed, so French is it altogether, that the saying runs—"Bon Breton de Vannes, bon Français de Rennes." It was here that Constance, heiress of the duchy, held her court, with Geoffrey Plantagenet, who, with their unfortunate son Arthur, were the only Plantagenets, dukes of Brittany. On the murder of Arthur, his sister Alice carried the ducal crown to her husband, Pierre de Dreux (called Mauclerc, from his animosity to the clergy), and from them descended the dukes of Brittany down to Queen Anne, whose double marriage conveyed the duchy to France and the Valois.

When Henry IV. made his solemn entry into Rennes, the Governor presented him with the three silver-gilt keys of the city, of rich workmanship; upon which the King observed, "Elles étaient belles, mais qu'il aimait mieux les clefs des cœurs des habitants."