Eustache Deschamps.
52. Torche of Penmarch.
We engaged a rough kind of vehicle, much like a butcher's cart, to visit the Torche de Penmarch, a rocky promontory, so called from its fancied resemblance to a horse's head, forming the southern extremity of the department of Finistère. The Torche is a mass of rocks separated from the mainland by a chasm called the "Saut de Moine," because [pg 263] an Irish saint, named Viaud, jumped across it on his landing. In rough weather, the noise made by the sea dashing against its sides and rushing through the crevices of the rocks, is said to be heard at Quimper, a distance of twenty-one miles. A line of rocks runs all along the coast, marked by a lighthouse at Penmarch; we proceeded to another group of rocks near which M. de Châtellier, a proprietor and antiquary of this country, has built a house for painting and enjoying the scenery. One of our party clambered down to see the "Trou d'Enfer," a tremendously deep hole in the rocks, the bottom covered with a pink sort of sea-weed, and the water as clear as crystal. The whole country is a dreary sandy level, with salt-marshes, over which we passed to the ruined church of St. Fiacre, and close by is that of St. Guenolé, both situated near the sea. The countryman who showed us the church, knelt reverently down at the threshold and put up a short prayer before he entered the sacred building. The general devoutness and strong faith of the Bretons is most impressive and genuine, mixed, no doubt, with great superstition; but, as Wesley says, "Heaven makes allowance for invincible ignorance, and blesses the faith notwithstanding the superstition."
53. Ship Sculptured on the Walls.
Church of St. Guenolé, Penmarch.
St. Guenolé consists of an unfinished square tower, with crocketed pinnacles and a porch of considerable size, under a large mullioned window of the [pg 264] fifteenth century. On each side of the porch are rude sculptures of ships and fishes, not uncommon in these parts, set there to show the church has been built with the thank-offerings of the fisher population of the district. In our tour we met with several churches with this sign, evidences of the piety of the fishermen; indeed, at Dunkirk, when the church was burned down in the sixteenth century by the French, it was entirely rebuilt by the contribution called "le filet saint," from an ancient custom among the fishermen of having one net so called, the produce of which was set apart for the church.
54. Church of St. Guenolé, Penmarch.
Towards the lighthouse are the ruins of the old town of Penmarch, much celebrated in the maritime history of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries; its commerce extended even to Spain, and the riches of its inhabitants were so surpassingly great, that they drank out of silver cups, and the lords of a manor near the Torche furnished the silk required to line the road traversed by religious processions, their wealth being due to the "viande de carême," that is to say, to the cod fishery. But the discovery of Newfoundland deprived them of this lucrative monopoly, and the ravages of Fontenelle le Ligueur [pg 265] [pg 266] [pg 267] completed their ruin. All now is a scene of desolation. Penmarch has been called the Palmyra of Brittany.