Part 4 (2/2)
It is situated on a tidal river, about eight miles from the sea, ascended by small vessels, which give the place a lively appearance. Few towns have so many beautiful timbered houses of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries remaining. One of the most curious is that belonging to a miller, No. 19, in the Rue des n.o.bles, a street where the houses are built one story projecting over the other, so that the top stories of the opposite houses nearly touch each other and exclude the light. The fronts, gable-shaped, have their enormous beams richly carved, and supported by brackets and statues of St. Yves or other favourite saints; some are overlaid with lozenge-shaped slates, and finished at the point with a leaden ”epi,” or ornamental terminal. All have a kind of hall, panelled and sculptured to the roof, the staircases richly sculptured and supported by a pillar carved from top to bottom with statues of saints or grotesque figures superposed one over the other. Among the statuettes in the house, No. 19, are the figures of St. Roch and his dog; St. Christopher carrying the infant Jesus, St. Michael, and various others. On another staircase, in better preservation, but not so richly carved (at the Veuve Perron's, No.
14, Grande Rue), are female saints,-the Virgin, St. Catherine, and St.
Barbara.
Morlaix gave a grand reception to the Queen-d.u.c.h.ess Anne, when on her pilgrimage through Brittany in 1505. The town presented her with a little s.h.i.+p of gold, bearing the arms of the city, and enriched with precious stones, and a tame ermine with a diamond collar round its neck. Anne received the ermine, and caressed the little animal, who returned her endearments, and, at length, suddenly concealed itself in her bosom, which unexpected proceeding startled the Queen, when the Seigneur du Rohan, who was by her side, exclaimed, ”What do you fear, madam; is not the ermine your cognisance?” No less enthusiastic was the reception given by the citizens of Morlaix forty years later (1548) to Mary Stuart, then only five years old, on her landing in France. She was lodged in the convent of the Jacobins, and a.s.sisted at the Te Deum in the church of Notre Dame-du-Mur. When pa.s.sing through one of the gates on her way back, the drawbridge, overloaded with spectators, gave way, and several persons were thrown into the water. Mary's Scottish attendants cried out ”Treason!” but the Seigneur de Rohan, who was on horseback by the side of the royal litter, indignantly exclaimed, ”Jamais Breton ne fit trahison.” The loyalty and good faith of the Bretons is proverbial. ”En tout chemin, loyaute,” is a Breton motto,(8) and it is one of the virtues attributed to them by a Breton writer, who a.s.signs to them four virtues and three vices.
Their virtues consist in a love of their country and their home, resignation to the will of the Almighty, loyalty to each other, and hospitality. Their vices are avarice, contempt for women, and drunkenness.
Their love of country and home is carried to an extent, rivalling, if not exceeding, that of the Swiss. The Breton not only loves the village where he was born, but he loves the field of his fathers, the hearth and the clock of his home, even the bed on which he was born, and on which he hopes to close his eyes. The conscript and sailor are often known to die of grief when away from their native land. Brittany possesses for its children an inconceivable attraction, and there is no country in the world where man is more attached to his native soil.
”O landes! o forets! pierres sombres et hautes, Bois qui couvrez nos champs, mers qui battez nos cotes, Villages ou les morts errent avec les vents, Bretagne, d'ou 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 etre 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 establis.h.i.+ng schools, and has revised the Breton(9) translation of the New Testament for the Society, and circulated, by means of colporteurs, from eight 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 pa.s.sed 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. 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 n.o.bles 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 n.o.bles, who had hastened from Guingamp to the a.s.sistance of the town, and were all ma.s.sacred. 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 superst.i.tions, was a native of Morlaix; he died in the Protestant Communion, 1854.
We were recommended to sail down the Morlaix River to its mouth, as the scenery is very picturesque, but we had not time to effect it. The great beauty of Brittany generally consists in its river scenery, the Rance, to Dinan; the rivers of Quimper and Quimperle; the Aven, Elorn, and Blavet, are all highly picturesque and worth visiting. Our next drive was to St.
Pol de Leon, partly along the bank of the river, pa.s.sing under the church of Notre Dame-de-la-Salzette and the convent below of St. Francois. The tall steeples of St. Pol are seen at a great distance, and looking behind is the best view of the Mene-Bre, an insulated conical mountain, one of the Mene-Arre chain, situated near the station of Belle-Isle-Begard. A chain of mountains runs through the Cotes-du-Nord, and, at the western end of the department, forks off into two branches which traverse the whole of Finistere,-the Mene-Arre, or northern chain, and the Montagnes Noires, or southern.
St. Pol looks like a town of the Middle Ages. ”The holy city,” as it is called by the Leonnais, one of the four bishoprics(10) into which Brittany was divided, comprising the modern districts of Morlaix and Brest. The Pays de Leon is remarkable for the number of its religious monuments, its fine churches, its bone-houses, calvaries, way-side crosses, and shrines.
Crosses are set up in every direction, and of every description, from the plain unpretending simple cross of wood or stone, to the huge crosses flaunting in green paint, with tears of gold-specimens of the taste of the maire or priest of the district. No Breton pa.s.ses the sacred symbol without kneeling to salute it, and making the sign of the cross-evidence that the piety of those who first raised them has not degenerated in their posterity. The country is rich and varied. The Leonnais is tallest of all the Breton race; his dress is generally black or blue, with a coloured scarf round his waist, his hair is worn very long, and his broad-brimmed hat has a silver buckle. He is grave, of a calm confiding faith, which nothing can shake or alter, and of intense religious feeling. The church is the place of meeting, where all his business is transacted, all his aspirations centered. Throughout Brittany the priesthood are low and ignorant. Like the Irish, the Breton farmer's great ambition is to make his son a priest. In no part of France are they more uneducated than in Brittany.
St. Pol is still and melancholy, the gra.s.s grows in the streets, the city looks as if it had not awakened since its palmy days of the fourteenth century. Its churches, calvaries, cemeteries, all silent as death-
”A deep, still pool in the ocean of life.”
Its lively neighbour, Morlaix, offers a strange contrast: its inhabitants may well say they are three hundred years in advance of St. Pol.
The pride of St. Pol de Leon is the church of Notre Dame-de-Creizker. Its steeple, nearly 400 feet high, was said by Vauban to be the boldest piece of architecture he ever beheld. It is built in the centre of the church, entirely of granite, cut in the shape of tiles and open work, to within eighty feet from the base. According to the legend, on the spot where the church now stands, there lived in the time of St. Genevroc, a young girl, whom the saint found, when pa.s.sing her house on the fete of our Lady, employed at her needle. He reproached her gently with her impiety, yet she went on sewing, saying ”she required food on Sundays as well as on work days.” But the girl has hardly finished speaking, when all her body became cold and motionless as a stone. She was completely paralysed. Asking pardon of St. Genevroc, he made the sign of the cross upon each of her limbs, and the power of motion returned. Grateful for her recovery, she gave to the saint, her house, which was situated in the middle of the town (as its name implies), as a site for his church. It is said to have been built by an English architect, invited to Brittany by Mary Plantagenet, daughter of Edward III., and first wife of Duke John IV.(11)
The axis of the nave is inclined to the left, a mystic allusion to the position of the head of the expiring Saviour on the cross. _Et inclinato capite, emise spiritum_, ”And He bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.”
The north porch of the Creizker is beautifully sculptured with leaves of the mallow, the vine, and mulberry. It was all under repair when we saw it.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 22. The Creizker.]
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