WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 75 



wolf, and fox, severally, as the season or occasion demands its 

 use. However, as one hound takes best to this scent, and 

 another to that, their several fancies are soon ascertained ; and 

 the relays are formed and thrown in according to the game they 

 are most inclined to pursue. 



Notwithstanding the universal belief in Brittany that wolves 

 will not attack a human being, however young or defenceless, a 

 fearful sensation prevailed at Carhaix, a month or so before my 

 arrival, by the sudden disappearance of a peasant girl from the 

 neighbourhood of Huelgoet, one of the wildest forests in the 

 department of Finisterre. The poor little trot, only six years old, 

 had been left by her parents, as is the common practice of that 

 country, to take charge of a small black sheep, which her mere 

 presence was supposed to protect from the attack of wolves 

 frequenting the adjoining forest. The plot of enclosed ground in 

 which she was stationed was so overgrown with old broom that a 

 score of Brittany bullocks might have wandered unseen beneath 

 its topmost twigs, while here and there, from the densest portion 

 of it, appeared sundry ominous track-ways, worn by wolves in 

 their passage to and fro from the neighbouring cover. The 

 parents of the child, well aware of these signs and the proximity 

 of those dangerous robbers, yet never for one moment entertained 

 a doubt either as to her safety or that of her charge ; and great 

 indeed was their dismay and agony on finding, ere the sun went 

 down, that no trace of either, beyond a few scattered bunches of 

 wool, could be discovered in that or the adjoining fields. Tracks 

 there were, however, in the soil, deep and recent, of the presence 

 of a huge wolf close to the bank near which the child and sheep 

 were last seen ; but beyond the wool no other vestige was left to 

 indicate the too probable fate of both. 



Still, the belief of the peasantry in the inviolability of the 

 human person by a wolf remained strong and unshaken ; and 

 large parties, aided by the gendarmes of the district, banded 



