BRITTANY: THE LAND OF THE SARDINE 



543 



Brest, the great naval port of France, 

 beautifully located on one of the best 

 harbors in all Europe ; Rennes, in the 

 interior, brought prominently to the 

 world's notice some years ago as the 

 scene of Dreyfus' first trial ; and Nantes, 

 on the Loire, the largest and one of the 

 most interesting places in all Brittany. 

 Its chief attraction is its hoary age and 

 romantic history. It is mentioned by 

 Caesar, Pliny, and other writers of their 

 time, and was a city of note long before 

 Caesar divided all Gaul into three parts. 

 In the middle ages it was one of the most 

 valuable possessions of the semi-royal 

 dukes of Brittany, and when, in 1499, 

 Anne of Brittany here wedded Louis XII 

 it passed to the crown of France. Dur- 

 ing the Revolution it was the scene of 

 the most atrocious massacres, and in 1793 

 fully 30,000 men, women, and children 

 were here butchered. 



SUPERSTITIOUS TEMPERAMENT OT THE 

 BRETONS 



Every observant traveler soon realizes 

 that the dominant note in the Breton char- 

 acter is the universal and ineradicable 

 belief in a higher power, which is not 

 only worshipped, but is regarded as in- 

 fluencing or determining every incident 

 in their daily lives. Most peculiar re- 

 ligious superstitions are current; witch- 

 craft, charms, and antidotes are believed 

 in, and fairies and other creatures of a 

 childlike imagination here have a very 

 real existence to both young and old. 



All of the people are now nominally 

 Christians, but Druidism flourished in 

 some remote sections as late as the seven- 

 teenth century, and it is an interesting 

 fact that the veneration accorded the 

 heathen deities in the earliest centuries 

 of Breton history was easily transferred 

 to the Holy Family and the Christian 

 saints when the new religion reached the 

 country. In no other part of Europe, if 

 indeed in any other part of the world, has 

 Christianity absorbed so much of earlier 

 creeds, and it requires no particularly 

 astute observer to appreciate that many 

 features of Breton religious practice to- 

 day are relics of prehistoric paganism. 



It is easy to understand how the super- 

 stitious temperament of the Bretons has 

 been developed by their isolated geo- 

 graphical position and the impressive 

 character of the country, by their dis- 

 tinct language, and by their being brought 

 constantly in contact with those strange 

 megalithic remains which are here more 

 numerous than anywhere else. 



A sympathetic foreigner* has given an 

 admirable estimate of Brittany and the 

 Breton character that should always be 

 borne in mind : 



Photo from Hugh M. Smith 

 ITINERANT BASKET VENDOR 



"Those who would wish to see Brit- 

 tany as she really is must not look at 

 her wild and barren plains, her bleak, 

 dreary mountains, her dark and sombre 

 forests, her stormy and rock-bound 

 shores, and her lonely, lovely valleys 

 with the hasty glance they cast on any 

 other passing landscape, with the hard 

 practical eye and fastidious tastes of 

 modern travelers ; they must think of her 

 as the land that has been consecrated by 

 the earliest feats of chivalry, perhaps the 

 only spot in the modern world that has 

 preserved in her legends untarnished the 



* Wallace-Dunlop : Wanderings in Brittany. 



