Chapter IV: Auray and the Megalithic Monuments of Morbihan

Auray is the real centre from which to make the round of the vast collection of relics of the long lost civilization of Morbihan.

Many have attempted to explain the significance of these rude stone monuments. Some have said that the famous avenues of Carnac were the streets of one of Cæsar’s camps, its roofs having fallen and mouldered away, and that the famous “Merchants’ Table” at Locmariaquer was an ancient druidical altar, to which the helpless were led to be sacrificed.

All this and much more is for the antiquary alone, and a nodding acquaintance with the history of these curious stone formations or erections is about all for which most travellers will care.

He who arrives at Auray on a market-day will seem to himself to come into a region where every one speaks the Breton tongue. Not all, of course, for French is now compulsory with the school-children, but the frequency of it here in the booths and stalls in and around Auray’s lovely old timbered market-house is greatly to be remarked.

It is a question if this same market-house be not quite the most theatrical-looking thing of its kind in all France. It is for all the world like a successful piece of stage carpentry, with a great spectacular stairway running up into its garret above, quite in the manner that one has seen upon the stage over and over again, when the heroine or the villain--it does not much matter which--escapes from his, or her, pursuers. Low built, heavily raftered, and with a leaky roof allowing rays of sunlight to dribble through into the gloom within in a most entrancing manner, this old market-house is the centre of the life and activity of the place for fifty-two Mondays in each year.

Within and without the walls of the market-house is gathered the most varied conglomeration of wares imaginable. Beside the draper’s counter are baskets of vegetables, eggs, or fish. A poor little calf, tied by the legs and lying at full length on the ground, keeps company with his former farmyard neighbours, the ducks and geese, but on either side is a second-hand collection of ironmongery and old shoes, and it should be the envy of the provident, for two sous buy anything in the collection.

The country-side Breton peasant who comes to Auray on a market-day is the glass of fashion of his race, his jacket embroidered in braid of gay colours, and velvet bands on his sleeves and collar. His shirt is high and stiffly starched, and his felt hat or cap heavily hung with velvet ribbons. The womenfolk are clad in equally spectacular fashion, with high white caps and full-sleeved bodices, each with a black velvet band around the sleeve, and full gathered skirts, spoiling all symmetry of form as nature made it.

The history of Auray, from the days when it belonged to John of Auray, grand huntsman of Brittany, has left its mark in the annals of the country in no indefinite manner. John of Montfort, the Counts of Blois, Duguesclin, and many others stalk through its pages of history until finally, in the wars of religions, it was held by the Catholic army and the Spaniards in turn. Its old château, whose foundations now form the fine Promenade du Loc, dates from the eleventh century; and it was reconstructed and enlarged two centuries later, finally to disappear, as the result of an order for its demolition given by the castle destroyer, Henry II., in 1558.

The port of Auray is more daintily and charmingly environed than most seaports. As it lies between the wooded, deep-cut banks of the little river, its intermingling of ships and salt water, and country-side, and sailor lads and rustic maidens, and all the motley population of the little town, is a marvellous thing to see.

The smack of antiquity is about it all, and the historic legend of its shrine of St. Anne--which lives as vividly to-day as ever it lived--most touchingly connects the present with the past.

One of the most celebrated, and certainly the most largely attended, of all the “pardons” of Brittany is that held at St. Anne of Auray, though Auray itself is something more than a mere place of religious pilgrimage, and a good deal more than a wayside station on the railway line where one leaves the train and hires a carriage for Carnac and Quiberon, though apparently not many tourists know it. In the first place, it is one of the largest and most characteristic of all the little Breton market-towns, is a deep-water port of a considerable size, and has a hotel which supplies one with the most ample and delightful meals that the traveller will find westward of Nantes.

This may be a mundane standard by which to judge of an old-world town’s appeal to interest, but it is all-sufficient, and the most marvellous attractions the world may have to offer will hardly be appreciated by a travel-worn and hungry traveller, and such should plan to arrive in town for the Monday dinner at the Golden Lion; also he should not hurry through the town merely for the sake of visiting the shrine of St. Anne, which is tawdry enough in its general aspect, except when it is thronged on the great days of the “pardon,” March seventh and July twenty-fifth.

The great festival of the Pardon of St. Anne of Auray is held in July, on the birthday of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Its origin dates back to 1623, when a peasant of the country-side, one Yves Nicolazic, was commanded by St. Anne, who appeared to him in a vision, to found a chapel in her honour in the fields of Bocenno, where, she said, an ancient shrine had existed nearly a thousand years earlier. Guided by explicit directions and a mysterious star, Yves found a precious image, which ultimately was transported and set up anew in the church built at Auray. This miraculous statue was lost during the Revolution, but a fragment was preserved and is included in the present shrine, which is surrounded by a modern edifice dating from the mid-nineteenth century.

Near by is the miraculous fountain, which, like others of its kind elsewhere, is exceedingly erratic as to the miracles it performs. It was beside this fountain, then but a humble little rock-gushing spring, but now neatly set about with a concrete basin, that St. Anne first appeared to Yves.

Each year, by train, by boat, by country cart, and on foot, pilgrims come from miles around, many of them camping out the night by the roadside, all, in spite of the solemn purport of their pilgrimage, in the gayest spirits. There is always a certain amount of discord to be encountered at all these great festivals,--beggars, deformed or ill with incurable disease, crippled or what not, all expectant of reaping a thriving harvest from the simple-minded frequenters of the shrine. Whether deserving or not, all of them appear to receive liberal alms, for the custom of giving alms is as much a component part of the event as any of the other observances, nor is it ever frowned upon or curtailed by the religious or civic authorities.

The order of the day includes the massing of the pilgrims at open-air services, the placing of candles before the shrine, the inspection of the relics of the saint, the drinking of, or bathing in, the miraculous fountain, and sermons and admonitions uncounted, all in the Breton tongue, incomprehensible to outsiders, but to be taken as salutary. The great feature is the procession of priests and pilgrims, the former in their brilliant vestments, many of the latter bearing tall, gaudily coloured candles and gay silken banners. Grouped around each banner will be found the Breton men and women from a particular section, each group differently clad from those of other sections, but all gay with brilliant colouring.

“Saint Anne, pray for us!” is the cry one would hear were it in English, or “_Sainte Anne, priez pour nous_” in French; in Breton, its sadness is indescribable, more like the wail of a _banshee_ than anything else.

Usually the Bishop of Vannes delivers an exhortation, in the Breton tongue, of course, from the top of the Holy Steps, after which the throng--or, at least, such as are truly and sincerely devout--climb to the top on their knees. According to the printed notice at the foot, each step mounted on the bended knee, accompanied of course by a prayer, is good for a nine years’ absolution of a soul in purgatory. In the cloister behind the church is a great crucifix, in which the peasant pilgrims stick pins, each recording a prayer said or a vow made.

On the night of July twenty-sixth, St. Anne’s Day, a grand torchlight procession marches. The “Marche aux Flambeaux,” a celebrated painting by Jules Breton, now owned in America, well shows the effect of one of these great demonstrations, except that it lacks the weirdness of the sombre background of night itself.

This ends the great days of the pardon, but throughout the year pilgrims make their way to the shrine to say a prayer, or to drink or bathe in the waters of the fountain, or perhaps to carry a jugful home to some bedridden member of their families.

Among the offerings in fulfilment of vows made at the shrine of Ste. Anne d’Auray are a number of very ancient inscriptions, such as the following best illustrate:

“William Genin, bitten by a mad dog, vowed himself to St. Anne and obtained a perfect cure in 1631.”

“Helen Sausse, abandoned by her mother, vomited a two-headed snake and recovered her health.”

On the way from Auray to Plouharnel, Carnac, Quiberon, and Locmariaquer are worth one day or three, accordingly as one may feel inclined. The distance is not great; a dozen kilometres will cover the journey out, and a little more circuitous return route will take in a half-dozen or more old centres of a civilization of which all knowledge is lost in the night of time.

Whatsoever the great megalithic monuments of Carnac may mean, certain it is that they tell--or could tell if one could feel sure he understood it correctly--a story quite out of keeping with the manners and customs of to-day. Like the tall, gaunt windmills plentifully besprinkled hereabouts, these great stones rear their heads skyward in fashion most strange. Long rows of them, like files of soldiers, or like the trees of the forest, stand to-day for the curious to marvel at, as they stood so long ago that their origin is not to be definitely traced.

Of the Lines of Carnac, as the strange population of tombstone-looking monoliths is known, much has been written by antiquaries, archæologists, and geologists ever since the tide of travel set this way. What these stones actually mean--some thousands of them in all, set out in regular rows--only a vain, presumptuous person could answer. They offer a prospect of a strange grandeur, for they really are grand, if not stupendous, and, as they stretch away in long, silent lines almost to the horizon, they are as phantoms looming to-day out of the mysterious past to which they belong.

There are three great companies of these menhirs here. Those of Ménec, composed of 1,169 members in eleven ranks; of Kermario, 1,120 members in ten rows; and of Kerlescan, thirteen rows made up of 579 individual stones.

Carnac has another ancient monument in the tumulus of Mont St. Michel, which, like other elevations bearing the same name, is a sky-nearing little peak of land which supposedly formed a firm earthly foothold for the archangel.

The parish church of Carnac is dedicated to St. Cornély, who, according to legend, lived in the neighbourhood and was many times saved from an untimely death by the oxen of the region. Just how this was accomplished no one seems to know, but enough of the tradition still lives to inspire a grand celebration on the saint’s day, the thirteenth of September, when many animals are offered up to him, as one learns from the kindly, tall-coifed guardian of the church.

The painted ceilings of the Church of St. Cornély are remarkable works of art, if not for their excellence, at least for their ingenuity. The north porch is an astonishing Renaissance addition, which, from its curves and curls, would seem to be the precursor of “_l’art nouveau_.”

To the westward of Carnac, at the shore-end of the peninsula of Quiberon, is Plouharnel, another centre around which are grouped many curious stone monuments.

The Chapel of Our Lady of the Flowers is a singularly beautiful small church built of the granite of the country. It contains a notable bas-relief in alabaster in the form of what is known in ecclesiastical art as a “Jesse Tree.”

Just why the promoters of a railway had the temerity to push it to the very end of the snake-like peninsula of Quiberon is a problem which will ever remain unsolved so far as the general public is concerned. Stendhal has written some gloomy views of scenes enacted at Fort Penthièvre, half-way down the peninsula, and Victor Hugo wrote of the same times (now a hundred years ago):

“_Mourir plus d’un soldat à son prince fidèle, un prêtre fidèle à son Dieu._”

The aspect of this long, narrow peninsula is everywhere the same, from its juncture with the mainland to the sandy point fifteen kilometres away, from which one sees the flash of the twinkling light on Belle Ile.

Quiberon has what may almost be called an ideal hotel, except that it is unworldly and not the least new. A travelling salesman, whom we met at Auray, told us that it was kept by an old cook, one of the Vatels of the stove. Simple and modest, but clean withal as the proverbial door-step of Holland, it is one of those inns that the traveller loves out of sheer inability to find fault with it.

Quiberon has two ports, Port Haliguen and Port Maria, both in danger of becoming popular seaside resorts, for the guide-books are already describing them as places where the sojourn will be agreeable for persons of simple habits.

The fish-market of Quiberon is one, if not the chief, of its sights for the student of manners and customs. “_Cinq lubines pour douze francs et deux cent quarante maquereaux pour trente-un francs_” was the way the market ran on the occasion of the visit of the author, all of which argues that Quiberon is a good place for the fish to come.

The lobsters, too, are a great feature of the trade here, and are sold by their length, measuring from the eye up to the first scale of their tails. An average price is rather over four sous, and Paris takes the best of the lot. They travel first-class and by express, the lobsters of Quiberon, when they take their first and last voyage to the “shining city,” and there are plenty of friends awaiting them at the station. They invariably arrive at the fish-market for the earliest sales, and at noon the epicure may eat them at Marguery’s, which sounds like a French version of the “Alice in Wonderland” tale.

One hour from Quiberon, by a tiny steamboat, and one finds himself skirting the cliff walls surrounding and sheltering the little port and town of Palais on Belle Ile, overlooked by the powerful citadel built by Vauban, who, as the fortress-builder of France, stood in his profession where Napoleon did in his.

This “_plus belle île de l’ocean_” has forty-eight kilometres of coast-line, and every one of them has been so cut and serrated by the action of the waves that the island would form a veritable ocean graveyard were it situated on the direct line of travel by sea.

For the most part, visitors content themselves with making an excursion to the northerly end of the island, a visit to the apothecary’s grotto, and another to the lantern of the great lighthouse, which at night sends its electric rays far out to sea.

What tourists may not do is to roam over the old citadel now occupied as a national fort, and this is a pity, for there they might conjure up a reminder of other days that would be like a chapter out of Dumas.

The citadel was built by Marshal de Retz in 1572, and was the refuge of the cardinal of the same name when he fled from Nantes in 1653. Not far away is the Château Fouquet. Nicholas Fouquet, Marquis of Belle Ile, was Superintendent of Finance under the regency of Anne of Austria, and continued the important office after the accession of Louis XIV. The consensus of opinion is that Fouquet was insinuating, specious, hypocritical, and sensual. It was at the great fête given by Fouquet at Vaux that the king planned his arrest, “fearing he would escape to Belle Ile,” then thought to be an impregnable fortress. Both in the pages of the historians and in the romances of Dumas one may read the story.

Belle-Ile-en-Mer, also, was made the home of Aramis after Dumas had given him episcopal rank. The minute details given in “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne” would form an admirable supplement to any guide-book.

The great Sara Bernhardt has of recent years made her home on this barren and desolate isle. It is not altogether desolate, however, for there are hotels at Palais and Sauzon, and tourists, solitary and in droves, are continually making excursions thither in the season from the neighbouring Breton coast, from Vannes, Quiberon, or Lorient.

Although Belle Ile is only a pin-head on most maps of France, it has a considerable population. Palais is a town of five thousand souls, and Sauzon counts something over sixteen hundred, and so Belle Ile, being only about 21,000 acres in extent, is a very thickly populated part of the globe.

Returning to the mainland, a call at Locmariaquer is inevitable, if one be a true and genuine traveller, even if it be “out of the world,” which virtually it is, being at the tip end of another peninsula like that of Quiberon.

The town itself owns to fifteen hundred or more souls, and all of them look prosperous and contented. Where all of them get their livelihood, it is difficult to see, for there is not much intercourse with the outside world.

Locmariaquer has not even a railway, as Quiberon has, but lies twenty kilometres or so south of Auray, almost at the mouth of Morbihan Bay. The church of Locmariaquer is a fine twelfth-century work, but the foundation of the little town lies much farther back in antiquity than this. It was the ancient Doriorigum of the Romans.

The Chapel of St. Michel is built up from the Roman remains of a structure known as _er c’hastel_.

The great celebrities of Locmariaquer are, however, those members of the great family of menhirs, dolmens, and cromlechs with which this part of Morbihan is so thickly strewn. The chief of these are the dolmen known as Mané-Lud, Mountain of Ashes, of vast dimensions and having a grotto beneath it. Not far off is a tumulus and another dolmen known as Dol-er-Groh, an enormous stone table or altar. Another is known as Mané-er-H’roeck, the stone of the fairies; it is quite seventy feet long, or was, for it now lies full length on the ground broken into four pieces. The finest and best preserved of all is the Dol-ar-Marc’hadouiren, the Merchants’ Table. It is hard to see just the significance of the name given to these three huge stones, but they form a wonderfully impressive monument of days gone by, nevertheless.

The most beautiful dolmen known, whatever that description may really mean (the local renter of boats calls it such: “_le plus beau dolmen connu_”), can be visited only by boat. It is on an island in the gulf, and is known as the Gavr’inis.

La Trinité, “a little village on the very edge of the sea”! This is a description which exactly fits what the natives and the railway powers like to think is a watering-place. It is something like one, to be sure, but the influx of strangers during the summer months has never been so great as to obliterate or even to deaden the local colour. Its little harbour is lively with fishing-boats, and occasionally gay, when the boats are “dressed” for some great festival, but nothing of blatant bands and riotous crowds mars the quietness and sweetness of La Trinité, and accordingly it is a place to be remembered.

Sometimes the sterility of the soil round about causes real distress among the small farming peasants; “one cannot live on fish alone,” they say.

There is a local benefactress who, when crops are poor and meagre, gives the whole of her own harvest gathered from an unusually ample holding to her more distressed neighbours. This is a true and practical charity that does not smack of smugness or pretence as do many acts questionably classed under that head. It is a singularly expressive exemplification of what the French know as “good socialism,” and one hears much of it at La Trinité and in its neighbourhood.

Taking to the road again, on the way to Auray, one passes another of those curious granitic formations. This time it comes down more near our own day, and is called the “St. Tiviro’s hat.” It does not look the least like the saint’s hat, any more than the “devil’s seats” and the “old men of the mountains,” scattered about the world, look like what they are called--but let that pass. Legend connects this rock with a certain St. Tiviro, who one day lost his hat, which ultimately turned to stone. It does not seem plausible, and it is a pointless story indeed, but it gives a small child the opportunity to point it out for a penny, which most folk will not grudge.