Chapter VI: Manners and Customs

To-day the Bretons are the most loyal of all the citizens of the great republic of France. In reality they are a most democratic people, though they often affect a devotion for old institutions now defunct. They may be a superstitious race, but they are not suspicious, although they have marked prejudices. When thoroughly understood, they are both likable and lovable, though their aspect be one of a certain sternness and aloofness toward the stranger. Their weapons are all in plain view, however, like the hedgehog’s; there is nothing concealed to thwart one’s desires for relations with them.

Their country, their climate, and their environment have much to do with their character, manners, and customs; and environment--as some one may have said before--is the greatest influence at work in shaping the attitude of a people toward an outsider, and every one is still an outsider to a Breton, be he French, English, or American.

The Breton is really a gayer person than his expression leads one to suppose. Madame de Sévigné wrote, with some assurance, as was her wont: “You make me prefer the gamesomeness of our Bretons to the perfumed idleness of the Provençals.”

Certainly, to one who knows both races, the comparison was well made. It is a case of doing mischief against doing nothing.

Brittany has not Normandy’s general air of prosperity, and indeed at times there is a very near approach to poverty and distress, and then it is bruited abroad in the public prints that the fisheries have proved a failure.

The Breton farming peasant, however, is not the poverty-stricken wretch that he has sometimes been painted. He lives humbly, and eats vast quantities of potatoes and bread, little meat, some fish, always a salad, and, usually, a morsel of cheese, but he eats it off a cleanly scrubbed bare board and from clean and unchipped plates.

In his stable, such few belongings in the form of live stock as he has are well fed and contented, and his chickens and ducks and pigs and cows are as much a pride and profit to him as to the peasant of other parts; but, after all, Brittany is not a land of milk and honey. The peasant lives in the atmosphere of dogged, obstinate labour, but he draws a competence from it, and it is mostly those who live in the seacoast villages, and those who will huddle themselves in and about the large towns and ports, such as Quimper and Brest, that are ever in want, and then only because of some untoward, unexpected circumstance.

Agriculture and the business of the sea are closely allied in Brittany. Hundreds upon hundreds of young men work in the winter upon farms far inland, and come down to the sea with the coming of February and March, to ship in some longshore fishing-smack, or even to go as far away as Newfoundland, the Orkneys, or to Iceland.

This gives not only a peculiar blend of character, but also a peculiar cast of countenance to the Breton; he is a sort of half-land and half-sea specimen of humanity, and handy at the business of either.

In many ports, the Breton struggles continually against shifting sand,--sand which is constantly shifting when piled in banks on the seashore, and becomes of the nature of quicksand when lying beneath the water where the Breton moors his lobster-pots. Between the two, he is constantly harassed, and until the off season comes has little of that gaiety into which he periodically relaxes. Every one will remark that the aspect of both men and women is sombre and dark, even though their spontaneous gaiety and dress on the feast of a patron saint or at a great pardon gives one the impression of gladness.

One sees this when on the great holidays the Breton peasant is moved to song, and chants such lines as the following, which more nearly correspond in sentiment to “We won’t go home till morning” than anything else that can be thought of.

“J’ai deux grands bœufs dans mon étable,
J’ai deux grands bœufs marqués de rouge;
Ils gagnent plus dans une semaine
Qu’ils n’en ont couté, qu’ils n’en ont couté.
J’aime Jeanne ma femme!
J’aime Jeanne ma femme!
Eh bien! j’aimerais mieux la voir mourir,
Que de voir mourir mes bœufs.”

Doubtless there is not so much hard-heartedness about the sentiment as is expressed by the words, which, to say the least and the most, are not wholly up to the standard of “love, cherish, and protect.”

Once in awhile one sees the type of man who is known among his fellows as _Breton des plus Bretons_. Like his Norman brother, the Breton in the off season works hard playing dominoes or cards in the taverns, where one reads on a sign over the door that _Jean X donne à boire et à manger_, that is, if the sign be not in Breton, which more often than not it is.

The landlord does not exactly “give” his fare; he exchanges it for copper sous, but he caters for the inner man at absurdly small prices, and accordingly is well patronized, in spite of his refusal of credit.

Bowls is the national game of Brittany, having a greater hold upon the simple-minded Breton, particularly in the neighbourhood of the Lannion, than any other amusement. No respectably ambitious inn in all Brittany is without its bowling-alley. As a distraction, it is mild and harmless, and withal good exercise, as we all know.

The religious fervour of the Breton folk has been remarked of all who know them howsoever slightly. It is universal, and, if it be more apparent in one place than any other, it is in the Department of Finistère, and it is not in the cities and towns that it reaches its greatest height, but mostly in the country-side, or on the seacoast among the labourers and the fisher-folk.

The religion of Brittany to-day is of the people and for the people. It is one of the great questions of the world to-day, but from a dogmatic point of view it shall have no discussion here. Suffice it to say that throughout France, with the numerous great, and nearly always empty, churches ever before one, one can but realize that the power of the Church is not what it once was.

The churchgoers are chiefly women; seldom, if ever, except on a great feast-day, are the churches filled with a congregation at all representative of the population of the parish, and even in the great cathedrals the same impression nearly always holds good.

In Brittany, the case is somewhat different, in the country districts at least, and even at Roscoff, Quimper, Vannes, and Rennes, where there are great cathedrals. In Brittany, in every parish church and at every wayside shrine, is almost always to be found not only a little knot of devoutly kneeling peasants, but, on all occasions of mark, a congregation overflowing beyond the doors. What this all signifies, as before said, is no concern of the writer of this book. It is simply a recorded state of affairs, and, judging from the attitude of the people themselves--when seen on the spot--toward the subject of religion, the most liberal thinker would hardly consider that here in Brittany religion was anything else than spontaneous devotion on the part of the people.

Of religion and priests, Brittany is full, but the people are not by any means priest-ridden, as many uncharitable and slack observers have asserted before now. No priest bids a Breton worship at any shrine. They do it of their own free will, and, though a churchman always officiates at the great pardons and festivals, the worshippers themselves are as much the performers of the ceremony as the priest.

In Brittany to-day the piece of money which passes current in most transactions, though in numbers it is infrequently handled by the traveller, is _la pièce_, the half-franc or ten-sous coin.

It is confusing when you are bargaining for a carriage to drive to some wayside shrine, to be told the price will be “_deux pièces_,” when--in Normandy--you have just formed the habit of realizing offhand that _deux cent sous_ is the same thing as ten francs. It’s all very simple, when one knows what they are talking about, and the Breton likes still to think his institutions are different from those of the rest of France, and so he goes on bargaining in _pièces_, when in other parts they are counting in _sous_, which is even more confusing, or in _francs_.

Most of the farmhouses of Brittany are constructed of stone and wood, with their roofs covered with a straw thatch. Of course this is a dangerous style of building to-day, as the authorities admit. Indeed a decree has gone forth in some parts forbidding the erection of any new straw-thatched building, and again in other parts against using any structure so built as a dwelling-house. The law is not absolutely observed, but it is by no means a dead letter, and the homely and picturesque thatched roof has now all but disappeared, except from the open country.

To enter the Breton peasant’s farmhouse, one almost invariably descends a step. The interior is badly lighted, and worse ventilated, but, as it is mostly the open-air life that the peasant and his family lead, perhaps this does not so much matter. Usually the house is composed of but one room, with a floor of hard-trodden earth. This is the dining-room, kitchen, and bedroom of all the family. The ceiling is composed of great rough-hewn rafters, sometimes even of trunks left with the bark on, and from it are hung the knives and forks and dishes, as in a ship’s cabin.

_B. McManus--1905_]

Furniture has been reduced to the most simple formula. Two or three great closed and panelled beds or bunks line one side of the wall, with perhaps a wardrobe, where the “Sunday-best” of the whole household is kept. Beneath the great beds is a series of oaken chests, and there the household linen is stored. These, with a long table, with a bench and a wide passage on either side, the great, yawning fireplace, with its crane and the inevitable highly polished pots and pans, form the furnishings of this remarkable apartment. All this is homely and strange, but it is comfortable enough for the occupants, if one does not mind being crowded, and it is the typical dwelling throughout Brittany.

Everywhere in the Breton country one sees oxen, cattle, and, above all, the horses of the indefatigable Breton race, “ready and willing to work and full of spirit in warfare.” So said Eugene Sue, and the same observation holds true to-day. None of the animals are so large or so fat as in the neighbouring provinces, but this is not because of malnutrition or because they are ill-tended. The cows of Brittany are by no means such plump, dainty animals as the cows of the Cotentin, and the Breton horses are certainly undersized when compared to the Norman sires and the great-footed Percherons, but one and all possess good qualities purely their own, and one thing above all should be noted,--Brittany is exceedingly rich grazing country, if not agricultural.

Much of the local character is shown in the dress of the people, and throughout the country-side and the seacoast villages alike both men and women show that remarkable attention to dress which marks the strong individuality of the race,--individuality which has come down through the ages, and endures to this day in very nearly, if not quite all, its original aspect. One knows this dress through photographic reproductions, and from having occasionally seen it on the comic opera stage, but actually to live among such picturesquely dressed folk is like a step back into the past.

B. McM. 1905]

The costumes of Brittany are greatly varied, but all look theatrical, and many of them are remarkably embroidered in multicoloured braid. On all great occasions, feast-days and fairs, on Sundays and on the days of the pardons, many ancient costumes, not modern reproductions, are seen. Particularly is this to be noted at Pont l’Abbé, Pont Aven, and elsewhere in the far west. The coifs of the women and the embroidered waistcoats and velvet-ribboned hats of the men mark them as a species of Frenchmen different from their Norman brethren; lovers of fanciful dress and customs quite Southern in gorgeousness, and not the least like the colder fashions of other dwellers in the same latitude.

At Quimper is an interesting Ethnological Museum, where one may study the subject at length, and in the town one may buy fabrics and stuffs and articles of wearing apparel fashioned in the genuine Breton manner.

The greatest activity of life in Brittany is in the coast towns, for there the populace has for the longest time been in touch with the ideas of an advanced civilization.

By the very geographic position of Brittany this was inevitable, as the country was not in the direct path of any great current of commerce, and had no great navigable river, except the Loire, which bordered it upon the south. There had been malicious critics of things Breton before him, but there could have been no real justification for the lament of Paul St. Victor, who must have had an exceedingly bad dinner at his inn when he delivered himself of the following:

“Breton dialect is full of barbarisms, and Brittany is not even a healthy country for painters. It is a land of monasteries and dull routine; the same types and the same costumes; no men, no women, all Bretons, all of Brittany.”

As a race, the Breton may well be summed up as follows: They are the descendants of the men of a primitive epoch, from whom they inherit traits which even time has not entirely eradicated. Their intuitions are correct, and their convictions profound; their will tenacious, and their energies equal to all that may be demanded of them. They are proud, truthful, courageous, intrepid, hospitable, and religious.

The manufacturing industry throughout Brittany is practically null, if one except the work of the great arsenals and ship-building ports, and the production of such articles of local consumption as sail-cloth.

Flax and hemp are grown in considerable quantities, but the ordinary crops of cereals rise to nothing like the proportions of those reared in Normandy or Perche. The Breton is strong on bee-keeping, however, and keenly watches the busy workers of his hives as they gather their harvest from the abundant crop of wild flowers covering the hillsides.

The Breton communes are of vast extent compared with those of other parts of France, but the population is scattered. Gathered around the parish church are the dwellings of the market-towns of three, four, or five hundred inhabitants or more. Upon the whole, Brittany is not thinly peopled, the mean of its population exceeding that of most of the other provinces of France. Whatever the aborigines were, whether of Indo-Germanique type or of a species hitherto unplaced, the present Breton population has been developed along lines close to those of Britain. And the Bretons are not far behind, and herein undoubtedly lies the charm of Brittany for the English-speaking traveller.

Writing of his stay at Guingamp,--which is about the dividing line where one passes from the zone of the French tongue to that of the Breton, where one is frequently to hear the short exclamation, “I do not understand you,”--Arthur Young tells us of putting up at a roadside inn “where the hangings over his bed were full of cobwebs and spiders.” The inn-keeper remarked to him that he had “a superb English mare,” and wished to buy it from him. “I gave him half a dozen flowers of French eloquence for his impertinence,” said the witty traveller, “when he thought proper to leave me and my spiders in peace.” “Apropos of the breed of horses in Lower Brittany,” he continues, “they are capital hunters, and yet my ordinary little English mare was much admired, while every stable round about is filled with a pack of these little pony stallions sufficient to perpetuate the local breed for long to come.”

To the humble inn--one of the regular posting-houses on the great highroad from Paris to Brest--he is not so complimentary. “This villainous hole,” said he, “which calls itself a great house, is the best inn of the town, at which marshals of France, dukes, peers, countesses, and so forth, must now and then, by the accidents to which long journeys are subject, have found themselves. What are we to think of a country that has made, in the eighteenth century, no better provision for its travellers?” In this our author was clearly a faultfinder, or at least he was unfortunate in not living at a later day, for the above is certainly not true of the inns of France to-day, though it may truthfully be said that, even to-day, the inns of Brittany are a _little_ backward, but it is not true of the Hôtel de France at Guingamp, which has even a dark room for the kodaker, and a _fossé_ for the motor-car traveller.