Читать книгу Rambles in Brittany - M. F. Mansfield - Страница 4

“O landes, O forêts, pierres sombres et hautes,

Bois qui couvrez nos champs, mers qui battez nos côtes,

Villages où les morts errent avec les ventes,

Bretagne! d’où te vient l’amour de tes enfants.”

Brittany in early days had a parliament the most important in France. Armorica was its more ancient name, which in old Breton signified “near to the sea,” or “on the sea.”

From the beginning of the fifth century, for a matter of perhaps a hundred years, the peninsula was known as Armorique, and its people as Armoricans. After this time the name disappeared from general use, and Brittany and Breton came. From the sixth century onward the change became permanent, and such chroniclers as Gregory of Tours, for instance, always referred to Britannia, Britanniœ, Britanni, and Britones, in writing of the peninsula and its people.

When first peopled from Britain across the Channel, Brittany was the most thinly populated part of all Gaul. Each wave of immigration, as the Britons from across the water fled from the invading Saxons, added to the population of the land, until ultimately it became as a hundred Britons against ten Armoricans. At least, this is the way the French historians and antiquaries put it, and so Armorique became Brittany, and such is the origin of French Brittany, quite independent of the etymology of the word Breton itself.

The inhabitants even to-day—more than in any other of the ancient provinces of France—have preserved the ancient nomenclature of the land and its people, and everywhere one finds only Bretons whose home is Brittany.

Mercator, the map-maker, was more of a success than Mercator, the historical chronicler. He said of the Bretons, in 1595, that they were “for the most part avaricious and largely given to making distinctions between glasses and tumblers.” As a matter of record, this is not so true of the Bretons as it is of the Normans, or of the Germans, or of the Spaniards. Up to the time of Cæsar the name Armorica seems to have been applied to all the coast of Northwestern France of to-day, with a little strip running as far south as the mouth of the Garonne, but more particularly it afterward designated the peninsula of Brittany as we know it to-day.

The region was early put under the guardianship of a chieftain, who invariably, here as elsewhere in those days, took advantage of every opportunity to advance his frontiers.

This attempted aggrandizement was not so successful here as in other parts, and by the fifth century Armorica had shrunk to the region lying entirely between the Seine and the Loire. In the life of St. Germain of Auxerre one reads:

“Gens inter geminos notissima clauditur amnes

Armoricana prius veteri cognomine dicta est.”

Finally, at the close of the sixth century, Armorica merged itself in Brittany, but the “Concile de Tours” makes a remarkable distinction between the new settlers and those who had previously been known as Romans. This distinction was also clearly made by St. Samson, who wrote in the seventh century that Britannia was the name given to Armorica by the exiled Britons who had fled from the Saxons and the Angles and had there taken up their home.

Before the Roman conquest there were five tribes in the country, named by Cæsar as the Nannetes, the Veneti, the Osismii, the Curiosolitæ, and the Rhedones,—names which, with but slight evolution, exist even to-day. Things went on quietly under Roman control, but when Clovis became the master of a part of Gaul he was obliged to treat with the Armoricans. Finally the Britons from across the sea came “like a torrent,” and established themselves, changing the names of certain regions to Cornouaille, Léon, Bro-Waroch, etc. Conquered in 799 by a lieutenant of Charlemagne, the Bretons revolted again some little time after, and, at the death of the great emperor, successfully withstood the attacks of the formidable army which Louis the Amiable had sent against them. For a quarter of a century Brittany now suffered attack and pillage by the Normans, relieved only when Alain Barbe-Torte drove the invaders from his territory. Previous to the Norman inroad, the Bretons lived in petty tribes, of which each formed a “plou,” a prefix still often met with in Breton place-names. The chief of a plou was known as a machtiern.

Up to this time no foreign customs had been introduced, but, after the victories of Alain Barbe-Torte, tribal organization was succeeded by that of the fief.

By the tenth century feudalism was thoroughly established throughout most of the ancient provinces of France, and the land was covered with seigniories, great and small, the one more or less dependent upon the other. Dukes, counts, and seigneurs, each in his own territory, played the hereditary sovereign in little, and above them was the suzerain power of which they were vassals.

After the expulsion of the Normans, the ancient Breton kingdoms of Domnonée, Cornouaille, and Bro-Waroch disappeared, and the sovereign of all Brittany bore the title of duke.

Historians write of the nine ancient barons of Brittany, among whom was divided the governmental control of the country, all of them being virtually subject to the reigning duke. They were:

 I. Seigneur d’Avaugour or De Goëllo.

 II. Vicomte de Léon.

 III. Seigneur de Fougères.

 IV. Sire de Vitré.

 V. Sire de Rohan.

 VI. Seigneur de Chateaubriand.

 VII. Seigneur de Retz.

 VIII. Seigneur de la Roche-Bernard.

 IX. Seigneur du Pont.

These original baronies expanded into a round hundred by the fifteenth century, and the list of them contains the ancestral names of the Breton nobility.

Henry II. of England dealt severely with Brittany, but his son Geoffrey married Constance, the daughter of Duke Conan IV., and this made the condition of the province more tolerable.

The first step toward the union of Brittany with the kingdom of France came when—through the intrigues of Philip Augustus—the daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet married Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux, and a prince of the blood royal of France. Joan of Penthièvre also married the Count of Blois, another lieutenant of the King of France.

Device of Anne of Brittany

The war of succession in Brittany between the ducal houses of Blois and Montfort was, up to the fourteenth century, the principal event of the province’s early history. The Montforts achieved final victory at Auray in 1364. Upon the death of Francis II., his daughter Anne, the chief figure in all Breton history, so far as existing memorials of her life are concerned, became duchess.

Anne of Brittany

In 1491, she married Charles VIII. of France, and eight years later his successor, Louis XII. The daughter of this last marriage, the Princess Claude of France, married the Duke of Angoulême, afterward Francis the First, and the fortunes of Brittany and France were thenceforth indissolubly allied, for, upon becoming Queen Claude of France, the inheritor of Brittany ceded the province to her royal spouse and his descendants in perpetuity. Queen Claude died in 1524, which event for ever assured France of this province,—the most beautiful gem in the royal crown. The union of Brittany and France was celebrated with much pomp in 1532.

The ancient county or duchy of Bretagne was bordered on the east by Anjou and Maine, on the west by the Atlantic, on the north by the British Channel and Normandy, and on the south by Poitou. The province had two territorial divisions, Upper and Lower, and Rennes was the parliamentary capital.

Upper Brittany comprised the five episcopal dioceses of Dol, Nantes, Rennes, Saint-Brieuc, and St. Malo, and Lower Brittany counted four similar divisions, Quimper, St. Pol de Léon, Tréguier, and Vannes. Thus the political divisions of a former day corresponded exactly with those of the Church.

To-day Brittany is divided into five departments: Côtes du Nord, Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Inférieure, and the Morbihan.

The administrative government of Brittany, or rather of its present-day departments, like that of the rest of France, radiates from the capital of the department, which is the residence of the prefect, the tax-collector, the bishop, and, in general, of all heads of departments. The chief town is also the seat of the General Council and (with few exceptions) of the assize court.

The most ancient codified law of Brittany was known as the little book, but the manuscript copy has been lost. The most ancient work which recites the “customs” of this great province dates only from 1330. This curious document is known as the “Very Ancient Law,” and contains 336 articles. “The Ancient Law” was compiled and published at Nantes in 1549, and contains 779 articles.

Brittany has been, and perhaps ever will be, considered by Frenchmen an alien land, where, in its great plains and mountainous regions, in the valleys of its bubbling rivers, and on its rock-bound shores, the people, one and all, “speak a tongue so ancient and so strange that he who hears it dreams of a vanished race.”

Yes, Brittany is a land of menhirs, of legends and superstitions, but all this but makes a roundabout journey the more enjoyable, and one must really cross and recross it to its uttermost confines in order to realize its great variation of manners and customs, to say nothing of speech, for, even though the Breton tongue is dying out as a universal language, one still buys his post-card with a queer legend on its face, which looks like Dutch at first glance, but really is Breton.

In Madame de Sévigné’s time the ladies of Lower Brittany were famous for their beauty. In “Letter XLIV.,” written to her daughter, Madame de Sévigné said: “Many beauties of Lower Brittany were present at the great ball, the brilliant Mademoiselle de L——, a fine girl who dances very well.”

Breton Post-card

Things do not seem to have changed greatly to-day, and, although Madame de Sévigné wrote of court beauties only, in the Lower Province one frequently meets such beauty of face as one does not see everywhere in France. It must be owned that the figures, if not exactly found wanting, are often too ample. The sternness of the land, like the bleakness of Holland, has, apparently, added no end of grace to the features of the women, whatever may have been its hardening effect upon the men.

In Cornouaille, Latin Cornu-Galliæ, one finds almost the same name and the same derivation as in English Cornwall, and the topographical aspect is much the same in both instances. “The people of Cornuaille are faithful to tradition, and above all others merit the name of Bretons,” says J. Guillon.

The Province of Léon forms the northern part of the Department of Finistère. The name was a development from Pagus Legionensis, a large military colony having been quartered there in Roman times.

In the south the ancient Breton Province of Bro-Waroch became the county of Vannes, the counts being in reality dependents of the Duke of Brittany; their people spoke, and retain even to-day, a distinct dialect, greatly varying from that of the rest of Brittany.

In the earliest times, both Nantes and Rennes were the seat of important administrative governments, but the Counts of Nantes ceded their fiefs to the Bretons in the eleventh century. Chief of these were the fiefs of the Baron of Retz, the Seigneur de Clisson, who defended the southern frontier against Poitou, and the Baron of Ancenis, who was the bulwark between Brittany and Anjou.

In the north, the ancient Breton kingdom of Domnonée was, in the twelfth century, divided into two counties, that of Penthièvre and Tréguier.

It was Duke Geoffrey who introduced feudalism of the Anglo-Norman and French variety. In earlier times, when a nobleman died, his children divided his lands and goods in equal parts among them, but in Normandy and France the estate went to the eldest of the line.

It was only in the twelfth century that the Bretons went outside their own domain. Previously, they were decidedly an untravelled race, but under Philip the Fair Paris came to know Breton well, though chiefly through the poorer classes.

They went to the schools and seminaries of Orleans to become clerics; sold their cattle and horses in the markets of Paris, and their wheat in Maine and Anjou, and their feudal lords, it is perhaps needless to say, bought their dress in the capital of fashion, and their wines in Gascony. From this time, Brittany may be said to have been opened to the world.

Not always were the Bretons a peaceful, law-abiding race, at least they did not always appear in such a light to their contemporaries. According to Bouchart, Duke Francis II. received a letter wherein his brother-in-law, the Count of Foix, said: “Monseigneur, I declare to God, I would rather be the ruler of a million of wild boars than of such a people as are your Bretons.”

In 1460, Francis II. founded the University of Nantes, thus doing away with the necessity of the young Breton’s going to Paris, Orleans, or Angers for his education.

Printing was discovered in Germany, and all in good time it appeared in Brittany, at Lannion, and at Tréguier. There were establishments devoted to the art even before they existed in such important places as Lyons or Montpellier. One of the first books printed in Brittany was a French-Breton dictionary, published in 1499, and known as the Catholicon of Jean Lagadeuc.

By this time, a remarkable form of government, unique in all the world, was established in Brittany. In some respects it was modelled on the English Parliament, but in no way resembled that of the French legislative body.

The Estates met each year at Rennes, at Vannes, at Nantes, at Redon, at Vitré, or at Dinan, and at last, under Francis II., Parliament came to be a fixture at Rennes.

Even after the union of Brittany with France, the ancient rights, privileges, and liberties were assured to the old province until the Revolution. These sittings of the Estates at Rennes were sumptuous affairs, accompanied by a round of feasting and dancing at which appeared all the aristocracy who could.

Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter of one of the grand affairs as follows:

“The good cheer is excessive; the roasts are brought on entire, and the pyramids of fruit are so huge as to make it necessary to take down the doors for their entrance.... After dinner, MM. de Locmaria and Coëtlegon danced with two Breton girls, taking some amazing steps.... Play is continuous, balls endless, and thrice a week there are comedies.”

The relations between the nobility and peasantry in seventeenth-century Brittany were perhaps closer and more affectionate than in any other part of France. The noblemen frequently visited the peasants on their farms, and on Sunday the peasants danced in the courts of the castles and manor-houses.

“Virtually, under the old system, Brittany was peopled by rural nobility,” says Cambry, and indeed this must have been so, for within a small radius of Plougasnou were more than two hundred noblemen’s houses, “so poor,” says the chronicler, “that their inhabitants might well be classed with the labourers themselves.”

Brittany’s part in the Revolution was equivocal. The Republicans really had beaten the Royalists, but they had also aided the Girondins, and at Paris the Girondins were as much hated as the Royalists themselves. The Convention sent its representatives into the province, not to thank the Bretons for their help in the great struggle, but with the idea of still further arousing the passions of the people.

Among these representatives were Geurmer, Prieur de la Marne, Jean-Bon-St.-Andre, and the rascally and heartless Carrier, who drowned his hundreds at Nantes, and guillotined twenty-six Bretons in one day at Brest.

The Breton feeling and sympathy was in the main with the Republicans, though manifestly the majority had no sympathy with the rule of the Terrorists. It is curious to note, however, the change in the nomenclature of places in the endeavour to eliminate the religious and aristocratic prefixes and suffixes with which many of the Breton place-names were endowed.

St. Cast became Havre-Cast.

St. Fiacre became Fiacre-les-Bois.

St. Gildas became Gildas du Chaneau.

St. Gilles-les-Bois became Bellevue.

St. Jacut-de-la-Mer became Isle Jacut and Port Jacut.

Chateaulin became Cité sur Aôn.

Pont l’Abbé became Pont Marat.

Quimper became Montagne sur Odet.

St. Martin des Champs became Unité des Champs.

St. Pol de Léon became Port Pol.

Belle Ile en Mer became Ile de l’Unité.

Château Fouquet became Maison-des-Sans-Culottes.

Isle aux Moins became Isle du Morbihan.

Roche-Bernard became La Roche Sauveur.

Rochefort en Terre became Roche des Trois.

St. Gildas de Rhuis became Abélard.

St. Briac became Port Briac.

St. Lunaire became Port Lunaire.

St. Malo became Port Malo.

St. Servan became Port Solidor.

With the incoming of the Empire, most of these names reverted to their early form.

In our day, while many of the old provinces of France have suffered—if they really do “suffer”—from a decreasing population, Brittany has augmented her numbers continually. It is a well-worn saying among the political economists of France that the “fine and healthy race of Bretons is one of the greatest reserves and hopes of the republic.” Three-quarters of all those who man French ships come from the Breton peninsula.

Hamerton has said that no race, more than the English, had so strong a tendency to form attachments for places outside their native land. There may be many reasons for this, and assuredly the subject is too vast and varied to be more than hinted at here. Brittany, at any rate, has proved, in and out of season, a haven, as safe as a home-port, for the Briton and his family, when they would not wander too far. Possibly it comes after Switzerland, though France as a whole, “the most architectural country in Europe,” has been sadly neglected, for, as has been said before, no Englishman ever loved France as Browning loved Italy.

The native love of the Frenchman for the land of his birth is, to him, above all else. It is almost incomprehensible to an outsider; it is something more than mere patriotism; it is the love of an artist for his picture, as Balzac said of his love of Touraine. This sentiment goes deep. After the province comes the immediate environment of his village, and then the village. “Rien n’est plus beau que mon village, en verité je vous le dis.” Thus has written and spoken many a great Frenchman.

Nowhere in the known world is provincialism so deep and profound a trait as in France; and the Breton is always a Breton, contemptuous of the Norman, God-fearing, and peaceful toward all. There is throughout France always an intense provincial rivalry, though it seldom rises to hatred or even to jealousy.

Probably there is no great amount of truth in the following quatrain, evidently composed by a resident of Finistère, and there first heard by the writer of this book, but it reflects those little rivalries and ambitions which have appeared in the daily life-struggle among the inhabitants of other nations since the world began:

“Voleur comme un Léonard,

Traitre comme un Trégarrais,

Sot comme un Vannetais,

Brutal comme un Cornouaillais.”

Sometimes the love of one’s own country may be carried to an extreme. We read that for long years, and until recently, the inhabitants of Trélaze positively refused to assimilate with outside conditions of life to the least degree, and finding a Breton of this little zone or islet who spoke French was as improbable as to find one who spoke English. At St. Brieuc there is a special quarter where the Breton-speaking folk live to the number of two thousand, and this out of a population of only twenty-two thousand, while at Nantes the Bretons number ten thousand. At Angers there is a large and apparently growing Breton colony; likewise at Havre, in Normandy, where they have a special chapel in which the priest preaches in the Breton tongue. At Paris, too, there are various Breton colonies, and the Church of St. Paul and St. Louis, in St. Anthony’s Street, has a Breton priest. It is the same with the church of Vaugirard. At Havre there are something over three thousand Breton-speaking persons, and in Paris seven thousand.

Perhaps Brittany has produced fewer great painters and sculptors than any other section of France, but all Bretons are artists in no very small way, as witness their wonderfully picturesque dress and their charmingly stage-managed fêtes and ceremonies.

The pioneer painter of Breton subjects was doubtless Adolph Leleux, who, as one of the romantic school in Paris, found in this province what many another of his contemporaries was seeking for elsewhere, and discovered Brittany, as far as making it a popular artists’ sketching-ground is concerned. His first paintings of this region were exhibited in the Salons of 1838-39-40, and Paris raved over them. His peasant folk, with their embroidered waistcoats and broad-brimmed hats, had the very atmosphere of Brittany.

St. Brieuc

Leleux’s success was the signal for a throng of artists to follow in his footsteps, and to-day their number is countless, and the very names of even the most famous would form too long a list to catalogue here.

Among Leleux’s most celebrated canvases were “La Karolle, Danse Bretonne” 1843; “Les Faneuses,” 1846; “Le Retour du Marché,” 1847; “Cour de Cabaret,” 1857; “Jour de Fête en Basse Bretagne,” 1865; and successively the “Foire Bretonne,” “Les Braconniers,” “Le Pêcheur de Homards,” “Pèlerinage Breton,” and “Le Cri du Chouan.”

In all these works one finds the true Brittany of Rosporden and Penmarc’h.

Fortin’s “Cahute de Mendicant dans le Finistère” (1857), “La Bénédicité,” and “La Chaumière du Morbihan” follow Leleux as a good second, then Trayers with “Marché Breton and “Marchande de Crepes à Quimperlé.”

Among other noted pictures are Darjours’s “Palaudiers du Bourg de Batz” and the “Fagotiers Bretons”; Guerard’s “Jour de Fête” and “Messe du Matin, Ille-et-Vilaine”; Fischer’s “Chemin du Pardon” and “Auberge à Scaër,” and Roussin’s “Famille Bretonne.”

Gustave Brion, with his “Bretons à la Porte d’une Eglise”; Yan Dargent, with his “Sauvetage à Guisseny,” and Jules Noel, with his “Danse Bretonne,” and various landscapes of Brest, Quimper, Auray, and Douarnenez, are on the list of names of those who made the Breton region famous in the mid-nineteenth century.

Since then, the followers in their footsteps have been almost too many to number.

Most folk call to mind with very slight appreciable effort such masterpieces as Jules Breton’s “Retraite aux Flambeaux” and “Plantation d’un Calvaire,” now in the museum at Lille, and Charles Cottet’s “Bateaux de Pêche à Camaret” in the Luxembourg gallery.

In addition, there have been innumerable “great pictures” painted by English and American artists whose very names form too long a list to catalogue here.