LEGENDS OF BRITTANY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 109, 11 May 1939, Page 10

LEGENDS OF BRITTANY.

Perhaps no other region in the world possesses «o many lejjencU as does Brittany. Every village and hamlet has a nciii't* of local legends besides legend* which arc common to the whole of this part of France. There are .-til! in Brittany tellers of stories who. in the winter, go from village to village, t-omething like troubadours going from castle to cattle in the daye of old. They find a welcome place in the chimney corner, for in Brittany the big chimney corners still exist, and during a day or two they entertain witli stories of goblins and fairies and isaints, of enchanted forests, miraculous wells and cities beneath the sea whose hoik of ill-omen arc sometimes heard by fishermen on t-formv night**. These story tellers do a bit of mending and repairing. Hut it not for the mending and repairing but for their stories that they are welcome. Most of (he legends are concerned with i-aiuis, and the majority of these saints reached Brittany from <;reat Britain ami Ireland, a favourite miraculous means lieinir in Mono colli us or boats of stone. Xear l'orros-Ouiree there is a shrine sot up cm the seashore which it is alleged is one of therse stone voxels set on end in which a. saint from Ireland reached Brittany. Once on nhoro, fhoco saints many a time fought and compiered dragons who had ravaged the countryside. These, legends of dragons are *o persistent that it has move than once Ik'oii suggested that they may be reminii*cences of fights between our cavemen ancestorsand giant reptiles.

These saints, never officially recognised, are honoured throughout Brittany. Pardon*, or religions festivals, are held in their honour, when farmers and peasants ride in from niile< around in their picturesque costumes to worship in the beautiful cathedrals and churches of Brittany and walk behind the silk banners in procession afterwards. In one part of Brittany a saint is honoured, a (simple youth who wandered the fields and byways repeating "Ave Maria." He spoke no other words, but a lily which grew over his grave was found to have its root in his mouth. Another holy man who wandered starving in n. wood was nourished by a large fish, off whose side he cut flesh for a meal, the fish over afterward-. appearing daily at the surface of the pool for the same purpose. Wild wolves crouched at the feet <>f another saint, and a wolf who had devoured an ox returned and was tethered to the plough to take the heart's place. When ■some of these saints died it wa- hard to bury them where they did not wir-li to rest, and their bodies, drawn by driverh-ss oxen, would make journeys through forests where trees divided to let them pass, to find rest in trie humble chapel they had chosen. Sometimes it took a long time for <mod to triumph over evil, as at that spot where a whirlpool to be appeased had to receive its annual sacrifice of a child nailed up in a tub with a candle from the church and a loaf of bread, until at last one day the tub was found again loirj: after with the candle burning and the infant smiling and tbe whirlpool calmed to the gentlest harmless ripple.