CHRISTMAS EVE IN A BRETON VILLAGE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 51, 21 December 1905, Page 27

CHRISTMAS EVE IN A BRETON VILLAGE

I remember in particular a midnight Mass which I attended one Christmas Eve in the church of an old Breton village, where we were spending the holidays (says a writer in the New York Tribune). The sacred and storm-beaten edifice, when we entered it shortly before midnight, was filled to overflowing with kneeling and picturesquely-arrayed peasants. On the right side of the altar a bower had been made of fragrant pine and fir branches, with great bunches of crimson-berried holly and waxy mistletoe glistening among the verdure. Under this canopy there sat on a low stool a young girl of great beauty, with her long black hair falling in silky masses on her loose white garments. In her arms she held an infant. Beside her stood a young man, wearing a gold-embroidered robe and leaning on a heavy staff, while an ox, a donkey, and four sheep were quietly munching corn from a couple of mangers. The celebration of the Mass began. A small chorister chanted the ' Puer natus est nobis.' (For to us a child is born.) The deep bas3 voice of another grown-up chorister, hidden somewhere in the fir-branches bower above described, gave the response of ' Übi?' (Where?) A tenor chorister concealed near the sheep added the word ' Bethlehem,' and then a baritone voice answered ' Eamus.' (Let us go thither.) Thereupon the priest, his acolytes, and the entire congregation formed into a procession and marched to the fir-tree bower, where the representation of the Nativity had been arranged. The priest, having sprinkled both the mother and child as well as the animals with holy water, we all followed the kindly old rector to the chief fntrance of the church. The scene there was one which I shall never forget. All the cattle and flocks of the village had been driven into the old churchyard, and stood there crowded together in the silvery light of a full moon, around

the open portal. Standing on the topmost step of the porch, with his acolytes and surpliced choristers around him, the veneraole white-haired priest, who has had charge of the parish for close upon 40 years, exclaimed : ' God in His mercy, my dear children, has sent me on this radiant night of the Nativity to bless your cattle and your flocks, because it is only right that the animals which constitute your greatest help and source of prosperity should participate in the joy which fills all ( vi hearts. Now lead your flocks past me.' The Bhepherds and cattle herdera then began to drive (be animals past us, while the rector, dipping the sprinkler into the siWer ewer of holy water, showered the latter upon the os<a and the sheep; and amid the clang of the bells around tlieir N necks, their lowing and their baaing. as well as the words and cries of their drivers, ever and anon were heard the goli-nin words of the priest : ' Benedicat vos omnipotens Uens, Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus,' the choristers bringing the blessing to a close with a resounding 'Amen.' As I watched the animals vanishing one after the other into the night, it •eemed to me as if I were carried back to the primitive times of the early Christians, and as if our matter-of-fact prosaical and materialistic nineteenth century was not a reality, but only a nightmare.