LEGENDS OF BRITTAINY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 April 1939, Page 3

LEGENDS OF BRITTAINY

DISTRICT RICH IN LORE.

YEARLY TOUR BY STORY TELLERS

Perhaps no other region in the world possesses so many legends as does Brittany. Every village and hamlet has a score of local legends besides legends which are common to the whole of this part of France. There are still in Brittany tellers of stories who, in the winter, go from village to village, something like troubadours going from castle to castle in days 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 with stories of goblins and fairies and saints, of enchanted forests, miraculous wells and cities beneath the sea whose bells of ill omen are sometimes heard by fisher-

men on stormy nights. These story tellers do a bit of mending and repairing, but it is not for the mending and repairing but for their stories that they are welcome.

In all the Celtic legends there is a touch common to Ireland, Scotland and Wales, just as in all these Celtic lands one finds the bagpipes in some form or other and the strange plaintive note even in the merriest tune. Most of the legends are concerned with saints, and the majority of these saints reached Brittany from Great Britain and Ireland. a favourite Miraculous means being in stone coffins or boats of stone. Near Perros-Guirec there is a shrine set up on the seashore which it is alleged is one of these stone vessels set on end in which a saint from Ireland reached Brittany. Once on shore, these saints many a time fought and con-> quered dragons who had ravaged the countryside. These legends of dragons arc so persistent that it has more than once been suggested that they may be reminiscences of fights between our caveman ancestors and giant reptiles. These saints, never officially recognised, are honoured throughout Brittany. Pardons, or religious festival's, are held in their honour, when farmers and peasants ride in from miles 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 bvways 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 a wood was nouiished by a large fish, off whose side he cut flesh for a meal, the fish ever afterwards appearing daily at the surface of the pool for the same purpose. Wild wolves crouched at the feet of another saint, and a wolf who had devoured an ox returned and was tethered to the plough to take the beast’s place. When some of these saints died it was hard to bury them where they did not wish to rest, and their bodies, drawn by driverless oxen, would make journeys through forests where trees divided to let them pass. 1o find rest in the humble chapel they had chosen. Sometimes it took a long time for good 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 lung after with the candle burning and the infant smiling and the whirlpool calmed to the gentlest harmless ripple.