Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-01-04
STUDIES IN BRITTANY
Wakeman's WanderingS Yield a New
Series of Quaint Scenes.
THE LAND OF LOVELY CONTRASTS
And Remarkable Antiquities That Point
to an Interesting Era.
ROBES OF PRIESTS SLAIN LONG AGO.
lcoRREspoNpENcr OF TIM prsrATCH.

crouching monster sullenly receiving the
onslaughts of the tempests, is piece Of
rock-buttressed land, traversed by three
somber ranges of mountains and innumera-
bic flashing rivers. The river Loire, winding
through the fairest of the valleys of France,
cuts behind and below it on the southeast,
and after sweeping by the quaint old city OF
Nantes, mingles its waters with those of the
vast Bay of Biscay, which pound and howl
among its skirting southwestern islands and
headland crags. Its northern walls, almost
in direct east and west line OF grandly mas
sive parapeted ports, are washed by the cur
rents of the English Channel, which,
broken by the brunt of the Channel
islands, here flow in stately and
measured tides, piercing the French
coast deeply at the western base Of
the peninsula, and forming majestic sea-
angle in the noble bay Of Cancale. This
splendid out-jutting of land, with its ragged
fringe of islands and its countless inlets and
estuaries, has greater expanse of coast line
than has all the rest of France, from St.
Malo to the Belgium outposts, and from the
Loire to the sea-abutting Pyrenees which
guard Castilian lands. Within its con-
| fines are five departments Of France-Loire
| Inferieure and lille Et Vilaiane, stretching
| from the Loire to the English Channel on
the east; Morbihan and Cotes Du Nord,
| lying next, to the west, the former on the
Bay of Biscay, the latter on the channel;
and the fifth, Finistere, the Lands Eud"
of the French, in whose sea-foaming jaws
sits the city of Brest, where, through the
channel of Goulet, flash and gleam the
mighty naval ornaments of France, under
those vast and impregnable ramparts begun
by Frances greatest Cardinal, Rchelieu,
| and completed by the then empires grand
est military author and engineer, Sebastian
L. Prestre Vauban. Geographically, this
is Brittany.
POETRY OF ART IN PASTORAL SCENES.
It is land of somber mountains broken
by limpid lakes and flashing rivers where
foreign anglers ever are, and where forest
ers hack and trim in the Olden way as
Troyon's brush has painted; of valleys
stretching far and desolate and wales of
sweetest pastoral scenes; of Roman roads
and crumbling walls; of sunken lanes, hewn
stiles and milestones; of olden cities with
cathedrals vast and splendid; of sleeping
villages with quaintest chapels and altars;
of roadside shrines and startling crucifixes
standing tall and dark against the horizon;
of tended herds of cattle, and guarded
f1ocks of fowls; of strange, great
houses with high-peaked roofs, whose
upper stories seem to boil up from
and over each other; of professions with
banners and pilgrimages with offerings;
Of chateaus and chalets cleaning from
nests of frs; of great avenues of beeehes like
grim sentinels behind the fierce walls of
prineely possessions; of wild, brown marshes
Of salt where no living thing ever circles
of al 81 h
mighty fortresses of the pres ent; of marvel
Gus monuments in stone to the superstition
or valor of unknown and unrecorded pagan
ages; and of air and sky and wind and
weather so strange, changeable and wonder
full in their mystic, wizard effects upon all
that the eye may behold, or the fancy
wreathe into glowing tangibilitv, that more
painters have plodded and bothered within
it than ever saw It7ly-but one. the poor
man, Millet, of Barbazon, ever setting be-
fore the world true Innings of its pictur-
esque, sometimes merry, but oftener pathet-
ieally sodden, peasantry. Scenically, this
is Brittany.
Here are 5000 900 more people peculiar
and interesting than can be found in any other
equal space in Europe. Since there is any
record of them they have stood here in this
granite -buttressed peninsula, seli-contained,
self-sustained, isolated. The mighty waves
of Teutonic encroachment have never
touched them.
QUITE SEPARATE CIVILIZATIONS.
The splendid civilization Of the slight lit
tie island" just across the channel there, has
remained farther from them than it has from
India. Though its population is one-twelfth
of that of all France; though all its cities
are reached by rail in q few hours from
Paris; its people have sturdily retained
their own individuality in traditions, Gus
toms, dress and language, to that degree
that, at least In language, thought, manner
and everyday life, Breton folk are less
French to-day than IEishmen in Ireland are
English. l do not know what the aristoc-
racy OF Brittany may be, for the aristocracy
anywhere fill the least of the real worlds
space, but the people of Brittany, the peas
antry and the lowly of Breton cities, pos
sess certain remarkable characteristics.
Women and men alike are beasts Of burden.
All refuse and resent innovation. Each
seems contented with his or her lot. You
can interest none in other ways of living, or
life in other lands. The birth and the
christening; the youthtide OF drudgery,
back-bent, dirt-grubbing days with open |
mouthed, snoring nights and the same old |
rounds of toll; the ogling and momentary
courtship at the feast and Pardon" davs;, |
the marriage when all who know the couple |
bring wretched gifts and feast upon them |
until the pair have a legacy of poverty SO |
irrevocable at the outset that their lives are |
mortgaged until death; the illimitable |
and drudgery of the wife who
is now legal slave brutally mastered to the |
end of her lite; the starved old age as men,
dieants at the mercy oftheir children, or in
the shadows of wavside inns and church
doors; and then the shrIving and dumping
~ fho al inf 4
ground; is the true picture, stripped of its
poetry, as the firm, just hand of Millet has
alone placed it upon canvas. of the average
Breton peasants lives. There are softer
blendings and tenderer side pictures,
though. Through the CRIME and slime of
their hard, cold lives a few things must
stand luminously revealed.
REVERENTIAu LOVE FOB THEIR BABES.
Their love of and reverence for babes are
wondrously touching. No Breton
mother will nurse her infant without first
'rossing herself. No Breton youth, woman
'r man, will ever pass an infant anywhere
without repeating for it blessing. No
neither with babe in her arms is ever met
Without eVoking tender "God bless your'
rom the passer. And one holding deadly
hatred will not strike his enemy if that
nemy's arms infolds q child. Again, like |
he 1rish-and it must be borne in mind that
he people of ireland and those of Brittany
re the closest of kin and from one common
Jeltic stock-the affection and quick-hearted
linging to family ties and to neighborhood
nd communal yearnings, find here uniVer-
al expression to a degree which al
1ost approaches pathos, when one
ONES to know it as it is. 1 have
ometimes wondered If this birth-spot at
sediment proved greatest where a race has 6
-eatest age. You may trace the ancient G
rish 1000 years. There is certainly an an 9
quity here carrying an unbroken line of i
radition and undoubted mystic history that 1
n toward the beginning. So these dumb ]
'lk, rooted to 80 immeasurable past, hug I