Morning journal and courier., 1890-01-04

| ing or life in other lands. The birth and tn
christening; the Youthtide of drudgery, bacl
bent, dirt grubbfng days with open mouthed
snoring nights and the same old rounds o
toll; the ogling and momentary courtship q
the feast and pardon" days; the marriag'
when all who know the couple bring wretch
ed gifts end feast upon them until the pail
have legacy of poverty 80 irrevocable al
the outset that their lives are mortgaged IN
til death; the illimitable child bearing and
drudgery of the wife who is now legal
slave brutally mastered to the end of hel
life; the starved old age as mendicants at the
mercy of their children, or in the shadows
Of wayside inns and church doors; and ther
the shriving and dumping of the poor old
carcasses into consecrated ground; is the
true picture, stripped of its poetry, as the
firm, just hand of Millet has alone placed IL
upon canvas, of the average Breton peasants
lives. There are softer blendings and tens
derer side pictures though. Through the
CRIME and slime of their hard, cold lives q
few things must stand luminously revealed.
Their love of and reverence for babes are
something wondrously touching. No Breton
mother will nurse her infant without first
crossing herself. No Breton youth, man or
woman, will ever pass an infant anywhere
without repeating for it a blessing. No
mother with babe in her arms is ever met
without evoking tender "God bless your
from the passer. And one holding deadly
hatred will not strike his enemy il that ene-
my's arms enfold child. Again, like the
Irish-and it must be borne in mind that the
,1o Of ra1o md NE0
the closest of kin and from one common
Celtic stock-the affection and quick hearted
clinging to family ties and to neighborhood
and communal yearnings, find here univer-
sal expression to degree which almost ap-
proaches pathos, when one comes to know It
as it is. have sometimes wondered If this
birth spot attachment proved greatest where
a race has greatest age. You may trace the
ancient Irish four Thousand years. There is
certainly an antiquity here carrying an un-
broken line of tradition and undoubted mys-
tic history that far towards the beginning.
So these dumb felix, rooted to so immeasura-
BILE past, hug it to their hearts as the best,
the grandest, of their consciousness
one other thing. Their eyes will glow, their
forms straighten, their breasts heave and
swell, at the slightest kindling of the memo.
ry-Gres that forever burn before the affairs of
their mythic and mystic heroes and legenda-
ry gods. The race of warriors from whom
they sprang, the glorious deeds of their my-
biological knights, the marvellous mysticisms
of those vanished Druidic workers of weird
and awful spells. thread the warp and woof
of ballad, tale and song, in such wondrous
richness of texture, that one stands dis
mayed before it in the effort to discern where
paganism was ended and Christianity begun.
That other one thing supreme to Breton folk,
whatever may be 6rst-to you and I, is their
religion. They are not bigots, for they
know but one. Whether its influence over.
mastered them, or whether their stolid inde-
pendence of spirit shaped it's final fitting to
them, is no matter. It is the food and
breath of their lives, and defy any, list
that lives to come among them and know
the simple, steadfast, unquestioning loyalty
to their faith, and not love them the more
for what it is to them, and they to it. Soci-
ologically this is Brittany.
But here I am at wrath environed Carnae!
Savans dig and peck away for remnants of
the cast off shells of lost races and ages in
all the lands fringing the Mediterranean.
Yet here at Carnac, in the very Brittany Of
Brittany, and at the very threshold Of Eu-
rope, are imperishable remains of the activi-
ties of people and time so remote that
archaeologfsts are dumb in the presence of
what no learning has yet been able to inter-
pret and reveal. think the study of rude
stone monuments and these silent, awe in
spring reminders of the past grows on one
with strange and increasing fascination. I
wandered among the splendid antiquities of
Ireland for year. The last days wander
ing and wondering was infinitely more i'm
pressive than the first. So, on entering
Brittany, was all impatience to first see the
vast fields of pillar stones the ancient Oelts
had here raised in the same inexplicable way,
evidently forsthe same inexp1icahle psrrese,
and have consciousness, for myself, Of the
kinship of those prehistoric races who have
left such mighty monuments to pagan mys-
ticisms upon almost every square rood of
these westernmost European lands. The
plains of Carnac would be indescribably
ments not standing upon them. But under
meath wintry skies, whipped and beaten by
storms of wind and sleet, and ghostly as a
vast graveyard with these monumental
stones, the belief that pagan races sought
the saddeat and dreariest places nature pro-
vided for the burial Of their dead, is given
startling emphasis here.
A vast tumulus, or mound of stones, once
q pagan burial place, about one hundred
chapel and Calvary dedicated to st. Michael,
to which pilgrimages are made, stands al
most in the center of the desolate expanse.
This is called Mont St. Michael. From its
top the entire plains of Carnac may be seen,
with their countless pillar stones, peulvens,
or menhirs, and many grimmer and vaster
cromlechs or dolmens. As ia we'll known,
the former are believed to be simply stone
monuments to pagan dead. They vary from
six to eighteen feet in height above the soil.
Hundreds upon hundreds have fallen and
are partly covered with furze and brambles.
Countless thousands were destroyed by the
efforts of Charlemange and later under q
canon of the Council of Mates, especially
enacted to effect the destruction of pagan
monuments. Old chroniclers assert that
over twenty thousand stood on these fields
before that time. If, as some assert, each
menhir or stone served as memorial OF the
death of numbers by Druidic sacrifice, what
an awful olden slaughter pen one stands
upon at Carnac! Here and there within
sight of Mont st. Michael are many huge
and still more weirdsy suggestive dolmens,
the exact prototypes of one hundred and
eiahty-one personally inspected of the two
hundred and twenty-six cromlechs known to
exist in Ireland. These consist of upright
stones, held in their vertical position by hor-
izontal slabs of immense proportions. At
Carnac some are from ten to fifteen feet in
height, with Gaping stones of from twelve
to twenty feet in length. and from two to
four feet in thickness. But two miles from
Csrnac, near the village of Plouharnel, are
several immense dolmens, one, -eeye.sd ny
three tremendous stones, being nearly fifty
feet long. These dolmens are thought to
have been the raised places where Druidic
sacrifices took place before assembled thou
sands, and the chambers within the burial
places of the victims. It Is certain that
they were pagan buriM places. for there have
been recovered FROM every one half burned
bones of humaR beings, cinnerary urns,
stone weapons, gold torques and other rude
ornaments.
The pillar STONES stfll standing upon Oar.
mac fields arei seen principally clustered in
three distinct ,1anges or avenues; and all are
to the north and northeast OF the village.
The most ea),tern grouping is known a. Ker-
lescant. The central and smallest grouping
is called kermario, and the western and
largest field is generically named the Stones
of Carna2. At first each of these seems .
macs, but as the eye becomes ia
miliar Yong and sinuous avenues are distinct
ly traced; aud the curious fact will impress
the keen observer tina. in all three Of these
vast collection of pillar stones the lines and
aveDuee, from eight to eleven in each still
being easily followed, converge rapidly as
th9ir eastern termini are approached; the
theory, as held by some archaeologists. being
Chat the three great series still visible and,
perhaps, hundreds of others effaced within
the three or fonr thousand years since they
were erected, all once led 90 the most sacred
and eastern point at Locmariker, some If
teen miles distant, where there Is still to be