Some Folklore Surrounding Bees

The humble honey bee has always enjoyed a close relationship with humanity. The creature is depicted on one the earliest European pre-historic cave paintings and possessed sacred associations for the ancient Egyptians while also enjoying a prominent place in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans of antiquity. Such intimate connections between mankind and the bee appear quite universal; bees are to be found in the Hindu scriptures and in the mythologies of cultures as diverse as the Mayans and the Norse; Africa, the Americas, Asia and Australia all possess native beliefs and traditions regarding the importance and symbolism of the bee.  

There has been a great deal written about the position of bees in Celtic countries and some authors seem to have conflated a mass of superstitions and beliefs from across the Celtic fringe and portrayed them as applying en masse throughout the Celtic world. There are also many picturesque but fanciful depictions of the role of bees in Celtic religion and mythology. Similarly, many of the writings of Plutarch and Virgil regarding bees and their admiration of virtue or their relation to the flight of the soul, have recently been imaginatively transposed to a Celtic setting.

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Brittany has a rich tradition of beliefs and superstitions surrounding bees and bee-keeping and those highlighted in this post were noted in accounts written between the 18^th and 20^th centuries. Some of these have commonalities with superstitions held in other parts of France and other parts of the Celtic world but we should be careful before inferring that these once formed part of a broader pan-European tradition of bee-related beliefs. 

One of the most crucial elements of the superstitions surrounding bees here involved the importance of sharing one’s life with the bees. It was crucial to make the bees feel that they were appreciated as part of the farmer’s extended family and it was therefore important that the bees were told of all events of interest to their master. Otherwise, it was said, the hive would not flourish. Once each bee hive had been informed of any salient news; if the bees were content they would begin buzzing and that was taken as a sign that they were satisfied and would stay with the household. In neighbouring Great Britain, a similar custom known as “telling the bees” was practised although that often involved attracting the hive’s attention with the house key.

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It was thought that a symbiotic relationship existed between bees and bee keeper and that the prosperity of the hives depended on the health and standing of the master of the household. One tradition in Brittany held that unless hives were decorated with a red cloth at a wedding and the bees allowed to share in the family’s rejoicing, they would leave the household forever. It was therefore customary for hives to be decorated with cloth or ribbons on family wedding days. On the wedding of the household’s eldest daughter, hives were especially decorated with red coloured ribbons. In the same spirit, if a daughter of the household became engaged to marry, she was expected to inform the bees of her forthcoming nuptials lest they desert the hive, never to return.

Other life events also merited decorating the hives so as not to offend the sensitive bees; in western Brittany, when a boy was born to the household it was common to tie a piece of red cloth around the bee hive. However, when the master of the house died, the hives were adorned with a black cloth and the reasoning behind it seems to have varied a little between the eastern and western parts of the region, In the east, it was done so as not to lose the bees but in the west it was believed necessary to prevent the bees from dying for want of mourning for their departed master.

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However, in some communes in the west of Brittany, it was once believed that the bees quickly followed their master in death. That said, all deaths in the household were popularly marked with a black cloth around the bee hives. If the mother of the family died, the cloth of mourning would remain for six months although in certain parts of the region of Finistère, the mourning of the hives lasted a full year.

In western Brittany, bees were said to know their master and were thought to protect him against all the evil creatures that might disturb his summer slumber. Another Breton superstition held that if a farmer had his hives robbed of their honey, he had to give them up immediately because the hives would never succeed under his care again. One tradition from the region, noted in the early 19th century, recommended that when bees had been stolen, the owner who urinated, before sunrise, on the site of the hive, would soon be able to recognise the thief whose hair was now cursed to turn red.

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When bees were swarming, it was the custom to beat pans, kettles, tripods and other metallic objects while invoking various charms in order to cause the swarm to settle. In eastern Brittany, the farmer who made honey was said to know how to control bees by virtue of a gift passed on from father to son but only the eldest boy could possess it. Holding his hat behind his left shoulder, the farmer recited a special prayer with his eye fixed in the middle of the swarm; the Queen Bee was assured to soon come to rest on his hand. In addition, two strands of straw were placed crosswise on the top of empty hives to help encourage the bees to make their new home.

However, bees were thought to only attach themselves to respectable households and were thought to leave a home if harsh, disparaging words were said in front of them. They were also said to leave if the heir to the household held a bad reputation. It is difficult to be certain whether those latter superstitions derived from the writings of the ancient Greeks or, more likely, the parish priest. It was always considered bad luck to count the hives and in some parts of Brittany farmers were careful to arrange their hives in such a way that they could not easily be counted.

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Some Breton superstitions are much easier for us to fathom: to see bees enter the hive and not leave it in a very short time, was taken as a sign of forthcoming rain; bees that became idle announced some approaching catastrophe; a stray swarm that landed in your garden was thought to bring bad luck (as it likely belonged to a neighbour). It was also believed that if a bee was deliberately killed in the farmhouse, the others would immediately leave their hives.

While the bee was regarded as a familiar creature and one of the forms sometimes chosen by witches and other shape-shifters, it was also viewed as highly auspicious. It was therefore frowned upon to attempt to buy or sell bees as if they were a mere commodity; they were only to be gifted or traded as part of a barter agreement. To give a hive to someone was a gesture of much significance as you were not only providing them with honey but also, and above all, good fortune. Bees were even said to repay the generosity of their master if he shared his honey with many people.

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There were several superstitions surrounding bees in Brittany that featured strong Christian elements. For instance, in some parts of the region, on Good Friday, a small cross of wax, often blessed by the local priest, was placed on the hive. One legend from western Brittany tells us that bees were created from the tears that Jesus Christ shed on the cross; not a single tear fell upon the ground but all immediately sprouted wings and became these wonderfully industrious creatures that flew away with His blessing to take sweetness to all of mankind.

The Breton border town of Saint-Ceneri-le-Gerei was the site of an intervention by bees at the end of the 9^th century where, it is said, a party of Norman raiders had set their sights on the riches believed to have been held in the abbey there. At the approach of the Normans, the community surrounding the abbey retreated within the protective walls of the site and the besiegers were soon haranguing the defenders with all manner of sacrilegious threats. The fearful defenders could only pray for deliverance and it appeared from the most unexpected quarter; thick swarms of angry bees were seemingly roused from their homes within the abbey walls and immediately descended upon the Normans, covering each man with a suit of stinging bees.

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Whether in confusion or desperation, one of the Normans leaped into the river Sarthe below, hoping to drown his assailants. Others soon followed, some jumping but most falling; all to their deaths on the rocks of the gorge below. The enemy thus routed; the becalmed bees quietly retreated to their abbey home. The abbey was eventually sacked and razed by the Normans just five years later but there is, alas, no record of any apine activity on that occasion.

In Brittany, during the festival of Candlemas, on 2 February, beeswax was traditionally brought to the chapels and churches for blessing. While the blessing and subsequent procession of candles is an indicator of the forthcoming Paschal Candle in the church, the association of this day with the bee is due to the fact that church candles here were traditionally required to consist of at least 51 percent beeswax.

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In southern Brittany, Saint Peter not only protected fishermen but also bees and supplications were directed to this saint to help ensure the health of the hive. It was also thought that if bees swarmed on Saint Anne’s Day, on 26 July, a wax taper would be found in one of the hives which was then named the hive of the king; if the bees swarmed on a day consecrated to Saint Anne’s daughter, the Virgin Mary, a honeycomb would be formed in the shape of a cross and that hive was then known as the hive of the queen.

When the bee does feature in Celtic mythology, it is generally taken as a symbol of wisdom and while there may be scant references to bees, there are many to honey and mead. The realms of the Celtic afterlife were said to contain rivers of mead and mead was undoubtedly a most popular drink amongst those still living in this world; at least until it gradually became supplanted by the brewing of cervoise and beer in the Middle Ages. The corpus of Arthurian literature includes many references to mead as do many other medieval writings which attach almost mystical powers to mead; purveyor of strength and virility, bestower of health and longevity.

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The appeal of mead was not, of course, limited to the Celtic world; this fermented honey and water based beverage also had sacred connotations to the Indians and Greeks of antiquity and references to it can be found in the literature of many cultures throughout the world. Despite its wide popularity, it was never a drink consumed by the cauldron-full; good mead took time to prepare (at least two years) and required high-quality honey. Even today, to produce just one gallon (4.5 litres) of mead, it requires three-quarters of a gallon (3.5 litres) of water and almost 5lbs (2.3kg) of honey; it was thus a rather prestigious beverage.

In Brittany, one of the most well-known manifestations of mead was in the form of chouchen; a type of mead produced from the fermentation of honey in water and apple juice or cider. Traditionally, buckwheat honey was used and this accounted for the strong rich colour and pronounced flavour found in chouchen. Interestingly, the name chouchen actually started out as a brand name after the First World War but quickly gained popular acceptance and becoming synonymous with the beverage.

Chouchen was long renowned as a drink that caused people to fall over after a bout of over-indulgence but analysis of Breton honey in the last century showed high concentrations of wax, dead bees and bee venom. Traditionally, the hives used on Breton farms were wicker baskets that necessitated smothering a large number of bees in order to access the honey. It seems that it was actually the presence of bee venom, attacking the cerebellum (the part of the brain controlling movement and balance) which caused some drinkers to lose their balance after drinking chouchen. Given its long history and significant position in the popular imagination, it is not surprising that the drink was adorned with many special and curative virtues. It was even thought to be an aphrodisiac and it was traditional to serve it to newlyweds on their wedding night.

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Insects make little appearance in the old Breton folk remedies and even honey seems to have been used sparingly. Not so today, when various Breton honeys are marketed as possessing healing qualities. For instance, heather honey is said to benefit the urinary tract, lavender honey to aid respiratory ailments, chestnut honey improve s one’s circulation, while fir honey is claimed effective against throat infections. Such therapeutic versatility is impressive but it was once believed here that eating the queen bee provided one with a most potent pain suppressant; provided, of course, that you were unconcerned by the immense bad luck that was always associated with killing a bee.

The Healing Stones of Brittany

The mysterious nature and brooding presence of the thousands of prehistoric megaliths that litter the landscape of Brittany have long fascinated both locals and visitors alike. Veneration of the region’s standing stones and ancient monuments continued for centuries after the arrival of Christianity. Unfortunately, we do not know why the cult of stone remained popular here into the modern era.

Perhaps the mystical aura of these massive blocks of stone retained ancient associations with death and the afterlife or possibly the stones held the folk-memory of a ritual significance once important in the religion of the later Celts? Whatever the reason, it is clear that the ancient stones retained a special place in the Breton imagination. They were closely associated with supernatural beings such as korrigans and fairies; entities who were often said to be spirits from a time before the arrival of Christianity.

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In addition to supernatural forces, the region’s ancient stones were also believed to possess the power to influence the lives of the common people. This is perhaps most clearly manifested in the many folk beliefs and old superstitions that linked the stones with good fortune and those most important, yet often most elusive, fundamental human needs: true love and good health.

Belief in the healing power of stone was once widespread here and numerous rituals connected with healing stones were noted as extant in Brittany as late as the end of the 19th century. For instance, young men would rub their loins against the Iron Age stele in the churchyard of Saint Samson in Pleumeur-Bodou in the hope of improving their strength; a similar ritual was noted at a rock of the same name in nearby Trégastel. Men would also rub their shoulders against the menhir in Landunvez for the same purpose.

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To ward off rheumatism, people rubbed their backs against the leading stone of the dolmen at Guimaëc and on the menhir in the churchyard at Saint-Guyomard. In Beuzec-Cap-Sizun lies a recumbent menhir some 8 meters long, which was traditionally held to be the vessel on which Saint Conogan, a noted healer, arrived there by sea in the 5^th century.  To be rid of rheumatism and all kinds of muscular pain, visitors came to lie upon the stone and to rub themselves against it. Water from the saint’s fountain nearby was also said to possess the power of curing eye ailments.

The feet of children who had difficulties walking were placed into the small depressions found on a rock near Ménéac, while the mother placed her foot and knee in another hollow; divine healing was thought assured in the belief that these depressions had been made by the Virgin Mary. Another healing stone was found 50km south in Plumergat where those suffering from colic invoked Saint Stephen while lying on a stone basin.

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Returning north, a stone known as Le Lit de Saint-Idunet (Saint Idunet’s Bed) near Pluzunet was the scene of a ritual that required parents to roll their feeble children and those struggling to walk in a large depression in the rock that once supposedly served as a temporary bed for the 6^th century saint. Healing was not thought assured unless the parents whipped the patient with a broom which they afterwards used to sweep the surface of the stone.

A variant ritual, noted in the early-20^th century by the Breton author Charles Le Goffic, saw parents place their children on the stone bed and then taking, in the palm of their hand, water from the adjacent saint’s fountain. The child’s body was then sprinkled three times with this water and its loins rubbed while the earth next to the stone was itself sprinkled three times.  

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For hundreds of years, children with walking difficulties were also taken to the church at Pluneret in southern Brittany and placed on a large quartzite boulder known as Le Bateau de Sainte-Avoye (Boat of Saint Avoye) housed there; reputed to be the stone vessel once used by the saint to cross to Brittany. Here, the ritual involved seating the child inside the trough-like impression found in the stone to ensure that its bared lower back and loins made direct contact with the rock. Such contact was said necessary for the patient to be imbued with strength from the 3^rd century Christian martyr who endured terrible tortures before being beheaded. Some accounts say that it was necessary for the supplicant to offer a pure white hen as tribute – presumably to the priest or church warden?

An ancient menhir that once stood in a field near the hamlet of Kerangolet had, by the 1820s, been re-sited to rest within a chapel in the town of Gouesnou; a move likely inspired to remind parishioners of God’s omnipresence, as the stone was traditionally held to possess miraculous virtues. Popularly attributed to the 7^th century British evangelist Saint Gouesnou, the stone, roughly two metres in diameter, was pierced through the middle by a hole some 15cm (6 inches) wide and into this cavity visitors inserted their withered or maimed limbs in confidence of a speedy cure. 

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Touching a stone that once stood near the Saint Egarec chapel in Lampaul-Plouarzel was believed to cure ear problems, while gout was thought cured if the sufferer rubbed their shoulder against the menhir of Roshuel. The notion that direct, personal contact with stone was necessary to ensure that one successfully gained the outcome sought was also noted in many old fertility rituals here.

On moonless nights, women who experienced difficulties conceiving would visit the western town of Locronan and lie, arms outstretched with faces turned towards the heavens, upon a great stone not far from town that popular superstition claimed once served as Saint Ronan’s mare. In the latter part of the 19^th century, it was noted that newly married couples also visited the stone, against which they rubbed their abdomens in hopes that their union would be blessed with children.

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During the time of the Troménie – the grand procession that takes place during the Pardon of Saint Ronan – people suffering with fever or subject to nervous disorders would circle the rock three times before sitting on the stone in expectation of relief from their afflictions.

Two other stones, one a monolith, that stood in fields outside Locronan were also once visited by women anxious to bear children; in both places the ritual seems to have involved rubbing their bare bellies against the stone. Similar practices were also known to have taken place in other places, such as at the menhir of Kervéatou near Plouarzel, the menhir of Moëlan, the menhir near Saint-Cado’s Chapel near Ploemel and that of Kerangallou near Trégunc.

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Even simple pieces of the great stones were thought able to cast their power to protect the life of humans and their livestock. For instance, chipped pieces of megaliths were sometimes placed in the roofs and foundations of buildings as a protection against lightning strikes and even carried in people’s pockets for the same reason. When hung around the necks of children, the stone pieces were said to offer protection against ailments such as skin disorders and eye pain. Particles of stone play a part in many of the old folk remedies, especially when ground, mixed with liquid and drunk by the sick. Such stone dust often came from the tombs or the statues of particular saints but some treatments utilised that taken from ancient megaliths.

When worn as an amulet for nine consecutive days, the earth taken from under the tomb of Saint Gonéry in Plougrescant was thought to drive away any fever. Similarly, the earth taken from under the niche of the statue of Saint André that was set into the surviving walls of a dilapidated chapel outside Plouvenez-Lochrist, was placed in the sabots of those suffering from whooping cough in expectation of a cure. It is worth noting that the village once also possessed a fountain that attracted thousands of pilgrims to imbibe its miraculous water but this was filled-in by order of the ecclesiastical authorities during the 18^th century as a means of ending the pre-Christian rites still apparently performed there.

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Earth taken from Île Maudet, infused in a bowl of water, was once widely taken as a cure for intestinal worms; the small north coast island is named after the 6^th century saint who is said to have cleared it of snakes. By the mid-19th century, the island’s soil was also popularly used as a remedy against snake bites, eye diseases and skin complaints. The saint was also invoked to cure knee pain and sufferers would visit the chapel dedicated to him in Haut-Corlay to collect a handful of earth which they applied to the knee before washing it with water taken from the nearby fountain.

By the side of a track a little outside the village of Dirinon, in western Brittany, lies a two-metre-long block of quartzite known as La Pierre de Sainte-Nonne (Saint Non’s Stone). The rock’s face features ten modest cupules which were likely scored-out by human action rather than some form of erosion. Sadly, the original purpose of these small depressions are lost to us but local legend claimed that these were the impressions made by the hands and knees of the early-6^th century British saint Non whilst giving birth to Saint Divy; better known internationally as Saint David, patron saint of Wales.

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Saint Non’s Stone was traditionally visited by parents whose infant children possessed visible blue veins below their eyebrows; once regarded as a sign that the bearer was condemned to an early grave. The healing ritual seems to have involved the afflicted children being placed on the stone and manoeuvred so that their limbs made direct contact with the cupules. Just 50 metres from the stone, sits the saint’s fountain with its three large basins whose water was believed to enjoy healing properties, being particularly effective against diseases of the eye.

The 17 cupules found on the surface of a rock near the fountain devoted to the 6^th century Breton Saint Gwenael in Lanester, southern Brittany, are of unknown origin but the site was long reputed to mark the spot where the saint breathed his last. In years gone by, those suffering from eye infections and even partial blindness would visit this sacred site at the edge of the Blavet River in hope that their sight would be restored or preserved. The ritual involved taking water from the fountain, now inaccessible at high tide, and spreading it liberally over the stone; a piece of cloth was then dipped in the water that had settled in the cupules and pressed against the patients’ eyelids whilst they prayed for the saint’s healing grace.

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Above the shoreline near the north coast town of Plouescat lies a granite rock some 8 metres long resembling a fallen menhir. The uppermost surface of this stone, known as the Feunteun ar Vir (Fountain of Prevention), contains 25 depressions of varying sizes. In times past, people came to take home the rainwater collected from the largest of these hollows in the belief that it offered a miraculous cure for sickness in cattle and that, when drunk, it provided protection against all manner of diseases suffered by both humans and their livestock.

In eastern Brittany, the menhir known as La Pierre de Saint-Martin (Saint Martin’s Stone) now lies under the artificial Trémelin Lake near Iffendic. The stone contains indentations that were reputed to be impressions left, in the 4^th century, by the feet of Saint Martin of Tours. The menhir was a popular site of pilgrimage for those suffering from fever who left a coin or a wooden cross on the stone as a token of their invocation to the healing power of the saint. In addition to protecting crops against hail, the saint was invoked to heal those suffering from paralysis and those unable to speak.

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The efficacy of visits to the ancient stones, like those to certain fountains, most likely depended, to a large extent, on the day or time on which they were made. Sadly, such prescriptions have been mostly lost to us today but an account from the end of the 18^th century provides just such detail.  It tells that each year, before sunrise, on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (15 August), all the women of the south coast town of Le Croisic left their houses and, while holding each other’s hands and crying out at the top of their voices, walked in procession to the menhir known as La Pierre Longue (Long Stone), around which they danced until noon. Complaints raised by the local priests in the 19^th century tell us that the ritual was still observed by young women who then also climbed the stone in the belief that they would become fertile.

It is perhaps too difficult for us now to fully appreciate the shadows long cast by these ancient stones upon the popular imagination. Clearly, they inspired the people living near them but they also attracted visitors from far afield; people who likely made their humble supplications with a sense of reverence, fear and hope!

The Cult of Rock and Stone

In Brittany, it seems almost impossible to travel more than a few miles without seeing some form of ancient megalith. While many are older than the written word, their real meanings today remain clouded in mystery, shrouded in superstition and folklore.

Erected between approximately 3,500 to 6,500 years ago, Brittany’s megaliths range from single standing stones known as menhirs (Breton for long stone) to lengthy alignments of stones; from a simple dolmen (Breton for stone table) to more complex passage tombs. In its most basic form, a dolmen consists of just three stone slabs; two set upright supporting a flatter slab that formed the roof of a burial chamber. The whole structure would originally have been covered by stones and earth to form a small but significant mound in the landscape and where such mantles survive, they are called tumuli.  

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It is widely believed that prehistoric man worshiped celestial bodies as well as trees, springs, mountains and rocks and that all remained objects of veneration among the Celtic pagans of Brittany.  While there is general agreement that dolmens were initially built to house burials and to honour the dead, there is much debate regarding the role of standing stones and stone circles in primitive culture here. Were they boundary markers, centres of sacrifice, astronomical observation posts or sites for communal gatherings and worship? Perhaps, over time, they were a combination of all these or possible none; we will never know for certain.

The worship of stones into the common era is not so easily explained as the worship directed toward objects possessing movement and vitality. Perhaps the mysterious nature of these massive blocks of stone retained ancient associations with death and the afterlife or possibly the stones held a ritual significance in the religion of the Celts. Whatever the reason, the worship of stones endured in Brittany and elsewhere in northern Europe.

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In 452, the Council of Arles expressly forbade the worship of stones; in 567 the Council of Tours ordered that ‘all those who worship stones or ruins and on which they make vows and oblations’ be excommunicated; in 658 the Council of Nantes ordered bishops to dig-up the stones and the Council of Rouen in 692 denounced all who offered vows to stones. Yet it seems that many of the old beliefs refused to die under the onslaught of Christianity, as a capitulary of Charlemagne in 743 again explicitly forbids the worship of stones and oblations made on them. 

There appears to have been no systematic programme of destroying megalithic monuments in Brittany so as to purge the landscape of its pagan past. Perhaps the local priests charged with carrying out any removal orders feared alienating their parishioners? However, hundreds, if not thousands, of menhirs were toppled or else dug-out, moved and re-worked as building stone, even into the last century.

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In many cases, chapel or shrines were erected near megaliths in an attempt to transfer the devotion attached to the stones to a Christian site, such as at the Tumulus of Saint Michael in Carnac. Not only were ancient stones thus transferred by re-dedication from pagan gods to Christian saints but dolmens and menhirs too. Sometimes this was done by topping the menhir with a wooden crucifix as at the Menhir de Champ-Dolent or by carving a Christian cross onto the face of the stone.  An early 18th century chapel in Le Vieux-Marché was even built incorporating an ancient dolmen into its very structure. This is a most curious building and the only chapel in France dedicated to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. Local legend says that this structure dates from the very beginning of time, having been shaped by God on the sixth day of creation.

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The traditional folk beliefs associated with the megaliths of Brittany are, as you might expect, numerous. Many believe that the ancient Bretons venerated the stones as the abodes of gods or as seats of divine power and that such sacred sites were places where the pagan priests once invoked the spirits of their ancestors. Perhaps this helps explain why the megaliths are so closely associated with supernatural beings such as the magical korrigans and fairies; entities who are often said to be spirits from a time before the arrival of Christianity.

In Breton legends, fairies are often said to live in dolmens or in the springs near menhirs, while dolmens were held to contain an entrance to the subterranean world of the korrigans and their hidden treasure. This association has long since seeped into the region’s toponymy with many monuments long popularly known as the rock or grotto of the fairies and the house or castle of the korrigans.

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The belief that only such supernatural creatures could have erected the massive stone monuments was widely found across Brittany, albeit sometimes with small refinements such as the stone blocks being carried in aprons, balanced on the heads of fairies or carried under each arm. The hours of darkness belonged to the fairies and one night was thought all that was needed to raise a dolmen. If the stone had to be brought from afar, the work was arduous and sometimes incomplete before dawn’s first light; as attested by the presence of many solitary menhirs and roofless dolmens in the landscape.

The world’s largest dolmen is known as La Roche-aux-Fées (the Rock of the Fairies) and stands near Essé in eastern Brittany. Built from 32 upright stones with nine roof slabs, this structure is about 20 metres long by five metres wide and four metres high. Local folklore ascribed its construction to the fairies who, according to some accounts, completed the work in a single night. One legend tells that the structure was built by the fairies to protect the souls of the just but these fairies disappeared with the demise of the forest. Since then, the whistling of the wind between the stones was held to be the lamentations of souls no longer visited by the fairies.

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It was also said that the fairies had placed a spell of confoundment upon their building so that no count of the number of stones would consistently tally. This legend seems to provide the background reasoning behind a once popular local custom whereby couples wishing to marry visited the stones on the night of a new moon to walk around them in different directions; the women going clockwise and the men counter-clockwise, counting the stones as they did so. If the lovers agreed on the number of stones, not necessarily the correct one, it was said that their marriage would be a happy one.

On the south coast, the world’s largest concentration of megaliths features over 3,000 menhirs arranged in about a dozen rows over 4km (2.5 miles) long, known as the Carnac Alignments. There are many legends surrounding these stones, some say that they were erected by the korrigans, others tell of the wizard Merlin cursing an invading Roman army or that Saint Corneli, patron saint of horned animals, having been pursued to the edge of the sea by a pagan mob resentful of his evangelising, changed his pursuers to stone.

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Other popular legends relate that menhirs go once a year or once every hundred years, usually while the bells of the Christmas midnight mass are being rung, to wash themselves in a river or the sea, returning to their ancient seats after their ablutions and before the sound of the twelfth bell has died. Although the stones of La Roche-aux-Fées dolmen were said to change their places continually.

Some Breton folktales tell that menhirs were once men who had the effrontery to insult a fairy and were turned to stone for their insolence. Others say that they are monuments raised by the fairies to honour those mortal men and women who had made good use of their lives, while another legend tells us that the menhirs are powerful enchantments containing fairies who have been locked away by the power of magic. The presence of such a fairy shrine was seen as a guarantee of good fortune, spreading a subtle charm across the immediate neighbourhood.

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This belief in the benevolent charm of the stones can also be glimpsed in the old Breton practice of placing chipped pieces of megaliths or Neolithic worked flint, popularly known as Thunder Stones, in the foundations and roofs of buildings as a protection against lightning strikes. Some small Thunder Stones were carried about the person in hopes of the same protection, while others were fashioned into necklaces that were hung around the necks of children to protect them from childhood illnesses such as skin disorders and eye pain.

Many other superstitious rituals connected with sacred stones were noted as still extant in Brittany at the end of the 19^th century. For instance, young people would rub their loins against the stele set in the churchyard of Saint Samson in Pleumeur-Bodou in the hope of improving their strength while men would rub their shoulders against the menhir in Landunvez for the same purpose. To ward off rheumatism, people would rub their backs against the leading stone of the dolmen at Guimaëc and on the menhir stood in the churchyard at Saint-Guyomard.

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Given the obvious phallic significance of the menhir, we should not be surprised that a number of superstitious rituals surrounding fertility were once closely attached to some stones. For instance, a menhir near Carnac was renowned in the 19^th century for being visited by childless couples; the ritual reported here seems to have involved a naked chase around the menhir during the nights of a full moon. Likewise, the Menhir de Kerloas, the tallest in Brittany at 9.5 metres, was visited by newly married couples who would rub their naked ‘bellies’ against the stone in order to only have male children; the ceremony was also believed to ensure the woman became the absolute mistress of her household but only if she convinced her husband to willingly kiss the stone.

Similarly, young couples would visit the menhir at Moëlan-sur-Mer and rub their bodies against it in the hope of children. Childless couples and barren women would, under cover of darkness, also visit the broken menhir near Locronan and rub their ‘abdomens’ against the stone in the hope of having a child. Accounts vary as to which part of the anatomy featured in these fertility rituals but many 19^th century authors are clear that they are conforming to the social conventions of the time and hiding behind euphemisms!

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At Monthault in eastern Brittany, unmarried women would slide down a massive ashlar, leaving behind a ribbon, in the expectation that they would be married within the year. It was important that no one witnessed this as it was thought only the stone could keep the secrets of a maiden’s heart. Similar practices were known to have long taken place on other stones, such as those at Saint-Georges-de-Reintembault, Mellé and on the inclined Menhir de la Thiemblaye near Saint-Samson-sur-Rance; long-regarded here as one of the three gateways to Hell. At this latter site it was necessary for the woman to slide all the way down the edifice with bare buttocks, the skin being in constant contact with the stone.

The symbolic importance of flesh against stone is quite ancient and was often noted in archaic societies who practiced an element of stone worship; bodily contact with that to which they attributed power was crucial. A bared bottom was also a requirement for sliding down the broken blocks of the Great Menhir at Locmariaquer on Brittany’s southern coast but to succeed, the ritual had to be completed on the night of May Day. Here, gaining a scratch deep enough to bleed augured a future marriage.

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Near the north east coast, in Plouër-sur-Rance, young women would climb to the top of the rocky outcrop known as La Roche de Lesmont to take position on the highest block of quartz. This abuts a large pyramid shaped boulder which, over the years, has been rubbed quite smooth by the elements and human action. It was on this angled face of rock that girls would slide down in the expectation of gaining a marriage within the year.

For the ritual to be effective, it was necessary that, before commencing her slide, the young lady rolled up her skirt so that her bare flesh was in constant contact with the stone (underwear not being commonly worn until the turn of the 20th century). If the girl reached the bottom without scratching herself, she was said to be sure of securing a husband within the year. Some reports claimed that the slider also needed to urinate in a certain cavity in the stone for the rite to have power.

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In the eastern village of Maen-Roch, the large quartz-rich boulder known as Le Rocher Cutesson was climbed on the morning of May Day by unmarried people, of both sexes, each carrying a bowl full of water. Holding their bowl, the young folk allowed themselves to slide down the rock face; those who managed to reach the ground with their bowl intact were said to be married within a year. A little over 3km away in Saint-Étienne-en-Coglès, a similar result was said to be achieved if a young woman climbed the large boulder in the churchyard of Saint Eustache’s chapel on Good Friday and, having clandestinely rubbed herself against the rock, remained upright on its summit in front of the congregation without blushing.

On the south coast, the dolmen of Cruz-Menquen in Carnac was popularly known as La Pierre Chaude (the hot stone). During the nights of a full moon, young women seeking marriage would sit atop the capstone with their skirt lifted above their waist. It was, no doubt, to counter such pagan practices that the local clergy decided to Christianize the megalith in the early 19th century. Accounts from the same time relate how young women seeking husbands, undressed completely and rubbed their ‘navels’ against another menhir near Carnac that was especially devoted to this usage. Similar practices were also recorded, in the 1850s, at the megalith known as La Roche-Marie near Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier.

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Further along the southern coast, near Guérande, the French diplomat Charles Coquebert de Montbret noted the presence of many pieces of red cloth pushed into the clefts and cracks of the dolmens of Kerbourg during a visit in the early 19th century. He was assured that these were offerings entrusted to the stone by young girls in the hope of being married within the year.

Many superstitious practices were once widely thought to pronounce on the sincerity of a lover. For instance, near the south coast town of Concarneau, the massive boulder at Trégunc known as Men Dogan (the cuckolds stone) was visited by men to verify the fidelity of their partners; tradition held that a deceived partner could not make the 50-tonne stone move but those whose partners were faithful could move it with just one finger. The behaviour of another balancing rock nearby was said able to answer any question put to it; the rock could only be moved if the answer was in the affirmative.

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Several menhirs that faced the sea off Brittany’s southern coast were once visited by young couples who placed flax flowers on the stones on Saint John’s Day; if the flowers were still fresh when visited eight days later, it was taken as a sign of faithfulness. However, those men who feared betrayal by their wives visited the rock at Combourtillé, circling it, some accounts say the men hopped, during the hours of moonlight in an attempt to retain marital faithfulness. On a smaller scale, a piece of magnetite or magnet stone placed under the bed was thought to have the power to repel unfaithful lovers from the marital bed.

Unrequited love was traditionally said to be returned if the lovelorn sat on a rock near Fougère known as La chaise du diable (the Devil’s Chair) for a certain period at a particular time of the year. Sadly, the most opportune moments are no longer known and only the ritual itself remembered today.

Some Superstitions of May Day

Representing one of the key stages in the life of the rural peasant farmer, the arrival of May announced the appearance of summer and the renewal of the land. Nature’s re-awakening reminded the Breton farmer of the fragility of the boundary that separated success from failure; the safety and joy of an abundant harvest or the misery of a winter spent in dire straits. Little wonder then that such notions of rebirth and new growth gave rise to superstitions and rituals designed to celebrate and encourage fertility and to protect the community against all opposing forces.

In Brittany, May Day was the day when cows were believed most susceptible to the power of the witch; evil spells thrown against them could dry-up their milk or prevent their butter from taking. In order to protect against such misfortune, an elaborate ritual was once performed; on the eve of May Day, the cattle were taken from the byre which was then scrubbed thoroughly.

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The branches of a number of plants collected that morning, namely bay, bramble, elderberry and laurel, were then burned with scraps of old leather in pots placed in all the corners of the building. Although some accounts say that the fire was only lit in front of the stable door. Branches of elderberry were then hung from the walls inside the barn and a bramble, with a root at both ends, fastened in the form of an arc above the barn door. This ritual complete, the cows were then returned to the barn; each being led backwards through the doorway.

The belief that one’s cows’ best milk was, on May Day, particularly vulnerable to witches and thieves able to draw the cream of others to their own herd was once quite widespread here. It was said that one’s rival only needed to attach a string to the filter of their milk churn and drag it in the direction from which they wanted the cream to come before sunrise on May Day, in order to divert the precious yield.

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In central Brittany, it was said that milkmaids ran naked before the dawn of May Day, filling their churns with dew collected in their neighbour’s fields in order to steal the cream of their cows. Similar nude expeditions were also reputed to have been carried out by milkmaids in eastern Brittany where it was believed they stole milk by walking naked around the stables of their neighbours at night. Perhaps aligned to beliefs surrounding the vulnerability of milk on this day, it was also said that giving away any milk on May Day was to invite certain misfortune upon the household.

An indication of the ancient traditions that held May Day to be a time of mystical potential seemed to have survived into relatively recent times in a number of what can only be described as fertility rituals. For example, on the eve of May Day, young ladies once visited a hawthorn tree near the town of Saint-Briac; they circled the tree three times, in absolute silence, in expectation of securing a marriage within the year.

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Similarly, in order to be married within the year, near the village of Maen-Roch, the large quartz-rich boulder known as Le Rocher Cutesson was climbed on the morning of May Day by unmarried people, of both sexes, each carrying a small bowl full of water. Holding their bowl, the young folk allowed themselves to slide down the rock face; those who managed to reach the ground with their bowl intact were said sure to wed within a year.

In the south coast town of Locmariaquer, on the eve of May Day, unmarried girls would lift their skirts to slide, bare bottomed, down the broken blocks of the Great Menhir. A scratch deep enough to bleed was said to augur a marriage within the year. Part of this massive 21 metre menhir, possibly the largest monolith erected by humans at the time, was recorded as still standing in the early-18^th century thus this custom, which could not have been observed when the stone stood vertical, 12 meters high, must have been relatively recent and was still performed in the late-19^th century. Most likely, the unmarried women of the area followed, on the broken pieces, an ancient custom that was formerly held on another stone in the locality.

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In times gone by, on the morning of May Day, young people of both sexes would take pains to consult the oracle of the fountain of Saint-Brigitte in Esquibien, for it was believed that whoever leaned over the basin of the fountain three times saw the face of their future spouse reflected in the still water.

Those planning on getting married were once popularly advised to avoid arranging a wedding during the month of May; it was said that to marry in that month was to wed poverty and to invite quarrels into the household. The recommendation to avoid May weddings was once quite widespread but an examination of the old marriage records here shows that little attention seems to have been paid to this superstition as the number of May marriages is consistent with the twelve-month average.

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The fountain of Saint-Efflam in Plestin-les-Grèves was the site of a once popular ritual that was said to provide a definitive answer to any doubts a couple might have about the faithfulness of their partner. On the first Monday in May, it was necessary to visit the fountain without being seen and without having eaten anything that day. Three small pieces of bread, representing the couple and any suspected third-party, were cast upon the water of the fountain; if the latter piece moved away from the other two, it was because any suspicions were well-founded.

If a person was anxious to know how much longer they had left to live, they had only to look into the water of the ‘Fountain of Death’ (Feunteun an Ankou in Breton) at Plouigneau at midnight on May Day. If an image of a skull was reflected in the magic mirror of black water instead of a face, they could be certain that death was near. The same ritual was also popularly performed at another ‘Fountain of Death’ some five miles away in Plouégat-Guérand.

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May Day was also the day that it was held necessary to visit these oracular fountains with an infant under one year of age. The fountain was questioned by immersing the child’s feet in its waters; if the child removed their feet it was seen as a sign that they would suffer an early death. In other fountains, a child’s shirt was placed in the water; if it sank, it was said the child would die within the year.

A variant of this ritual was noted at the fountain of Saint-Just near Loudeac and that of Saint Gwenole, almost a 100km to the west, in Châteaulin. At these locations, expectant or even hopeful mothers would place the shirts of a baby girl and baby boy on the sacred waters; the one that floated on the surface indicated the sex of the unborn child.

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In addition to the May Day superstitions surrounding fertility and renewal, the specialness of the month was also manifested in the magical practices that were thought to be especially effective thanks to the latent power of the month of May. For instance, only a witch born in May was said to possess the power to stop an expectant mother passing on an unmet craving to her baby in the form of a birthmark or noevi materni. To do so, the witch applied a paste made from heath bedstraw onto the relevant part of the mother’s body while reciting a charm of expulsion.

A popular medicine of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, whose use is even attested at the French royal court, was Eau de Millefleurs or Water of a Thousand Flowers. The most popular varieties of this tonic were made from cow’s urine or by the distillation of cow’s dung. According to the French chemist Nicolas Lémery’s Universal Pharmacopoeia (1697) the tonic was produced by distilling fresh cow dung: “In May, when the grass starts to gain strength, fresh cow dung will be collected and having half-filled a stoneware pot, we will place it in a bain marie and by a strong fire we will distill a clear water called Eau de Millefleurs.”

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The French physician François Malouin, in his Medicinal Chemistry (1750), offered a detailed description of the other type of Millefleurs:“… cow urine; that of a heifer or of a young healthy brown cow fed in a good pasture. In the month of May, in the morning, we collect in a vessel this urine of the cow which is carried, hot, to the patient, who must be on an empty stomach.” Lémery believed this tonic a purgative most suitable for treating asthma, dropsy, rheumatism and sciatica, if the patient drank two or three glasses of it every morning for nine days.

In Brittany, it was once held that warts could be made to disappear if they were rubbed with the tail of a black cat but only if this was done under the new moon in May. Additionally, a cat born in May was said to be no good at catching mice; it would only bring snakes into the house. In eastern Brittany, some believed that for a cat to be any good as a mouse-catcher, it must have been stolen.

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Likely established to dislocate the pagan May Day processions from the first day of May, the three days of prayer preceding the moveable Feast of the Ascension, known as Rogation days, were established in Gaul in the 5^th century. These ceremonies focused on imploring for God’s protection against calamities and for His blessing on the sown crops and the year’s harvest. It was customary for the local priest to lead his congregation through the fields of the parish, blessing fields and crops in hopes of a bountiful yield. In Brittany, the Rogations processions usually started early morning and each day followed the direction of the cardinal points, starting from the church and ending at some wayside calvary or sacred fountain.

Over time, several superstitions became closely linked with the Rogation days here; most likely these had been first associated with the magic of May Day before slowly transferring to the moveable Rogation celebrations. For instance, it was strongly advised to avoid baking bread and doing the laundry during the Rogations, lest someone in the household die before the harvest was gathered.

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It was said that the butter made during Rogations never corrupted and a jar of it was kept all year, for it was considered a most effective balm for healing all wounds. Similarly, the butter made during the month of May was held to possess marvellous qualities for animals and was applied throughout the year as a liniment in the treatment of injured legs and hooves. However, one of the most curious May Day superstitions held that medlar trees chose this day to lean closer towards the ground in an effort to encourage people to trim them so that they would grow stronger.

Some Customs of May Day

Today, May Day is known as La Fête du Travail (Workers’ Day) here in France and celebrated with a public holiday. It has become an occasion to be seen to campaign for workers’ rights and social justice but the date also carries a much older tradition here; it is also la Fête du Muguet, when sprigs of muguet or Lily of the Valley are presented to loved ones.

With roots in the ancient practice of heralding new-growth after the end of winter, the custom is said to originate from May 1560 when King Charles IX was given a bouquet of Lily of the Valley as a token of good luck. Not known for his sensitive side, the young King was so charmed by this gesture that, on the following first of May, he presented a sprig of this flower to all the ladies at his court.

The tradition is still observed today and you will often see these blooms sold in sprigs and bouquets at this time of year; bought by people as gifts for family and friends to whom they are presented as tokens of affection.

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However, in Brittany, the custom of using green foliage to express hope and gratitude at this time of year likely extends back to antiquity. For the ancient Celts, the year is thought to have begun on 1 November with the festival of Samhain, which inaugurated the start of winter, while six months later, on 1 May, the feast of Beltane marked the start of summer. Two intermediate festivals, now known as Imbolg on 1 February and Lugnasa on 1 August, divided the year into four equal seasons, the middle of which roughly corresponded to the Midsummer and Midwinter solstices. We need not get too obsessed with exact dates, particularly given the changes wrought by the adoption of the Gregorian calendar mean we are now some two weeks adrift of the dates recorded at the end of Caesar’s reign.

When establishing its liturgical calendar, the infant Church took pains to absorb and divert the popular feelings associated with the old pagan festivals by supplanting these with Christian ones. Thus, ancient celebrations such as the summer solstice were dispossessed by the new religion to become Saint John’s Day; Samhain became All Saints’ Day and Christmas Day appropriated the winter solstice. The Celtic festival of Beltane, midway between the spring equinox and summer solstice, was most effectively subsumed by the moveable feasts of Easter, Ascension and Pentecost, which shared the common theme of rebirth and new life. Such themes were also the focus of another popular festival held at this time of year; the Ancient Roman festival of Floralia, devoted to Flora, the goddess of flowers and fertility, which was celebrated between 28 April and 3 May.

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The month of May has therefore long represented one of the pivotal stages in the life of agrarian society in Europe; it heralded the arrival of summer, the renewal of nature and the beginning of the heavy agricultural work upon which the people so depended. With the crops sown, the abundance of the forthcoming harvest and thus one’s hopes for survival through the cold winter months were still uncertain. Given this uncertainty, it is perhaps not surprising that the community’s hopes and fears merged and superstitions born.

Nature’s re-awakening reminded the Breton farmer of the fragility of the boundary between success and failure; over time, rituals developed that both symbolised nature’s renewal and the farmer’s need for protection. In western Brittany, a traditional ritual known as Barrin ar Mae (May Branch) was performed on the eve of May Day. Here, a branch of budding beech but sometimes birch was hung or laid in front of the house and other key structures such as the stable, hen-house and bread oven, in order to bring on good luck and to protect against evil. Similarly, the gateways to fields were often honoured with a May Branch in order to ensure a good harvest and to protect the sown crop against misfortune and witchcraft.

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The May Branches were customarily picked only by boys; a privilege that seems to have continued until the 1960s. Although not as popularly practiced as in the past, the ceremony still survives in a few areas to this day; branches being placed in the evening against the homes of the elderly and those of friends, who will not discover this sign of affection until the morning of May Day.

Unfortunately, a related practice, known as Bodig Mae (Girls’ May) disappeared around the time of the Second World War. This ceremony was again only performed by young men, who, on the eve of May Day, visited the homes of young women with a branch, popularly known as ‘the May’, which was left against the door or a window as a declaration of romantic interest. Different traditions were noted in different localities; in some areas, it was a solo enterprise and done anonymously, in others, groups of four or five young men would visit four or five different households and sing songs while one of the party left their dedication.

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One custom common to all localities saw the offering placed in the most prominent position available; some were leant against doors so that they would fall inside the house when the door was opened, others were tied against buildings facing the house so that it was the first thing seen on the following morning. The size of the branch offered was said to indicate the depth of the man’s ardour. We can therefore imagine where such notions might have led and the arguments that might have arisen in the house that contained two unmarried sisters and two branches upon the threshold.

While this might sound rather endearing, we should not lose sight of the human element and the bitterness occasionally found in the heart of a spurned lover. Sometimes, the budding beech was substituted with less welcome bouquets of thorns, stinging nettles or brambles. Some offerings were laden with mean-spirited symbolism: cauliflowers for the jealous woman; cabbages for the greedy; laurel for the lazy; apple for the drunk; the fir for the wicked and broom for the promiscuous. Given our capacity for cruelty under the cloak of anonymity, we can but wonder what other objects might have been left for the young lady whose only injury might have been to refuse someone a final dance at a church fête.

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It has been recorded that, at times, middle-aged spinsters and widows who had re-married with what the community considered unseemly haste were often targeted in a form of communal condemnation. Those ladies who found themselves ill-served, naturally tried to make neighbours believe that there had been a substitution and it was not unknown for people to stay-up late to be sure that no prankster replaced a beech with a bramble. Eligible women who, for whatever reason, had not received a May branch were the object of as much gossip and speculation as those who had woken-up to a bundle of nettles. Given the anxiety that the eve of May Day might have brought to some households, it is perhaps not too surprising that the custom eventually died away.

The notion of renewal and new growth gave rise to several superstitious rituals to celebrate and encourage fertility and drive away opposing forces. On the eve of May Day, it was customary to place a little salt in the four corners of the pastures in order to protect the cattle from evil spells over the year ahead. Similarly, to preserve the health of cows, their udders were rubbed with the morning dew of May Day. Indeed, cattle were traditionally taken out of the stable earlier than usual on this day to allow them to graze the May Day dew.

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Great virtues were once attributed to the dew that formed on May Day; young girls here traditionally rubbed their faces with it, in expectation of securing a fresh complexion and protection against all manner of skin diseases. An indication of the ancient traditions that held this month was a period full of mystic potential seemed to have survived into fairly recent times with the popular belief that May Day rain – not a particularly rare event here – was especially harmful to the bounty of fruit trees.

To be continued ….

The Art of Collecting Seaweed

For centuries, the gathering of seaweed was an important activity along the coasts and islands of western Brittany. The back-breaking work involved in harvesting, drying and burning the seaweed changed little between the ends of the 17^th and 20^th centuries. Sometimes, whole families laboured together, for others it was a means of supplementing the meagre household income and an activity pursued by the women and children of the community while the menfolk were at sea.

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Traditionally, seaweed was harvested on a fairly modest scale as a foodstuff for both human and animal consumption as well being utilised as a fertiliser and even as a source of domestic fuel. However, the 17^th century saw the emergence of more intense harvesting thanks to the demands of the emerging glass-making and soap-making industries. Both of whom required ready access to good quality sodium carbonate or soda; a product extracted from the ashes of burnt seaweed.

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By the end of the 18^th century, advances in manufacturing technology saw a marked decline in the demand for industrial scale quantities of soda. However, the slump in demand was completely reversed within a generation thanks to the accidental discovery of iodine; created as a by-product from destroying the soda residue.

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Typically, men would gather the seaweed directly from the sea using large wooden rakes while the women and children would focus their efforts along the seashore and amongst the coastal rocks. The collected seaweed was then carried by hand or in wheelbarrows or even horse-drawn carts and piled together in large stacks, several metres square. Sometimes, these massive seaweed stacks were constructed in shallow water and tied together like an enormous bale; the incoming tide would be left to do the hard work of bringing the stack further up the seashore.

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As with most commercial endeavours, seaweed gathering here was long plagued by arguments of unfair competition. Those fortunate to have access to a horse and cart were able to take tonnes more seaweed directly to their ovens, much to the chagrin of those poor souls who had to move everything, in stages, by hand or wheelbarrow.

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Once collected, the seaweed was spread across the ground to dry and while Mother Nature was doing its share of the work, the harvesters were busy preparing their ovens. These ovens were usually long, fairly shallow, stone-lined pits dug out close to the shoreline. Depending on conditions, the seaweed was burned for between 10 to 24 hours; the fires kept burning until the many tonnes of collected seaweed had burned to cinder. These ashes were then formed into bricks of soda, popularly known in Breton as Bara Mor or Sea Bread, which were then sold to brokers and other middle-men who dealt directly with the iodine factories.

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The first factory entirely dedicated to the treatment of seaweed for the production of iodine was established in Le Conquet, the westernmost town in Brittany, in 1829; the first of many such facilities that were ultimately created across western Brittany. Underpinned by its long traditions of harvesting seaweed and in the production of soda, Brittany soon found itself dominating the nation’s iodine industry. By 1860, more than a dozen Breton factories produced about 70 tonnes of iodine annually, representing over 80 percent of national output.

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Thanks to improvements in the extractive process that produced iodine from soda, the industry continued to prosper here until the early 1900s when the effects of competition from Chile, and later Japan and the USA, began to be felt. By the 1930s, Brittany’s cottage-industry style seaweed harvesters were in terminal decline; unable to compete with the mechanised industrial techniques used by its overseas competitors who instead extracted nitrates from mineral deposits.

The industry effectively ended, as an economic concern, here in the early 1950s although some producers managed to keep going, having moved into alginates; a derivative of seaweed used as thickening and stabilising agents in the pharmaceutical and food industries.

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Today, arguments about efficiency and economies of scale are countered with increased calls for ecological sustainability and reduced carbon footprints and while the number of professional seaweed harvesters are nowhere near the numbers seen as late as the 1960s, scores of such specialists continue to ply the trade. Indeed, some reports suggest that the industry is now growing again, thanks to the traditional demand for seaweed as a foodstuff, animal fodder and natural fertiliser now being supported by increased calls from the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries.

Customs and Superstitions of Easter

Across Brittany, a number of curious customs and strange superstitions were once very closely attached to the principal Christian festival of Easter and the Holy Week that led up to it.

Heralding the beginning of Holy Week, Palm Sunday was traditionally the day when, immediately after morning mass, people would take blessed sprigs of boxwood or laurel and place them on the graves of loved ones; a practice that still survived into the 20^th century. These blessed evergreens were also planted in the strips of a family’s uncultivated land; typically, at the end of the furrows.

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While this latter custom seems to have died out by the middle of the last century, the habit of placing, for good luck, a branch in each room of the house as well as in the stables was still noted in the early 1960s. Planting a branch of evergreen in the fields was possibly a means of invoking the dead, whose souls were said to do penance there, to aid in the fertility of the field and to protect the sown crops from harm.

Traditionally, church bells were not rung here between Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday; a mark of mourning for the death of Christ before they rang out again, in celebration of the resurrection, on Easter Day. It was on Maundy Thursday that the eggs that were popularly exchanged as gifts on Easter Day were coloured; typically, these were dyed red at home with onion skins.

According to legend, the church bells did not sit quietly in their towers but on Good Friday made a pilgrimage to Rome where they were blessed by the pope himself. They returned full of pious vigour on Easter Sunday, laden with eggs – treats for the children – dressed as red as the pope’s cardinals. Some tales say the bells were accompanied on their homeward journey by angels carrying baskets filled with flowers and eggs which they distributed near the houses of deserving children.

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Serious misfortune was said to fall upon anyone who spun yarn on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday. The latter was also regarded as a most inappropriate day to do the laundry, for it was said that whoever boiled laundry on Good Friday cooked the blood of Christ. It was believed that a person who slept in a bed whose sheets had been washed on this day risked dying there within the year.

In some parts of the region, popular prohibition against doing the laundry seems to have once encompassed all of Holy Week for fear that it would result in someone in the family dying in the year ahead. However, Holy Week was also traditionally the time when many Bretons gave their house a thorough cleaning and revived the external whitewash.

In western Brittany, many people chose to fast from the evening of Maundy Thursday until noon on Good Friday; a day especially shrouded in superstitions. For instance, those who ploughed on Good Friday were said to make the earth bleed all year round. It was also considered particularly unlucky to slaughter any animal on this day or to sow any kind of grain. However, it was regarded an auspicious day for sowing cabbages, onions and pumpkins; onions were said to be protected from drought and insects if sown on this day, while the largest pumpkins were assured if sown in silence but in parts of eastern Brittany, pumpkins were believed best planted during Holy Saturday. Flax, once a very important crop in Brittany, was not sown during Holy Week for fear that the seed would be destroyed by fleas.

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Good Friday was the most auspicious day for grilling a sardine, which, when hung from the ceiling was said to protect the house from bothersome flies over the year ahead. Likewise, sprinkling a little broth, made of pork fat, into the ponds and streams nearest the house on Good Friday was recommended to shield one against the bothersome clamour of croaking frogs throughout the coming summer evenings. While the bread baked on that day was believed to hold special properties; if placed in a pile of wheat, it provided protection against mice and other annoying rodents. 

The day was also one in which it was also customary for those that lived close to the coast to visit the seashore to collect barnacles and whelks. Unfortunately, I do not know why this was once so. However, I am fairly certain that people were not upset if it rained on this day as it was said to signal an abundant harvest in the months ahead.

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Spring lambs were taken to the fields for the first time on Good Friday and this was also the day that those who kept bees, placed a small cross of wax, blessed by the local priest, on top of the hives in order to secure good fortune over the coming year. However, in some parts of the region, it was a blessed branch of boxwood that was put on the hives.

The chicken eggs laid on Good Friday were thought to bring good luck to the household and were kept as talismans to protect the house against fire over the year ahead. Here, people traditionally refrained from eating eggs during Holy Week but then ate as many as a dozen on Easter Day. Care having been taken with storing the eggs laid on Good Friday as it was believed that eating the first egg laid on that day would protect one from illness for the following seven months.

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In Brittany, it was popularly believed that children needed to be washed on Good Friday in order to protect them from scabies but the power of the day also offered other marvellous cures. For instance, it was said that only a healer born feet-first on the afternoon of Good Friday was powerful enough to straighten the spines of those who suffered from rickets. Likewise, the seventh child of a family of seven boys was thought to possess the gift to cure fever and scrofula but only on a Good Friday.

One cure for scrofula noted in the east of the region required the healing ritual be performed before sunrise but only if both healer and patient had not broken their fast; the patient was even forbidden to eat or drink before noon. After making several signs of the cross, the healer dipped their middle finger in holy water and traced a wet circle around the sufferer’s sores in expectation of a cure.

Holy Saturday was traditionally the day when priests blessed the water that the faithful would take home to pour into their own stoups. This water was usually held in large copper basins placed in the middle of the church and it was from these basins that the women of the parish would fill their own containers. Accounts tell that this was often a most undignified affair with much jostling and even fighting for pole position, convinced, as they were, that those who took the first water would be more highly favoured than the others. On returning home, the women sprinkled their animals with this holy water in the belief that their cows would produce better and more abundant milk than their neighbour’s animals.

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As well as using-up whatever fresh eggs remained from the previous week of abstinence, eating eggs on Easter Sunday was thought the best way to assure the fertility of the household’s domestic animals. While Easter Sunday was the day to break eggs, Quasimodo Sunday was traditionally the day to break the pots and plates that had been chipped and damaged over the previous year. Another curious belief here noted that a seaweed commonly known as ‘marine mistletoe’ was held to cure epilepsy but only if harvested at precisely three o’clock on the morning of Easter Sunday by a person with a perfectly clear conscience.

Belief in the transformative power of Easter can also be seen in its employment against the supernatural. For instance, in parts of Brittany, it was believed that werewolves could only be killed when struck three times by a dagger made of silver melted from a crucifix or shot by a ball moulded from the same source but only if the haft of the knife or the stock of the rifle had been rubbed with wax from the Paschal candle. It was also said that even that bird of ill omen, the magpie, crossed its nest on Good Friday. Roosters born on this day were thought to crow unusually early and to possess the ability to foretell death, which they did by altering their usual cry. Around the Bay of Saint-Brieuc, sailors once believed that fish spoke to each other in Breton on Easter Day.

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The arrival of Easter Monday saw a swift return to business as usual, for this was traditionally, in western Brittany, the day that the backbreaking work of the great clearings began.

California Dreams Can Come True

In the mid-19th century, a Breton trader owned most of the US city of San Francisco as well as a further 900 square miles of the then newly established state of California; landholdings that would have made him one of the richest men in the world. Just two years later, his ownership was unrecognised by the US government but that may soon change as an international court demands restitution for his defrauded descendants.

For a man who, for a time, could have been counted amongst the world’s wealthiest, we know little about the early years of Joseph-Yves Limantour save that he was born in the south coast town of Ploemeur; a short distance from the major Breton port of Lorient where his father was employed. By the time of his twentieth birthday, in 1832, he was serving in a trading vessel off Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. However, within five years, Limantour seems to have gained command of his own vessel which he used to transport and trade goods back and forth along the Pacific coast of the newly-independent State of Mexico.

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On 26 October 1841, his ship ran aground off the coast of Point Reyes, north of the village of Yerba Buena, in the Mexican province of Alta California. Providentially, Limantour was able to save the bulk of his cargo but its value far exceeded the purchasing power of what was then an impoverished and remote region. It was therefore necessary for him to arrange sales for cash, credit and land and to barter his way to a serviceable ship that would eventually allow him and his men to return south, late in the following year.

Once re-supplied, Limantour is reputed to have continued his coastal trading with a now distinct emphasis on delivering supplies to the Governor of Alta California, General Manuel Micheltorena y Llano. Such goods were apparently often paid for by official land grants; a policy that was by no means unique at that time in that part of the world.

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When the considerable tensions between the United States and Mexico eventually broke out into war in 1846, Limantour used his skills and resources to keep the Mexican forces of Alta California supplied with arms and ammunition. Accounts vary as to how personally active he was during the war but the forces of the United States had gained control over all significant ports and coastal settlements by the end of August 1846. With no Mexican facilities to supply in the north, Limantour was forced to re-focus his efforts in the south of the country.

Mexico capitulated in the middle of September the following year and the peace treaty that followed in early 1848 was as savage as it was humiliating. Mexico was forced to cede almost 1.4 million square kilometres of territory to the United States and to accept the permanent loss of Texas, admitted into the Union at the end of 1845. The total land lost by Mexico was therefore closer to 2.4 million square kilometres or over half its total land area.

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The value of some of this land soared with the discovery of rich deposits of gold in California in early 1848. The subsequent ‘gold rush’ saw a massive influx of new settlers to the region; the village of Yerba Buena, now renamed San Francisco, alone saw its population explode from under a thousand to over 25,000 in less than two years. Not unexpectedly, official bureaucracy found it difficult to cope with hundreds of thousands of new arrivals into an area that was transitioning from Mexican rule and US military oversight while acceding to the Union in September 1850.

Once formally part of the Union, the US government focused on bringing administrative order to California and soon established a Commission to assess and endorse the validity of land claimed under grants made by Colonial Spanish and subsequent Mexican administrations. Landowners were controversially given two years to prove their ownership to the satisfaction of the Commission; those that did not or who failed to satisfy the Commission would see their land confiscated by the State.

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In February 1853, Limantour presented his first batch of deeds, authorised by the provincial Governor some ten years earlier, amounting to over 200,000 acres of land covering Cape Mendocino, the Tiburon peninsula, the Farrallones and Alcatraz, as well as land in what are now Tulare, Fresno and Monterey counties and the land now covered by parts of the cities of Burbank and Clearlake.

However, his most lucrative title asserted ownership of a large part of San Francisco; over 30,000 square acres immediately south of the city’s California Street. Later that month, Limantour submitted further deeds claiming ownership of additional land in California amounting to almost 595,000 square acres or about 2,400 square kilometres (925 square miles) in total.

Almost immediately, counter claims and rumours of falsehood spread throughout northern California most likely fuelled by Samuel Brannan, a controversial businessman and land speculator who owned the town’s highest circulating newspaper.

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In January 1856, the Commission delivered its assessment and endorsed most of Limantour’s claims. An act that, unsurprisingly, caused no little consternation to the thousands of people, including government agencies, who now found themselves adjudged as illegally occupying what they had considered their land. Given the challenge of physically reasserting his land ownership, it was not long before Limantour began accepting payments to renounce his claim to certain parcels of land; reputedly for a modest 10 per cent of market value.

For whatever reason, the Federal Government seems to have taken a particular interest in Limantour’s claim and filed legal suit to have the judgment of the Land Commission overturned. At the end of 1856, on the basis of a very questionable witness who later recanted, a grand jury ruled that there was enough evidence to bring forward charges of fraud and perjury against him.

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A mass of witness testimonies and documentary evidence were collected and the new US Attorney General pledged $70,000 to help win the case in addition to $25,000 spent securing the services of leading Washington lawyer Edwin M. Stanton, later to serve as President Lincoln’s Secretary of War, as chief prosecutor. In November 1858, the federal court concluded that there had been fraud and duly annulled the earlier decision of the Land Commission. Efforts to reactivate criminal charges against Limantour were frustrated due to him having absconded to Mexico some months earlier.

By all accounts, Limantour enjoyed a lavish lifestyle in Mexico where he was accepted into the highest echelons of society and built-up an impressive property portfolio. With his family, he briefly returned to Brittany in 1884; the year before his sudden death in Mexico City. His eldest son, José Yves Limantour, was an accomplished lawyer who served as Mexico’s Minister of Finance for 18 years before eventually retiring to France in 1911.

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A claim disputing the findings of the 1856-58 trial was first lodged in an administrative court in southern Brittany during the summer of 1944 by Limantour’s grand-daughter. This alleged that the decision of the US court had been based on fabricated evidence conveniently discovered in a US government building almost eighteen months into the trail and that the findings of the court had been heavily influenced by local and national officials who stood to gain materially from a verdict against Limantour. The notion that such collusion was directly responsible for depriving Madame Limantour of her rightful inheritance was accepted by the court who also decreed that she was entitled to full restitution as well as compensation for the then nine years she had been denied the right to enjoy her family inheritance (her father had died in Paris in 1935).

It seems that the judgement of the 1944 court was included amongst a series of exemplar cases that were put forward as instructive trans-national precedents during the formative years of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the late 1940s. The court’s ruling might have been forgotten but for the diligence of Madame Limantour who secured a ‘reminder to comply’ verdict from the Supreme Court of Brittany in May 1968. Speculation abounds as to why it has taken a generation for this potentially explosive case to appear on the roster of the ICJ’s Special Court for Restitution, Arbitration and Perfidy but now that is has, it will be fascinating to see how justice unfolds.

Joseph-Yves Limantour

How to Break a Spell

Popular belief in the power of witchcraft survived in Brittany long into the modern era; spells and curses, for good or ill, abounded in the common imagination. Thankfully, the unlucky few caught under the malignant shadow of an evil spell were not always doomed but had recourse to wise practitioners able to undo the spells cast by others and to offer their own charms of unbewitchment.

To thwart the evil spells to which one could fall victim, certain practices were once popularly recommended, such as carrying unblessed salt or just nine grains of it, knocking three times on the shell of the eggs that one had just eaten or even spitting on the shoe worn on the right foot before putting it on. The special talismans and rituals designed to keep one safe from malevolent spellcasters and the Evil Eye were often as varied as they were imaginative and generally fell into two categories; proactive and reactive.

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In western Brittany, a morsel of black bread was a widely believed to protect against evil spells and was noted as a talisman to guard new-born babies from evil until they received the protection of baptism. In some parts of the region, it was traditional for one of the women present at the birth of a baby to remove the new mother’s wedding ring and put it in a glass of wine before applying some of the liquid to the lips of the new-born to protect it against the Evil Eye. Additionally, in several parts of Brittany, new-born babies were immediately passed through the fireplace in order to protect them against evil spells.

One well-known charm to protect against any evil spells cast against you called for a sou coin, nine grains of salt and nine stems of nine plants, namely: chickweed, common daisy, dovesfoot geranium, fumitory, greater celandine, ground-ivy, spotted medick, pilewort and verbena. It was first necessary to pronounce the Breton invocation Doue Araog Oll (God Above All) into a linen pouch and to recite the Pater Noster and Ave Maria prayers three times without taking a breath.

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After this supplication, three stems from each of the nine plants were placed crosswise on top of one another before a second layer of three stems each was similarly laid. Again, three Pater Noster and Ave Maria prayers were recited on the same breath ahead of the remaining stems being placed atop each other in the pouch. When the last of the stems was in the bag, it was then necessary to recite another three prayers under the same breathing constraints as earlier, before finally adding the nine grains of salt. The pouch was then sewn shut with a linen thread and stitched into one’s clothing where it would afford protection to the wearer.

Another once popular protection charm involved wearing or carrying in one’s pocket, a small pouch containing a chicory root that had been torn from the ground before sunrise on the morning of Midsummer’s Day. Although some people claimed that carrying the tip of a branch of alder and some of the tree’s bark in a small pouch was an equally protective talisman against the Evil Eye and other misfortunes. The tree’s sap, when collected before dawn on 10 March, was regarded as a powerful weapon in the fight against evil. Sadly, I have not yet been able to confirm the significance of that most propitious date.

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Many plants were also employed in the fight to protect whole households against the evil spells that might be cast towards them. For instance, a branch of beech or, if not readily available, birch was hung in front of the house as a most visible sign of defence. Similarly, a branch of holly was also believed to offer protection against evil spells and poisoning but branches hung in stables were also thought to repel cow sores. Wild celery, gathered by hand, was another plant popularly kept at home in the belief that its presence protected the household against the curse of the Evil Eye and misfortune.

Planting a branch of boxwood in one’s field on Palm Sunday was said to prevent witches from casting any evil spells on the field’s future harvest. However, it was the health and vitality of valuable livestock that was seemingly of most concern to the Bretons of yesterday as many traditional charms to ensure their protection have survived for us today. To guard against witchcraft, branches of elder were hung on stable walls and a double-rooted bramble fastened above the stable door. The presence of a goat in the stable was believed to protect the other animals against evil spells, while toads – a creature frequently associated with the evil spells cast to injure livestock in western Brittany – were often nailed to stable doors in expectation that their presence would ward-off evil. 

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To protect against witchcraft over the year ahead, it was long thought necessary to assemble, at dawn, all one’s sheep at a crossroads on Midsummer’s Eve and smoke them with the Herbs of Saint John picked, before dawn, on the previous Midsummer. Similarly, farmers drove their cattle through the embers of the Midsummer bonfires in order to preserve them from the malice of the magical korrigans over the year ahead. Farmers and their families most often protected themselves against the same threat by wearing a gorse flower and by hanging an inflated pig’s bladder, containing nine grains of wheat, from a ceiling beam in the main room. The latent evil posed by the supernatural creature known as the Bugul Noz or Night Shepherd was thought allayed by placing a cross made of rosehip branches in the stable.

Maintaining the health of one’s livestock and livelihood was a constant concern to the Breton farmer. To help protect one’s efforts from those who, for whatever reason, sought to inflict misfortune, bunches of tansy were hung from the beams in the stable to dispel evil spells and to help ensure cows produced a plentiful supply of milk; bunches of white wormwood and houseleek were also said to have been similarly efficacious. In the west of the region, a branch of Medlar, cut before dawn on the morning of Midsummer, was also thought to provide excellent protection against witchcraft.

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In eastern Brittany, it was believed that witches sometimes cast spells over the cattle at market by mixing the powdered liver of a wolf with their tobacco; in smelling this smoke, the animals suddenly went berserk in their efforts to escape. To combat the influence of such a spell, an amulet of greater periwinkle was placed around the left horn of the beasts. A more widely used charm to protect domestic animals against bewitchment saw them adorned with an amulet containing nine cloves of garlic mixed with a handful of coarse salt.

As late as the middle of the 19^th century, washing one’s face, first thing in the morning, with cow’s urine, or your own if one could not obtain that of a cow, was said to protect you all day from evil spells and the wickedness of the Devil because you became invisible to him. If you were unfortunate enough to be visited at home by a witch or anyone else capable of casting the Evil Eye, such as a tailor, throwing a broom made of birch twigs onto the ground in front of them was believed enough to counter any curse. However, if one of your animals had been cursed, it was necessary to invite the one you suspected of having cast the spell to visit your home; their appearance across the threshold was thought enough to nullify their curse.

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Other practices to break spells and lift curses called for significantly more ritual, such as one noted in the east of the region that required the purported victim to purchase an earthenware pot that had never been used. This item needed to be bought, without any bargaining over the price demanded, with a handful of copper pennies that, on no account, were to be counted. It was then necessary to visit the blacksmith or nail maker and invite him to put a handful of nails into the pot, without counting or weighing them; the nails had to be paid for in the same manner as before, with a handful of uncounted pennies. This done, the victim was required to return home, fill the pot with water and set it to boil over the fire. Once the water had started to boil, it was believed that the hot nails now tormented the spellcaster who, to escape this torture, revoked their spell.

A similar ritual to nullify an evil spell recommended that the victim purchase the heart of an ox and a handful of new nails; both items needed to be bought, without any haggling, with handfuls of uncounted pennies. The heart was taken home, hung in the victim’s fireplace and, every morning, nails were driven into it in the belief that the spellcaster would suffer such pain that they would cease their mischief and break the spell that they had cast.

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As with the proactive charms to protect against evil spells, many of the reactive charms once thought invaluable in breaking a cast spell, revolved around livestock and livelihood. If cattle were lost at night, a fire tripod or a knife with a curved blade was thrown into the fields in the expectation that this would preserve the lost beast from a fateful encounter with a wolf and protect it against the witch.

When cows failed to yield the expected amount of milk, it was not long before witchcraft was suspected of having dried the cow. To break the spell and chastise the one who cast it, the owner of the bewitched cow was required to boil a few pins in the animal’s milk; these were then thought to wound the spellcaster who, to escape the pain, lifted their curse. In the north west of the region, another way to break such a spell was to stick several pins into the heart of an ox which was then put into an iron pot hung over the fire; the spellcaster was now believed to feel compelled to present themselves to the accursed party.

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A more elaborate ritual for lifting this type of curse involved cutting some hairs from the cow’s head, withers and tail, soaking them in the animal’s water trough before sunrise on each day of Holy Week before wearing them to mass on Easter Day. In western Brittany, it was thought that such spells could be broken if the cursed animal was walked around a three-sided field. One was even thought able to turn the tables on the spellcaster if, while walking the cow, they threw salt over their shoulder while making certain incantations. Salt was also used in neighbouring Normandy to counter any evil spells suspected of having been cast on a new cow; molten salt was rubbed on the udder and around the base of the animal’s tail to lift the spell.

The influence of some malign spell was often blamed when a cow unexpectedly aborted and several means of countering such spells have survived to this day. One fairly widespread practice called for the farmer whose livestock had been thus affected to bury the dead calf with its legs pointed skywards in a pit in front of the stable. In the east of the region, one way to break the spell called for the heart of the dead calf to be hung in the fireplace of the farmhouse and be pierced with the barbs of a blackthorn tree.

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When farmers encountered difficulties making butter, a supernatural explanation was often the one most immediately reached for. In western Brittany, it was thought necessary to churn the milk in a neighbouring parish in order to break the curse while milkmaids whose butter was slow to take, averted the possible influence of the Evil Eye by immediately changing their churns.

Around the eastern town of Vitré, farmers were more aggressively proactive and would examine their dung heaps; the presence of a flat fungi, popularly known as a fromage blanc, served as confirmation that their cow was bewitched. To counter the spell, it was believed necessary to gather, after sunset, three round stones and throw them as forcefully as possible into the pool that stood closest to the dung heap. This ritual needed to be repeated on three consecutive nights. On the first night, the stones were thought to strike the spellcaster and command their attention. On the second night, the stones would cause the spellcaster severe pain, while on the third night, the spell would be lifted by the caster for fear of receiving more suffering.

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It was also in the district surrounding this town that a most curious character was noted at the end of the 19^th century; a sorcerer, dressed in goatskin, who roamed the countryside offering to lift the curses that had been cast upon the area’s farmers. He is reputed to have carried on his shoulder a large plank to which were nailed three other small slats of wood, all affixed with hooks from which hung moles in varying states of putrefaction. These rotting carcasses were carried from farm to farm and sold to those who believed themselves bewitched.

Upon one of the branches were the rotting moles claimed to thwart the spells cast against the making of butter. It was enough to bury one of these corpses at the entrance to the stable and immediately the milk which no longer provided cream gave it in abundance. The second slat carried the bodies said to preserve chickens if buried in the hen house. The final slat carried the animals who supposedly had the ability to prevent cows from aborting.

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There were also many practices recommended to help thwart the evil spells that had been cast against oneself. To counter a spell that had brought about a fever, it was necessary to drink from a bucket of water after a horse had drunk from it or to receive three sprinkles of holy water in three different parishes on the same Sunday. Similar protection was thought to be gained from drinking holy water on the eve of Pentecost or exposing oneself naked to the rising sun while reciting a certain number of Pater Noster and Ave Maria prayers.

Grains of salt, phials of holy water, religious medallions, written charms and pieces of coal were all once widely employed to protect against the power of spells and curses. Although faith or doubt, belief or disbelief, was arguably the strongest weapon wielded for and against the power of the spellcaster.

Abelard and Heloise the Witch

Often described as one of the world’s great love stories, the relationship between Abélard and Héloïse is often celebrated alongside such fabled affairs as Helen and Paris, Dido and Aeneas or Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. However, the Bretons of yesteryear carried a very different remembrance; that of Héloïse as evil witch but does either standing hang true?

A little of the background to this reputation might be helpful for those unfamiliar with the story of one of the greatest logicians of the Middle Ages and his love affair with a strong-willed and, unusually for the time, well-educated young lady.

Around the turn of the 12^th century, Peter Abélard, left his comfortable home in Brittany to study rhetoric and dialectic from the leading teachers of the day. After a spell at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame de Paris, this able young man felt confident enough to establish himself as a teacher, first at Melun and then in Corbeil, near Paris. Abélard seems to have excelled in the art of the debate and soon earned a reputation as a brilliant scholar, having publicly bested his former teachers. Although undoubtedly clever, he does not seem to have been particularly wise, alienating many of his peers with his pride and arrogance while causing controversies that could have been avoided.

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Sometime around 1115, Abélard returned to the cathedral school of Notre-Dame de Paris as master and soon became aware of Héloïse; a precocious fourteen-year-old girl, well versed in the Classics, who lived within the cathedral precincts under the care of her uncle, a canon of the cathedral chapter of Saint-Étienne. Captivated by her intellect, Abélard resolved to seduce her and used his reputation to convince her uncle that he was the right man to continue the girl’s education but could only devote the necessary time to this endeavour if he lived in their household.

A romantic relationship duly evolved between the celebrated master of argument and his teenage pupil that seems to have become known to Héloïse’s uncle in early 1116. Abélard was cast out of the canon’s home but the couple continued their illicit relationship and Héloïse fell pregnant. With scandal looming, Abélard spirited his lover out of Paris and took her to his family home in Brittany, almost 400km away, and it was here, towards the end of that year, that Héloïse gave birth to their son. Leaving mother and baby under the care of his sister, Abélard returned to Paris to placate his lover’s furious uncle.

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A wedding was eventually agreed upon; a course of action that neither seemed to really want. Abélard demanded a secret ceremony so as not to endanger any future positions he might aspire to within the Church hierarchy. Héloïse seems to have been against the idea for fear that she was unworthy of Abélard and that marriage would distract him from his destiny; later, she would argue that marriage constituted a form of prostitution. Having left her baby son in Brittany, Héloïse returned to Paris and a very discreet wedding with Abélard.

To maintain the pretence that both parties were still single, Héloïse returned to live in the home of her uncle. However, it seems that he cared more for family honour than discretion and silenced the gossips by declaring that his niece was lawfully married to Abélard; a state of affairs that she publicly denied in order to protect her new husband’s standing. Her relationship with her uncle now destroyed by scandal, Abélard once again spirited her out of Paris and placed her in a convent at Argenteuil.

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Héloïse’s uncle was enraged and likely believed that his niece had been placed in the convent so as not to be an inconvenient embarrassment for her new husband. It was possibly this sense of injustice that led to him arranging for a group of men to bribe their way into Abélard’s home one night and castrate him. Such a barbarous attack on one of the city’s foremost citizens could not be quietly dismissed; Abélard’s valet and one of the perpetrators were punished with castration and blinded but no other assailants could be traced. Despite having denied any involvement in the affair, Héloïse’s uncle was removed from his position at the cathedral and had his assets seized.

The following year, solely out of obedience to Abélard’s bidding, Héloïse took Holy Orders; a commitment Abélard himself made shortly after. Once again, his teaching was in great demand and he continued to pointedly court controversy in some of his theological debates. However, in making a personal attack against one of his former masters, Roscelin de Compiègne, he fired the first salvo in a very public war of words. He was accused of supporting his wife with the fees that he had raised from his pupils; a breach of trust amplified by Roscelin, who rebuked him over his former pupil, saying: “Not sparing the virgin entrusted to you, whom you should have taught as a student … you taught her not to argue but to fornicate.”

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When the convent in Argenteuil closed in 1129, Abélard subsequently arranged for Héloïse and her sisters to be rehoused at an oratory he had founded in Nogent-sur-Seine some eight years earlier but which had since been abandoned. Here, Héloïse, who became the newly rededicated priory’s Abbess, wrote Problemata Heloissae, a collection of forty-two questions, which she and her sisters raised and Abélard answered. However, it is the exchange of eight letters, written before Problemata, that form the basis of their status as one of the world’s great love stories.

Abélard’s Historia Calamitatum (History of my Misfortunes), ostensibly an autobiographical letter to “a friend”, formed the first part of this, now famous, correspondence. Perhaps something has been lost in the intervening years because I found little in this epistle to merit its august reputation. The letter might have been designed to shock Héloïse into accepting that their love affair was over but Abélard seems so self-absorbed that this seems unlikely. He confesses of his earliest intent to seduce Héloïse and his confidence that his famed eloquence would win her over: “Héloïse, I was convinced, would lend little resistance as she had a good education and wanted to broaden it further”. Abélard also talks of having to coerce her consent by threats and blows and even that: “I sometimes went so far as to hit her, blows given out of love.”

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The letter is almost totally bereft of love, instead it reads as the eulogy of a man who wishes to be remembered by posterity after the fashion of his own making; a victim who loved logic and reason above all else and suffered because of this. A suffering imposed on him by God on account of his youthful pride and exacerbated by the persecution of his contemporaries; all driven by their envy of his talents. His romantic affair with Héloïse is almost dismissed as a reckless abandonment of the intellectual quest to which he was devoted; a short-lived lustful diversion from his vocation, an abhorrent interruption to his philosophy.

The letters written by Héloïse seem to talk of a completely different relationship. Perhaps in a sideswipe to him addressing his letter to a friend, she struggles to find an appropriate word to describe their relationship; “her lord, or rather her father, her husband, or rather her brother”, before deciding that: “sweeter to me is ever the word friend, or, if you be not ashamed, whore”. She expresses her bewilderment at having been so completely abandoned by Abélard, she talks a great deal of her mad love for him and the personal sacrifice she made by acceding to his demands that she become a nun and embrace a celibate life.

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She seems to have borne him little animosity, reminding him of her “love without measure” and lauding him as her master. Speaking of their earliest days, she tells him: “Who among kings or philosophers could equal you in fame? … What wife, what maiden did not yearn for you?” and “You possessed two talents, among all, capable of immediately seducing the heart of a woman: that of writing verse and of singing”. She seems to continually define herself by her associations with Abélard, regretting that her devotion to him led to their current state and that it was perhaps the “lot of women to bring total ruin on great men”.

In her last letters, Héloïse appears to accept Abélard’s rejection of her but not his constant calls for her to repent past sins and find the love of God, she even appears to tease him by confessing: “The amorous pleasures we tasted together are so sweet to me that I am unable to hate them or even drive them from my memory.  … Even during the solemnities of the Mass, when prayer should be purer still, obscene images assail my soul and occupy it more than the office.” Perhaps it was declarations like this that prompted Abélard to observe in a letter to his son: “There are some who revel in the sins they have committed, so much so that they never really repent. So sweet is the lure of this pleasure, let them suffer no penance. This is what our Héloïse has become used to, to constantly complain, to me, to herself”.

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Although Abélard’s reputation was established across the border in France, his attachment to Brittany ran deep and remained so throughout his life. He was born, around 1078, into minor nobility in the small Breton village of Le Pallet, just a few miles away from the thriving city of Nantes. The family estate would be his sanctuary during some of the most turbulent periods of his life, such as when, around 1105, he returned for a few years to recover his constitution after the stresses of his work had become too much to bear. It was to this place that he took Héloïse to have their baby; a boy they named Astralabe who would stay in Le Pallet until taking Holy Orders in 1145.

Unfortunately, Abélard’s six years spent as Abbot of the Abbey of Saint-Gildas de Rhuys in southern Brittany were not, for him, a happy time: “It was a barbarous land, an unknown language, a brutal and savage population and monks whose behaviour was notoriously rebellious to all checks. … The whole horde of the country was equally lawless, there was no one whose help I could claim. Outside, the lord and his henchmen did not cease to overwhelm me; inside, the brothers perpetually laid traps for me”.

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Somehow, the letters of Abélard and Héloïse survived the ages but it was not until 1616 that some were first published in Latin and it would be another hundred years before their collected letters were translated and printed in 1718. Slowly but steadily, the mythologising began; here were the prototype doomed lovers, the medieval lives that had breathed the passion of Tristan and Iseult or Lancelot and Guinevere. The Romantic movement of the 18^th and 19^th centuries recast Abélard as a rebellious free thinker, a dangerous bohemian battered by an unmoving Church; a Renaissance man born out of time with Héloïse a model of female emancipation and unjustly overlooked philosopher.

One of the chief recorders of traditional Breton ballads in the 19^th century, Théodore de la Villemarqué, collected some twenty variants of a song about Héloïse, or sometimes a nameless witch, that casts the good Abbess in a most sinister light. To me, the best rendition of this old song into English was produced by the Scottish author Lewis Spence in 1917; he gives it a dramatic, poetic flourish that I would not have had the nerve or skill to do. This then is the Ballad of Héloïse and Abélard or Loiza hag Abalard in Breton.

Oh Abélard, my Abélard,
Twelve summers have passed since first we kissed.
There is no love like that of a bard:
Who loves him lives in a golden mist!

No word of French nor Roman tongue,
But only Breton could I speak,
When round my lover’s neck I hung
And heard the harmony of the Greek.

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The Mass I chant like any priest,
Can shrive the dying or bury the dead,
But dearer to me to raise the Beast
Or watch the gold in the furnace red.

The wolf, the serpent, the crow, the owl,
The demons of sea, of field, of flood,
I can run or fly in their forms so foul,
They come at my call from wave or wood.

I know a song that can raise the sea,
Can rouse the winds or shudder the earth,
Can darken the heavens terribly,
Can wake portents at a prince’s birth.

The first dark drug that ever we sipped
Was brewed from toad and the eye of crow,
Slain in a mead when the moon had slipped
From heaven to the fetid fogs below.

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I know a well as deep as death,
A gloom where I cull the frondent fern,
Whose seed with that of the golden heath
I mingle when mystic lore I’d learn.

I gathered in dusk nine measures of rye,
Nine measures again, and brewed the twain
In a silver pot, while fitfully
The starlight struggled through the rain.

I sought the serpent’s egg of power
In a dell hid low from the night and day:
It was shown to me in an awful hour
When the children of hell came out to play.

I have three spirits – seeming snakes;
The youngest is six score years young,
The second rose from the nether lakes,
And the third was once Duke Satan’s tongue.

.

The wild bird’s flesh is not their food,
No common umbles are their dole;
I nourish them well with infants’ blood,
Those precious vipers of my soul.

Oh Satan! grant me three years still,
But three short years, my love and I,
To work thy fierce, mysterious will,
Then gladly shall we yield and die.

Héloïse, wicked heart, beware!
Think on the dreadful day of wrath,
Think on thy soul; forbear, forbear!
The way thou takest is that of death!

Thou craven priest, go, get thee hence!
No fear have I of fate so fell.
Go, suck the milk of innocence,
Leave me to quaff the wine of hell!

.

While Spence’s version is full of dark drama and poetry, there are a few notable phrases from the original that were necessarily omitted for the sake of form and verse. In the original, Héloïse states that: “I was only twelve years of age when I fled my father’s house to follow my dear clerk and be Abélard’s spouse”; a subtle but important difference that better sets the scene for the depravity that follows. The original song also tells us that it was the left eye of the crow that was imbibed with magical power for her witch’s brew, while another variant tells that the fern seeds were collected on the night of Midsummer. In the version above, Héloïse gathers eighteen measures of rye for her brew but the original talks of wreaking sabotage and famine: “From the eighteen armfuls of rye that the Abbot’s monks had sown, they harvested only two handfuls of corn”.

We learn in the original that her three snakes are adders that are hidden in a silver casket where they brood a serpent’s egg that, if hatched, “the damage caused will be dire; for seven miles around, it will spit flames and fire”. These brooding snakes she feeds with the blood of innocents, the first she killed in a churchyard. The baby boy was buried by a crossroads but she took off her shoes and dug him up. The ending to Spence’s version is wonderfully defiant and you can almost hear Héloïse, the great sorceress, screaming into the wind. The original carries an ending that would likely have felt just as powerful to the audiences of old: “Take great care, Héloïse, of your soul, for if this world is yours, the other belongs to God!”