Brittany’s Tormented Tailors

The Brittany of yesteryear was not without its popular prejudices, chief amongst these was probably the utter disdain, or even contempt, held for those that practiced certain professions, such as notaries, priests, millers, fishmongers, horse skinners, pie carriers and cesspit emptiers. However, the profession that seems to have once aroused the most scorn in the heart of the rural peasant was that of tailor.

Writing in the early 19^th century, the French author and administrator Hippolyte Bonnellier noted a belief current across Finistère, in western Brittany, that tailors were a breed apart; descended from the ancient druids and speakers of a special, secret language that was akin to a modified form of Greek. The Breton author Emile Souvestre noted the same in his book Les Derniers Bretons (1836) but also added that tailors were thought to have been taught how to braid by goats, whose language they were also said able to speak.

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The low esteem in which tailors were held can be seen in the old ballads and popular proverbs that have survived to this day. Such sentiments as: ‘It takes nine tailors to make a man’; ‘Who says tailor also says liar’ and ‘A tailor is not a man, only a tailor’, being typical. Some sayings were more savage: ‘I have never met a tailor who was not a fart bladder or had no scabies on his legs or did not carry lice as big as cats’. Others, were simply cruel: ‘A tailor has nothing in his head but a quarrel’ and ‘There is no longer and uglier story than the life of the tailors’.

Some people even refused to acknowledge the tailor with a name; a similar belief in the deliberate denial of the latent power of a spoken name was also noted with wolves and the Devil who were popularly spoken of as Guillou and Polik respectively. To Breton men, tailors were Spindle Dealers, Cutters of Ponytails or Givers of Kisses and if they were acknowledged at all it was by taking off their hats; a gesture usually reserved as a mark of respect offered to older women.

Sadly, the region’s children seem to have been imbued with this disrespect from an early age, as witnessed in an old nursery rhyme that translates to: ‘Listen to me, lice skewer; Come to my house on Thursday, I have three dogs and three cats; All six are naked; Come and make them each a doublet, So that they can go to mass on Sunday.’

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When tailors appear in folk tales it is generally as a figure of ridicule or as one possessed of unpleasant attributes such as greed. One story, noted in the 1860s, tells of two tailors, both hunchbacks. One was returning home from a wedding feast where he had played the fiddle until dark. Crossing the Liscuis moor, he encountered a group of korrigans dancing and singing their favourite ‘Days of the Week’ song: ‘Di Lun (Monday), Di Meurzh (Tuesday), Di Mercher (Wednesday)’. Seeing the tailor’s fiddle, the korrigans invited him to join their dance which he did with much aplomb. Not only did he lead their merry dance on his fiddle but he also delighted them by adding another verse to their song: ‘Di Iaou (Thursday), Di Gwener (Friday).’ In their gratitude, the korrigans offered him a choice of two gifts: beauty or wealth. The tailor chose beauty and immediately transformed into a handsome man without a hunchback.

The following morning, the other tailor, astonished to see his friend without his hump, demanded to learn the secret of his miraculous transformation. Having heard all of the night’s events, he decided that he too would risk a dance with the korrigans and that same evening, he hastened to the moor where he found the korrigans just as his friend had described.

Anxious to gain their favour, he proposed to improve their song by completing the days of the week but the korrigans thought the new verse inelegant and sent him home without any gift. The tailor was disappointed at his dismissal and protested loudly, finally pleading: “At least give me what my friend did not want to have!” The korrigans, unmoved by the tailor’s greed, immediately obliged him with an additional hump!

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Only in a very few tales does the tailor emerge triumphant from the ordeals that he is subjected to. In these, the tailor is usually pitted against an evil lord or the Devil and wins the day through sheer effrontery or great cunning. In one story, a drunken lord was envious of the great reputation that surrounded the local tailor. Having summoned the tailor to his castle, the lord consigned him to the dungeon, saying: ‘I want to see if you deserve your reputation. I need clothes for tomorrow.’

Locked in his small cell with no means or material with which to fashion a set of clothes for a wealthy lord, the tailor spent all night thinking of how he might solve his impossible dilemma. Hearing sounds outside his cell, he noticed a piece of charcoal on the floor near the door jamb. He quickly picked it up and traced the outline of a long coat on the whitewashed wall just as the door creaked open. ‘Your coat is ready, Sire. All you need do is put it on’, said the tailor. Enchanted by his quick wit, the lord released the tailor but only after showing him the gallows which he had erected to hang him.

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Another tale highlighting the impudence of a tailor tells of one brought before a powerful lord for having cheated his household. The tailor argued his case furiously and was startled when the lord broke off from remonstrating with him to rush out into the castle’s courtyard only to return clutching a rooster. “The time of talking is passed. Kill this bird as you wish to be dispatched and I swear, humanely, that whatever you do to him I will do to you.

Having received the lord’s confirmation of his murderous oath, the tailor took the rooster and thrust a finger into the bird’s backside. After withdrawing his finger, he put it in his mouth and looked at the lord, saying: “You will do that, my lord?” The stunned lord could not help but laugh and released the tailor, saying: “You are a stronger man than me!”

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Songs tell of tailors who fall from roofs or are thrown into ponds, others that they are owned by their patron saint, the Devil or that they are deceitful or sickly, always hungry or else cowardly thieves and boastful womanisers. One old song likens them to grunting boars with bandy legs who dishonestly retain for themselves a little of the fabric entrusted to them by their clients. Another tells us that the tailor does not deserve his food, nor holy water; he does not even deserve to be buried in consecrated ground. Little wonder then that the region’s tailors were once believed to be afflicted with the Evil Eye, possessing the power to cast misfortune upon man and beast simply by their toxic gaze.

There is no clear explanation for why the people of western Brittany felt so strongly about tailors. Perhaps, like millers, they were believed to keep a little of that entrusted to them by those least able to afford any loss; in this case, fabric and linen? Perhaps the fact that their occupation never placed them in danger or saw them collapse with exertion after enduring hard manual labour in all weathers was a bone of contention. Maybe they were mistrusted because they spent so much time in the company of women? Possibly, elements of all these factors coalesced in the popular imagination.

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It is also worth noting that the itinerant nature of the rural tailor might also have caused some to feel ill at ease. With no permanent base, tailors spent all year crossing the countryside, staying in farms only long enough to complete whatever tailoring work the household was unable to do themselves; closely sharing the life and secrets of the household before moving on to another.

Given the contempt felt towards tailors it is remarkable that they were often called upon to act as country matchmaker; a formal role known as baz-valan in Breton on account of the stick of broom that needed to be carried by the holder of this important office. If was often the baz-valan that formally asked, on behalf of the hopeful groom, the prospective bride’s parents for the hand of their daughter in marriage; a ritual held at nightfall that traditionally ended with him singing songs of blessing and praise for the dead as well as the living.

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In instances where the conditions of a marriage had not already been agreed upon by both sets of parents, the matchmaker acted as intermediary. It fell to him to inform the families about their morality and standing in the neighbourhood and of the state of their fortunes. A process that often followed an inspection of the farm, its livestock and working implements as well as a look at the contents of the linen store.

Given the stigma attached to tailors, it is worth considering the possibility that they somehow collectively assumed the mantle once worn by certain ‘unclean’ families; belief in whose existence was attested in the far west of the region by the Breton tax collector and amateur ethnographer Hyacinthe Le Carguet as late as 1893. He noted that certain families were believed more predestined than others to certain afflictions on account of their unhealthy blood and that people avoided touching vessels from which such unhealthy people had drunk. Marrying a child from one of these families was also avoided thus compelling these societal outliers to ally only within their social circles at the margins of society.

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Le Carguet postulated that this belief in unclean families was tied to the existence, in the Middle Ages, of a group of people who lived apart from others and to whom certain activities, such as rope making, were reserved. He suggested that these unfortunates were descendants of lepers. If this was so, it highlights, painfully, how the prejudices of the present can be conditioned by the long-dead realities of the past.

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