A Childhood in Brittany Eighty Years AgoSedgwick, Anne Douglas
History
A Childhood in Brittany Eighty Years Ago
Sedgwick, Anne Douglas
Brittany (France) -- Social life and customs
I was taken while I was a child at Loch-ar-Brugg to the famous _Pardon
de Folgoat_, to which people came from all Brittany. In Folgoat was
the summer residence of Anne de Bretagne, and in the vast hall of the
château she had held her audiences. The château is now the presbytery,
and is opposite the church, of which there is a legend. A poor child,
Yann Salacin, who was devoid of reason, spent hours every day before
the altar of the Virgin, which he decorated with the wild flowers that
he gathered in the fields, and wandered in the forest, swinging on the
branches of the trees, always singing Ave Maria, the only words he was
ever heard to pronounce. He begged for food from door to door and
slept in the barns. The peasants became impatient with him and began
to whisper that he was possessed of an evil spirit, and at last they
drove him out of the village. The curé, who was a good man, missed him
in the church, sought vainly for him, and at last heard what had
happened. He was filled with indignation, and told the peasants that
they had committed a crime. Then he set out to look for poor Yann, and
found him at last in a distant forest, dead with hunger. He brought
the body back to Folgoat and buried it near the church, and one day he
saw that a tall white lily had grown up from the grave; when he opened
the grave he found that the lily sprang from the lips of the little
innocent, and on the petals of the flower one could read in letters of
gold Ave Maria. This legend is believed in all Brittany, and a
stained-glass window in the church tells the story.
Behind the church is the Well of Love, so called because not a day
passes that lovers do not come to test their fate by trying to float
pins upon the surface of the water. If the pins float, all promises
well, and they go away happy. Astute ones slightly grease the pins,
and thus aid destiny.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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