A very large number of the superstitions of Brittany apply to ailments. Poor food, the excessive use of alcohol, and profound ignorance of the laws of health make the Bretons subject to numerous complaints, which they endeavour to cure by means that were adopted by their forefathers as far back as the fourteenth century. On reaching a little village near Tréguier we were advised to see the tomb of St. Yves in the church-yard, and on going there found an old woman--a hunchback--creeping through a narrow aperture with which that beautiful monument is pierced. Though she had been deformed since childhood, she was quite convinced that the saint, who had been renowned during his life-time for the miraculous healing of the sick, might still be able to do something for her. This "Hunchbacks' Hole" in the tomb of St. Yves had already cured quite a number of _bossus_, in accordance, legend said, with a promise made by the holy man. He himself, in his youth, had been hunchbacked. Remembering this when on his death-bed, he gave instructions that his tomb should be fashioned in the particular form in which it is to-day, at the same time promising that every cripple who crept through it should have the benefit of his prayers in heaven. [Illustration: A CURIOUS CURE FOR WARTS--DROPPING HARICOT BEANS ONE BY ONE DOWN A "HOLY" WELL. _From a Photograph._ ] The minor troubles to which poor humanity is subject are also "cured" by the carrying out of certain other peculiar ceremonies. When a Breton girl suffers from warts, for instance, she has herself blindfolded, takes a handful of haricot beans, and feels her way to the nearest well, into which she must throw the beans one by one, at the same time wishing. Should the well be a holy one--and most wells in Brittany have been blessed by the priests and are therefore considered to be "holy"--all the better; for her warts will disappear the very next day. In the case of an ordinary well, however, they will not be "charmed away" anything like so rapidly. Still, in the end the sincere wisher will get rid of them. To combat acute forms of headache a very curious method is employed near Billiers, in the Morbihan. The sufferer pricks his or her forehead with a needle until blood flows; then, with the same needle, he or she pricks a certain cross that was erected in 1874 near the village. By this means it is believed that the headache is made to "enter the wood," where it will remain for at least a fortnight. This "cure" is attributed to the intervention of the Virgin Mary, who is said to have appeared in the above-mentioned year where the cross is erected, with a promise that she would perform miracles "to prove her descent at that spot." Adjoining the cross for curing headaches is another that is reputed to be of great service in the cure of diseases of the scalp. All that the sufferers need do is to come and pray there, leaving their bonnets or caps behind them, attached to a forked branch stuck in the earth.