altogether. The principal table is decorated with such taste as the limits of rusticity permit; rude flags are hung here and there, and ribbons of various bright hues. At the head is a dais, with a high-backed chair, hung with garlands; this is the bride's seat. Around her is gathered a sort of rustic court circle, comprising her female relatives and nearest friends Feast" continues for three successive days after The young couple are now ready to start in life. If their united dowries are adequate, they hire a farm, furnish it, and set to work at once upon its cultivation. Sometimes they associate themselves with one of the fathers, helping him to manage his farm, and receiving, as tour of the green without "cavaliers." This done, the bridegroom and male relatives advance, he taking his bride's hand, and the rest the hands of their partners. A wide ring is formed, a regular country dance follows. Meanwhile tables are brought out and loaded with refreshments proper to the season-fruit, wine, cider, cakes, buckwheat biscuit, pâtisserie, and confitures. The dance ended, the party dis--no men are permitted near it. The "Bride's cuss the dishes set forth for their delectation. Thus, till nightfall, there are alternately dancing and feasting, the hilarity ever increasing under the inspiration of the beverages and the excitement. Two ancient, traditionary Breton dances, always performed at the weddings, it may be interesting briefly to describe. These are the "gavotte" and the "bal." They have come down from a high antiquity, and the Breton antiquaries are fain to refer them to the Druidical age. The "gavotte" is a very lively dance, presenting to the amazed eyes of the foreigner numberless turnings and counter-twistings, led by one of the most expert dancers, who seems to have no rule except his momentary impulse. The dance is accompanied by shouts and hurrahs, and is so energetic as soon to exhaust the participants. The "bal" is a more solemn and stately dance, commencing also with a sort of spiral movement-the performers separating by couples, and dancing one before the other. There is, too, a slow, measured dance, not unlike the time-honored "minuet" of our grandsires. The wedding dances are really interesting and picturesque to see. The quaint local costumes, the excitement, the bounding, leaping, and shouting, the seeming want of order and meth-payment, their support, with a prospect of inod, the sudden, amusing, and often graceful heriting the farm at his death. A third plan is tableaux, give the scene a vivacity and fresh- for the father to give up his farm to his son or ness which are rare to the dweller in great cit- son-in-law altogether (called “démission”), afties. The festivities of the wedding-day do not, er agreeing that the young man shall support however, end with the dances and with night- the old one during his life, and shall give him a fall. The scene then changes from the open certain part of each year's farm products. The lawn to some tents which have been erected latter is, perhaps, the prevailing custom among near by, beneath which bountiful tables have the Breton peasants; and it is attended somebeen spread. Here takes place the "Bride's times with great evils. Parenticide someFeast" (La Table de la Mariée). The dances times follows from it, the heir feeling the old over, hither flock the guests-usually compris- man to be a burden, and thus gradually being ing the whole village and neighborhood. The wrought up to get rid of him. Often, again, viands are plenteous, the hilarity unchecked. the sad spectacle of a neglected and ill-used Furnaces and ovens are set up just outside the old man-existing on the barest necessities tents, where the hot meats and vegetables are of life, starved by a slow and torturing proccooked on the spot. The young men serve up ess, despoiled of all, even filial respect, and the dishes, as a post of honor; the duty is in- lingering on despised by his children-is to trusted to the relatives and intimates of the be seen. But the custom of “démissions" has "happy pair." The bridegroom himself acts also advantages. It is favorable to agriculture, as head-butler, leading off the other servitors as it replaces waning strength by the vigorous at the beginning of the feast, preceded by the and ambitious energy of youth. It exchanges rustic band, and carrying himself a plate of fresh sinews for stiff and feeble ones. In the each delicacy to his bride, who sits enthroned custom of associated farming the advantages of at the head of the principal table. Drunken- energy and experience are united, and proper ness too often mars the innocency and jollity treatment secured to the elder. He is still in of the night. The men overdrink, as a matter authority, regulating, deciding, dividing the of course. But tradition enjoins it upon the profits between them. Each-father and sonbridegroom to give an example of chaste so- has his special duties. The son takes charge briety, compelling him to refrain from the cup of the flocks and herds; the father, the vine yards and fields; the daughter-in-law, the dai- | blissful journeyings for the peasant bride and ry; the mother, the household affairs. But disputes arise in association; the accounts get muddled; one interferes with the domain of the other; and so "ordeal by battle" is a too frequent resort of settlement. Otherwise the notary or tailor is called in to decide the quarrel. The custom of inheritance among the Bretons is curious. It is just the reverse of the law of primogeniture. The youngest succeeds to the paternal estate; if there are no sons, the youngest daughter succeeds. This rule prevails in other parts of France; but Montesquieu, an excellent authority, refers its origin to Brittany. He adds that the reason of its existence is, that the peasants think it the best method of preserving family interests, as well as conducing to public utility. The example was set, centuries ago, by the great landed proprietors, whose lands, being vast, were divided among the older children during the lifetime of the father, while the youngest child remained at home to assist the old man; to him, therefore, naturally fell the remainder of the patrimony. At the present day the peasants (who are mostly independent proprietors, if of ever so little) are accustomed to divide their little estates among their sons; so that the farms continue very small, and are only increased from generation to generation by individual thrift. To return to the marriage customs. The bridegroom and bride do not cohabit for several nights after the religious rite; sometimes it is three days, sometimes not less than fifteen, before they do so. The first night is dedicated, by imperative tradition, to "Le Bon Dieu;" the second, to "La Sainte Vierge;" the third, to St. Joseph; and so on, according to the locality, night after night is dedicated to this or that holy personage, especially revered by the district or the family. When the time comes for the husband to join the wife, the female relatives of the latter attend her in the nuptial chamber, dress her in the wedding garments, and each, in order of seniority in age, gives her a lecture appropriate to the occasion. Meanwhile the groom is being admonished by the elders in another apartment. He is then conducted with great solemnity to the nuptial chamber. The relatives gather below stairs, and begin to pray loudly and fervently for blessings on the wedded pair. Then rises a loud and solemn chant, "Veni, Creator," in which all join. The chant is scarcely concluded when a boisterous procession of villagers invades the house. They bring with them a stretcher, holding a large bowl of milk soup. The bridal chamber is entered, the relatives hasten up, the soup is deposited at the side of the bed. The couple are bolstered up, and potations of the milk soup are administered to them amidst much merriment and many a joke. Bread is then forced upon them, and wine; and a new scene of noisy festivity ensues. The next day commences the regular routine of farm life. There are no honey-moons and groom. He is up betimes, driving his horses or oxen afield; and she appears soon after, and forthwith enters upon her appropriate functions in the dairy. This marriage-time, however, in which a sort of temporary royalty is conferred upon the bride, turns the thoughts of the other peasant damsels to their own prospects. The pins which have fastened the bride's dresses are precious talismans; those who secure and wear them are assured of a speedy marriage, and are relieved of the dread that they shall die "vieilles filles." At the fête of St. Jean, in June, bonfires are lighted in all the villages throughout Brittany; and around these the peasantry are accustomed to dance and drink till far into the night. It is a legend that if a young girl visits and dances at nine of these bonfires before midnight, she will be married within the year. As the task is neither a difficult nor a disagreeable one, probably all who wish are assured of connubial felicity. There are many miraculous fountains scattered through the country, which, on being questioned on matrimonial prospects, give compliant oracular responses. The waters of some of them are efficacious, according to the superstition, to ward off lightning, give milk to dry cows, and restore cross-eyes to a proper angle. To the superstitious simplicity of the Breton peasant Christmas-time is a time of wonders. On Christmas-eve there is vigil kept by both man and beast. When the clock sounds midnight, it is asserted that the cows are endowed with speech, and predict the future. This privilege the cows are supposed to owe to the chance which made their kind assist at the birth of Christ in the manger at Bethlehem. These are only a few of the host of superstitions which excite the minds of the peasantry to fear and worship. Some have been handed down from remote times, from the age of the priest government of the Druids. Others have started, upon occasion, from extraordinary accidents, to which the peasant mind has given a superstitious, unearthly significance. It is a land of ignorance and credulity-of many timehallowed, amusing, and suggestive customs; a land which knows or cares little of human progress, and feels not at all, apparently, the onrushing tide of modern civilization. In connection with this subject it is worth while to give some account of a Breton pilgrimage. M. Jules Breton's interesting and highly characteristic picture of "a grand Breton pardon," of which we give a copy in our engraving on page 38, will serve as a general representation of those striking religious ceremonies, which necessarily have a good deal in common, and are among the most picturesque pageants of modern times. principal Breton pilgrimages are those of St. Anne of Auray and Guingamp. The former goes on all through the summer, although Whitsuntide and the fête-day of the patron saint are the occasions which attract the greatest multitude of devotees; whereas the latter is limited The two to the Saturday preceding the first Sunday in reverence, and who are probably as simpleJuly, when the procession takes place, and to a minded and superstitious as any in Europe, couple of days or so following. The Breton lacking the ardent imaginations of the Southern saints are of a homely sort. The miracles they races. Even so far back as the year 1623, are reported to have performed are not partic-when St. Anne of Auray first came into notice, ularly marvelous, which is, perhaps, accounted all that is pretended to have happened was a for by the peasantry who hold them in such vision to an ignorant peasant, whose pastor A BRETON PARDON. thought him crazed, as he no doubt was, but whose bishop patronized him; following upon which a broken statue was found in a certain field, and attracted pilgrims from far and near, who left behind them offerings sufficient to build a chapel in which the relic might be enshrined, but which, in later times, has been replaced, it seems, by a new building. galleries, bareheaded, and carrying lighted tapers in their hands. Some will even, by way of penance, make the circuit on their knees, and slowly mount the numerous steps of what is termed the Scala Sancta, and kiss the feet of the statues at its summit. As soon as the sun has risen on the morning of Saturday the narrow, tortuous streets of the old town of Guingamp are crowded with pilgrims, come to perform their devotions at the shrine of Notre Dame de Bon Secours, and to take part in the evening procession in her honor. Many have journeyed thither on foot and from long distances, that have required two or three days to accomplish, while some thousands had arrived by the railway from all parts of Brit spaces booths are erected, at which, besides eatables of different kinds, some few useful and many useless articles are exposed for sale, including an endless number of pictures and images of Our Lady of Good Help, and of such saints as are especially dear to the Breton peasant, together with crucifixes, chaplets, charms, and candles of all dimensions. Pilgrims come from one end of Brittany to the other to the shrine of St. Anne, not merely barefooted, as of old, but packed in third-class railway carriages; for, from the month of June until the end of September, the company of the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest issue cheap returntickets from all stations on their line. The pilgrims come singly and in companies, and sometimes an entire family will make the journey-tany. The town is en fête. In the various open the aged supported by the more stalwart, and the mother carrying her new-born child. Sailors, too, in pursuance of some vow made in time of peril, will proceed thither, barefooted and bareheaded, from the point of the coast where they chanced to be cast ashore. The inhabitants of the Isle Dieu are not deterred by the sixty leagues which they have to traverse from paying annual homage to St. Anne. The sailors of the commune of Arzon, at the extremity of the peninsula of Rhins, in memory of a vow made by their fathers during a naval combat they were engaged in with the Dutch, come regularly to the shrine every Whit-Monday. They embark, with their wives and children, at Port Navalo, on board luggers with red sails, having at the head of the flotilla a richly decked vessel, in which are the clergy of the parish in charge of a massive silver crucifix. On the same day there arrive by land processions from all the neighboring, and even from far-distant parishes, preceded by crucifixes, the banners of their patron saints, and the flags of their communes. Ladies of high birth and delicate frames are said not unfrequently to accompany these bands, followed by their carriages, the use of which they rigidly deny themselves except to return home in. So soon as the tower of the chapel is discerned in the distance the pilgrims fall upon their knees, and subsequently continue the journey in silence, with their chaplets in their hands. As they draw nigh the immense open space, shaded by chestnut-trees, that conducts to the miraculous fountain and the building which contains the object of their adoration, the different bands of pilgrims, mingling together, present a curious spectacle in their varied and picturesque costumes, in which, as in their language, centuries of civilization have wrought scarcely any change. Reciting their prayers, numbers will congregate round the fountain, of whom many will dip their faces, hands, and feet in the water which flows into the smaller basins, while others will drink of it at its principal source. The more fatigued will repose themselves on the steps of the surrounding amphitheatre, while long files of ardent pilgrims continue their weary march round the chapel walls and under the cloistered "The Pardon of Guingamp," according to the local historians, traces back its origin to the remotest antiquity; and, save during the interregnum of the Revolution, they assert it has always gathered together a considerable multitude of the devout; still, it is only within the last few years that the image of the Virgin, the object of all this homage, has been awarded a crown by his Holiness the Pope, and has thereby assumed a rank to which she was not entitled before. To a stranger the assemblage which the celebration of the pardon brings together presents many points of interest. These dense crowds enable him to study no end of varieties of the Breton type, in all the diversity of the Armonican costume; the men with their broadbrim hats, with velvet streamers fluttering behind, and their long matted hair falling over their shoulders and down their backs; their large stand-up shirt-collars; their short jackets, trimmed with velvet, and more or less embroidered; their waistcoats, covered with double rows of bright metal buttons, placed quite close together; their knee-breeches and tightly fitting leggings, the latter ornamented with more gilt buttons at the ankle; their embroidered leather belts, their huge wooden sabots, and their pilgrims' staves. The women, too, are not less interesting in the whitest and quaintest of caps, an endless variety of shape, and occasionally of the richest lace, in their bright-colored bodices or shawl neckerchiefs, their silk aprons, their sober-tinted gowns, and with their chaplets invariably in their hands. The more devout pilgrims first of all betake themselves to the chapel of Our Lady of Good Help, whose statue surmounting the altar is magnificently robed in gold-and-silver-embroidered blue and white satin, just as the chapel itself is decorated with flags and flowers, and festoons of colored lamps, for the occasion. Some few pilgrims will make offerings at her | ornamental portion of the procession is seen to shrine; but the majority appear to content emerge from the north door of the church, conthemselves with burning a candle in her honor sisting, first of all, of some young and rather at an adjacent circular frame erected for the pretty girls, robed entirely in white, and carpurpose, while, kneeling pell-mell on the stone rying the silk-embroidered banner of the Virpavement, and sadly jostled by the curious, they gin; then more girls and banners, followed by go through their appointed prayers. But not the members of various female religious comonly is this side chapel crowded; the church munities, in the costumes of their order, bearitself-hung from one end to the other with ing their respective banners; next come sevbanners, its altars all decorated with flowers, its eral small gilt statuettes, carried on handsome sacramental plate, its relics, and its ornaments stands, one of which represents St. Fiacre, the of all kinds exposed-is packed so thickly with patron saint of the gardeners, and another St. kneeling pilgrims that the passage from one end Joseph, the patron saint of the carpenters. to the other is rendered extremely difficult. Then follow richly gilt caskets containing vaLeaving the church, many of the more weary rious relics, borne by and surrounded by priests; pilgrims betake themselves at once to the quaint a gold bust, with a long forked beard; a wax metal fountain in the adjoining "place," sur- figure of a dead child in white, her head mounted by a statue of the Virgin, with a large wreathed with lilies, lying on a purple cushion wreath of newly gathered flowers encircling her covered with a crimson pall, and preceded and head, and a large bouquet in her hand. Con- followed by banners innumerable. Then a gregated round about are a dozen or more old number of men and boys dressed up to reprewomen with little earthenware bowls, which sent sailors, and bearing a couple of models of they fill with water and offer to all comers to men-of-war of the old school, and a huge gilt drink of, and even to lave their faces, hands, anchor; then some of the youths of the coland feet in. Their ablutions over, the more lege, accompanied by their band; next a numaustere pilgrims will content themselves with ber of men with banners and large ornamental strolling abstractedly through the town until open-work lanterns; then the sapeurs pompiers evening sets in and vespers are about to com- and their band; and, finally, a body of priests mence; while others kill the intervening time in rich vestments. The two detachments of at the various shows, in the cider-booths, or in pilgrims eventually join themselves together, risking their sous and francs at one or the oth- and the procession, composed at this time of at er games of chance that tempt them on every least 10,000 people, passes up the main street hand. of the town and round the large triangular place where the fountain is situated, chanting all the while. Here three tall poles have been erected, surrounded by banners in honor of the Virgin, and having immense piles of fagots stacked at their base. While the procession is moving round this open space in the direction of the church these stacks of fagots are set fire to, one after the other, filling the air above with fiery sparks, as the ground is already thronged below with lighted tapers, and throwing out such intense heat in their immediate proximity as to cause pilgrims and spectators alike to struggle to escape from it. Such are the aspects of a Breton Pilgrimage or Pardon as seen at Guingamp. The church bells toll for vespers; crowds of men and women, each provided with a wax taper, struggle through the streets to the entrance of the edifice, the steps of which are hined with cripples, feeble old men and women, and beggars of a sturdy type, got up to present as repulsive an appearance as possible. The church, which is brilliantly lit up, is crowded in every part. The service terminated, precisely at nine o'clock the bells begin to chime, and then to toll a monotonous peal, while most of the houses in the town are being illuminated, and the head of the procession-composed of men and women mingled together indiscriminately, the half-wild-looking Bas-Breton every now and then alternating with some charminglooking demoiselle whose toilet is after the latest mode-is seen descending the flight of steps in front of the north door of the church, preceded by a priest bearing the cross. A troop of cavalry, stationed immediately opposite, salutes the sacred symbol; and for a quarter of an hour pilgrims, all with lighted tapers in their hands, and the men with their heads bare, continue descending the steps in double file. While these are passing out at the north door, another detachment of pilgrims, also in double file, and similarly provided with lighted tapers, is leaving the church by the west. The two detachments proceed in opposite directionsthe one moving toward the upper, the other to the lower end of the town. At the expiration of the quarter of an hour just spoken of, the A VIGIL. THE hands of my watch point to midnight, But my pulse runs like the morning, My darling, my maiden, is nested She needs not the watch-care of angels The throbbing of her heart is ever |