Coming very soon...

There have been some delays, not surprisingly with current working conditions, at the printing stage, but the book should soon be ready. News about launch also in the pipeline. Thanks to all those who've enquired about this. I know that the many lovely British and French fans of Spirit of Place kind enough to want to continue following my work have had a long three year wait, but it's nearly over now. At the very least I hope people will enjoy the 'triumph over adversity' aspect that accounts for the long delay in finishing this book. I can still hardly believe I made it to the end.

Taking stock

Menhir de Champ Dolent, Dol-de-Bretagne

After my annual long visit to Combourg, where I have been based to complete a chapter called the Devil's trajectory around Dol-de-Bretagne, it's time to take stock of the year's work and my progress along a very decided path for 2019. I arrived home to find author's copies of my little saints' guide  waiting - one objective achieved and a pleasing result of a great deal of effort. Much of the research was done for another saints' project last year, but trying to sift a mass of material for meaningful synopsis is not easy, and to convey complex issues in compact form is a veritable skill. Introduction to the Breton Saints forms a third volume in the series that began with guides to Huelgoat and the Monts d'Arrée, a format that has been much appreciated by very many people. There may well be a fourth topic in 2020, given the success so far.

As to the main purpose of my year, the completion of Wayfaring in Little Britain, the journey is far from finished, although I have made significant progress lately. This is the third year of trying: thwarted by serous illness for the last two, I am finding the physical demands of travel, walking and research extremely hard to cope with, but am determined to finish the manuscript by the end of the year, even though the last bit of route coverage is not scheduled until December 26th! With the encouragement of the few readers who have glimpsed the content of this elusive book, this theme of hard-won achievement has crept into the text - quite a change for me to write personally, but it perhaps it is time to be honest about the demands of walking and searching against a backdrop of pain and difficulty. Most people writing about history in the context of landscape are serious walkers covering 30-odd kilometres a day without too much trouble. That has never been the case for me, but I hope there is equal merit in a book constructed around hardship, where a day's walking for a healthier person may turn into two or even three for me on occasion and where considerably more logistical planning is needed.

St Samson's mitre, Mont Dol

I hope it can be done. The themes of journeys and different types of walking from neolithic ritual through Roman roads to saints' stories and medieval pilgrimage are fundamental to the discovery of Brittany's landscape and history. It will be a final summary of all my painstaking work in this field over many years, as next year is to be devoted to something rather different...

Start of the Devil's trajectory on Mont Dol

Worth its weight in gold

Artichoke harvest

Léon, the northern area of Finistere is best known further afield for its ferry port at Roscoff, but no traveller heading south off the boat can have failed to notice the ubiquitous fields of artichokes, onions and cauliflowers. It is a prime growing area, part of what has long been called the Golden Belt of Brittany's agricultural harvests. Brittany Ferries itself was started in the 1970s to take the produce to Cornish markets. Breton artichokes were once flown on Concorde to the US.
The legend of Saint Goulven is at the heart of this idea of fecundity and its concomitant prosperity. His mother was about to give birth to him as soon as they arrived on the coast of Armorica, near where the bourg of Goulven is today. His father went on a desperate search for water, finally falling to his knees and praying for God's help. On returning to his wife, he found a newly born son and a newly flowing spring of freshwater. The land in Brittany provides. The elaborate Renaissance fontaine of St Goulven now marks the spot. Pilgrims later came for healing, particularly of fever. A stone sarcophagus in the wall by the statue is called the bed or tomb of the saint. Here sufferers immersed themselves and prayed for cures.

Sarcophagus in lefthand wall

Although much later a bishop of Léon, Goulven was a quiet and serious young man, who soon dedicated himself to prayer and preaching. He lived apart from society with a single follower. One day he had the impulse to send his friend Maden to a neighbour asking for a gift. After a short reflection, the neighbour hefted a clod of earth into the fold of Maden's tunic and sent him back. Maden found his load heavier and heavier as he struggled to return. Goulven came out of his hut to meet him and discovered that the earth had turned into a lump of gold. So we learn that the riches of Léon lie in its soil, and that Goulven was worthy of a miracle and destined for sainthood.

Earth turned to gold

St Efflam

He's a strange one, this Irish saint of royal blood, who ran away on his wedding night to avoid intimacy with his new wife Enora and pursue his devotion to God across the sea. He landed at Lieu de Grève in the bay of Plestin-les-Grèves where his chapel and sacred spring stand near to the shore. Stories later associated with him illustrate the exceptional powers and single-minded courage that form almost a badge of office for many Breton saints.
The substantial fontaine, dating from the late 16th century, is a prophetic one. The rituals vary but pieces of bread are of the essence, If you have been robbed and have your suspicions about the culprit, take three pieces of bread, name each one and throw them into the water. The one that sinks will be the guilty person. This tradition has muddled itself with another concerning engaged couples, who are also to throw in three pieces of bread. If two come together without the 'saint' (or third bit) intervening, they will be happy. Obvious you might think, but rumour has it that the bread used should be stolen... In fact, the same ritual with the magic number three is used to answer any question there - will I marry, will my husband survive a sea voyage, will my child live - but in this case the answer is yes if two of the pieces float towards the third saintly morsel. Ah, the finesse of ritual.

St Efflam has another curious legend to his name. He came across King Arthur engaged in combat with a dragon on the towering rocky pinnacle of Grand Rocher overlooking the bay. When the hero failed to make headway and both combatants retired for a half-time break, St Efflam stepped in and called the beast out of his lair. The sight of the raised cross was enough to daze the poor dragon, who meekly submitted to a command to throw himself off the precipice. The moral is clear: faith is stronger than brawn (and dragons should always look away quickly when faced by saints).
Enora, the deserted wife, showed admirable spirit in following the virginal Efflam and landed a little way off near Le Yaudet where she was picked up in a fisherman's net. She was soon running from the local tyrant, who chased her lustfully back towards Efflam's haunt of Lieu de Grève. There a miraculous paralysis overcame the pursuer: he swiftly repented and was released from his plight by Efflam himelf. Enora established her own oratory near that of her husband and remained close but chastely separated from him until her death.

Hell and healing

After three weeks of hell - total incapacity, insufferable pain, hospital in Rennes - I decided to turn to more traditional methods of healing yesterday. One of the chapters in my new book on the Breton saints is on this very theme, so some pratical research combined with the personal search for relief from pain that is preventing me from working, even reading or spending more than a few minutes on the computer, seemed a pragmatic idea. A kind friend took me to the place.
St Maudez is a specialist in skin diseases, eczema especially, but this fontaine is also associated with the cure of shingles. It sits beside a large, plain chapel in the countryside near Plouyé, with plenty of outside covered space indicating continued use for festivals and a pardon. There are two statues, one unusually incorporated in the steep-curved roof, and three basins, one shaped liked a four-leaved clover.

I made an offering and said my piece, then scooped water onto my burning face. Strangely after a couple of minutes there was a complete lull in the pain and a sudden flow of relief went through my whole body, so worn down after weeks of intense suffering. Then it was back, throbbing and stabbing around my eye and cheek-bone. For the moment, I have nothing more to say to St Maudez.

Saints preserve us

Making cow"s eyes - St Herbot

Summer has been slow, sad and full of difficulties, but I have to say that working on the new book about Breton saints has revived my tenderness for this bunch of introverted loners and misogynistic misfits. The tension between what they mostly wanted - isolated contemplation and spiritual struggle in the throes of landscape - and what became expected of them in terms of community leadership, man management and political nous (or maybe nowse) was nothing if not challenging. Some - St Pol, for example - rose above it all and maintained a lofty saintliness that was proof against the worst excesses of wordliness: others, like St Ronan, fought every battle with asperity and, one is tempted to think, the relish of a waspish personality. His namesake, the philosopher Ernest Renan, says he was more a spirit of the earth than a saint: 'son caractère était violent  et un peu bizarre'. St Herbot just gave it all up and settled down in a quiet spot away from people to commune more comfortably with cattle.
But their legacy is immense, and the particular nature of Breton faith that cherished them so is equally endearing. I am currently reading Anatole Le Braz's Au pays des pardons in which he describes (or rather tells how it was described to him) the pardon of St Servais when the faithful of Cornouaille and the faithful of Vannes turned up ready for a brawl, comported themselves as teams and fought for the privilege of hoisting the sacred banner of the saint, whilst the little statue of Servais was smashed to smithereens under the blows of staves and had to be replaced each year. The wounded were taken home on carts, bleeding and groaning.

Pardon of St Eloi - a more orderly affair

Zealous walker: St Yves, patron saint of Brittany

Iconography of St Yves - Quimper cathedral

Yves Helory (c1250-1303) was canonized in 1347 after due process in which 225 witnesses testified to miracles achieved in his name. He is the male patron saint of Brittany, his historicity in marked contrast to his female counterpart Ste Anne, a figure from the Apocrypha. No visitor to Brittany's chapels can have failed to observe the iconic image of St Yves, a figure in the garb of an ecclesiatical judge, between a rich man and a poor man, his head usually inclined towards the latter. He had the reputation of favouring the underdog in legal disputes and siding with have-nots, which makes his role as patron saint of lawyers who come from all over the world to his pardon on May 19th each year in Tréguier, a curious one.
St Yves passionately devoted his life to the sick and those living in abject poverty. He gave away all his own possessions and opened the family manor house at Kermartin in Minihy-Tréguier to unfortunates. But it is his physical presence in the landscape of the Trégor that is most memorable. All his formal education in law and theology at Paris and Orleans, his aptitude in French and Latin, did nothing to separate the man from his home territory. As well as his duties at the cathedral of St Tugdual in Tréguier, he was rector of Trédrez and Louannec. Sometimes he preached in seven different churches on a Sunday, walking many miles between them. He was said to take little rest or food on these excursions, leaving in the early morning and returning home exhausted late at night. Certain rocks along the routes he walked are dubbed the bed or pillow of St Yves, emphasising his rejection of comfort and luxury whilst so many suffered hardships of penury.

'Pillow' of St Yves - Trédrez

The indefatigable walking was part of his method and his commitment to God. It was a way of interacting with the peasants in the fields or workers in the forests and travellers on the road (as two women attested after his death). He always stopped to speak and make contact with those he passed, seizing these opportunities to spread the word of God. By all accounts his actual sermons - no texts survive - were highly emotional, tears figuring alongside examples from the lives of saints.
Before the violent mayhem of the Wars of Succession that ravaged the greater part of Brittany from the mid 14th century, it was apparently possible to walk without fear along the paths of the Trégor. From Trédrez in the west to the area of Goelo and the Abbaye de Beauport in the east, many legends of association in the landscape have grown up around the journeys of St Yves and the powerful image of this slight figure walking his way into sainthood.

St Yves - Tréguier cathedral

To be continued...

Valley of the Saints

The Valley of the Saints project is to place up to 1000 statues of Breton saints, carved by contemporary sculptors, in a rural location of Cotes d'Armor. The more I thought about this, the more bizarre an idea it seemed, and after finally managing a visit last month, I still came away wondering what on earth it's all about. The concept may not immediately scream 'theme park', but in essence that's what it seems to be. How sticking a bunch of stylised lumps of granite all over a beautiful natural landscape contributes to Breton heritage is hard to envisage. Is it even art? Where is the authenticity of experience that is the essence of cultural tradition?

Work is very much in progress, with only about half-a-dozen statues in place, and a workshop area for honing further examples. I was told I couldn't go up to the site (the title Valley of the Saints had not prepared me for their current location on the top of a hill) because tractors were working, putting a statue in place. When I pointed out that the world and his wife and all his dogs were processing ahead of me up the track, I got a resigned shrug. It's clearly difficult to keep control over the instincts of man even in this place of holy figures.

Except it isn't, of course, a holy place and never will have the atmosphere and context that understanding of the particularities of Breton saints requires. The placing seems random and the selection includes historical figures like St Yves and mythical founders. The language of faith that is religious iconography should help in identification as they are not (yet) all named - only if you happen to know all those symbols in the first place.

What sort of literature will be produced to explain a mass demonstration of religious figures from 15 centuries, originating from different countries and holding distinctively different places in the complex tapestry of Breton religious development? How will visitors be able to distinguish between history and legend? Will the final presentation rate story-telling above significance? Will this become a substitute for visiting Brittany's unparalleled variety and richesse of churches, chapels and cathedrals? Like a mini Tro Breizh pilgrimage around the tomb of a 20th century bishop in Quimper cathedral, instead of the 600km walk of the real thing?

It will presumably answer the basic question who, but what about where and why and how? How can context be created for this glum parade? In the end this could be dumbing down on a colossal scale. I sincerely hope it will develop into something more. I'm sure the coach parties will roll in regardless.