The Druid that never was ...

I've been working a lot lately on 'traditions' that were invented in the 19th century to promote certain images of Brittany or to try to attract people to particular areas. The Foret de Paimpont's artificial association with Arthurian Brocéliande is a case in point, fostered especially after the publication in Paris in 1812 of La Table Rond, a work of high Romance. Its influence encouraged men like Blanchard de la Musse to seek out suitable physical places for scenes from the Arthurian tales in their own neighbourhoods. He decided to locate the Valley of No Return in the Foret de Paimpont. Later it had to be moved because they built a factory in the original setting, but that's another story...
The glass window above is from the remarkable church at Rumengol, richly decorated by Marine artisans from Brest. The window is late 19th century and it shows a sad Druid lamenting his loss of status as two early Breton saints lord it over his former domain, setting up a statue of the Virgin Mary on top of a dolmen (neolithic burial place). Leaving aside this latter anachronism, the illustration purports to relate to the very well-known and strong tradition that the church was built on the site of a former Druid sanctuary, where human sacrifice was carried out. The adjacent forest of Cranou is certainly an atmospheric place with plenty of oak trees even today, and it may well once have been a focus of Druid ritual, but in as much as any wooded area - which doesn't narrow things down much in Brittany - might have been.
The Druid connection has given rise to songs and stories galore, incuding the legend of St Guenolé, outraged by the thought of pagan practice, running all the way from Menez Hom to remonstrate with the Druid and teach him the error of his ways before making poor old King Gradlon build a proper Christian church on the spot.
So where has all this come from? All too often it is impossible to find the end of the thread of local traditions, many of which do genuinely go back to a distant past. But in this case, I think it is possible to point the finger at one individual and hold him responsible for creating an image of Rumengol out of his own imagination. The Chevalier de Freminville (often called La Chevalière for his fondness for dressing up in women's clothes) was no Breton speaker but he had an unquenchable interest in the mysteries of Brittany, and in his treatise of 1829 on antiquities here, came up with a translation of the name Rumengol that gives us 'glowing red stone.' From here chuck in a dolmen and it is but a short bound to Druids and blood sacrifice - at that time it was still wrongly thought that neolithic remains were the work of the Celts. Later writers soon picked this theme up and ran with it - hence we now have an infallible 'ancient' tradition, and the curiosity of this stained glass window.

Trévarez

I worked with the Domaine de Trévarez again this year, translating texts for their new exhibitions, and made a visit yesterday with my friend Jeanne to see the artistic creations in the flesh and to enjoy the gardens - plenty of colour already in evidence - in superb spring weather.

We had a good walk all round and then tea and cake in the courtyard café area. Brought back memories of working for the National Trust at Stourhead.

AIKB trip

Pebble factory

Rochers at St-Guenolé

A pleasure as ever to give a tour for the AIKB today, this time in Pays Bigouden, the south-western tip of Brittany. We started at Tronoen with one of the earliest calvaires in the region, before a visit to the remains of the WWII factory where Germans ground down pebbles from the natural sea defences of the Baie d'Audierne to use in the building of their Atlantic Wall structures. We had a picnic lunch and stroll on the beach Porz Carn, opposite the pre-history museum's outdoor exhibits, before continuing to the Rochers de St-Guenolé, a noted danger spot on this flat coast subject to mighty waves at high tides. In 1870 the family of the Prefect of Finstère were washed away as they picnicked here. We weren't.
The lethal lower rocks all around the nearby Pointe de Penmarc'h featured in Chaucer's Franklin's Tale, and we finished up beside them at the magnificent Phare Eckmuhl, built at the end of the 19th century to mitigate the threats this treacherous coast poses to passing shipping. Lovely warm, sunny day to enjoy this unusual area, which features in the Coast chapter of my forthcoming book: Brittany, a cultural history.

Lac St-Michel and the Yeun Elez

Yesterday I walked the 15km round Lac St-Michel for a GPS trace to ensure accurate maps for my Monts d'Arrée booklet, which is nearly finished. The drawback of this circuit was always a long stretch of tedious road-walking around the nuclear power-station at the Brennilis end, but this was re-worked last year to give scenic footpaths instead right by the lake and behind the barrage at Nestavel. I needed to check exactly how this all worked on the ground, and the route is indeed immeasurably improved.
The advantage of this circuit is the almost flat level of the whole thing, offering a long walk to those whose knees may not appreciate the usual very up and down Breton terrain. There are also great views of all the highest hills in Brittany, without the need to climb them. Crossing the Yeun Elez, often on wooden walkways, gives a close experience of the peaty tourbières characteristic of this area, in contrast with the upper heaths or landes. Here you are crossing the cradle of Breton legend as well as a distinctive landscape.

Talich quartet in Quimper

I first went to hear the original Talich quartet in London at the Wigmore Hall about 30 years ago. The dense power, lightness of touch and liquidity that were so impressive then were equally evident yesterday afternoon in Quimper, when the current line-up, including a member of the original family,  performed Schubert's Death and the Maiden and their speciality, Dvorak, (Quartet No.10) at the Theatre de Cornouaille. This was a Sunday 'chocolate concert' with hot chocolate to drink and handmade chocolates to sample before the show. And what a show it was. We were sitting in the balcony, a perfect vantage point for every bowing, facial expression and bald spot. It was magnificent, and a packed theatre would have sat for many more than the three encores we got. This morning I unearthed my recording of the Talich playing Dvorak quartets and quintettes and it is playing as I write. Moving, exciting and so evocative of my long love-affair with eastern Europe and time spent there.

Coming soon - my two new books

Thanks to all who have enquired about a follow-up to the much appreciated little tourist book I did on Huelgoat last year. In exactly the same format and to be published in separate English and French editions is 'The Monts d'Arrée.' Same kind of thing - sights including villages, nature trails and local museums, history, legends and walking maps, plus a glossary of Breton place-names. I am told it will be out in May.
On the other hand I don't have a firm publication date from Signal Books for 'Brittany: a cultural history,' but it is being edited at the moment and I've just seen the cover for the first time, so things are happening over there in Oxford.

A change of scene

Bécherel

Just spent a few days in eastern Brittany, part research, part pleasure of revisting some old much-loved haunts. On the way out stopped at Bécherel, the little town of books à la Hay-on-Wye, then continued into Ille-et-Vilaine to stay in the same fantastic accommodation as last September (thank you, Lionel and Maryne - www.gites-combourg.com), which is certainly the best such place I know of in Brittany. Five minutes away is the beautiful small town of Combourg with its chateau immortalised in the works of French writer Chateaubriand, who spent part of his childhood there. I am currently writing a text about both man and place, so it was great to be back walking the grounds where he famously 'created' the state of ennui in his teenage angst years.
The French friend I was with had not visited this area before so we did some sights, including the Menhir de Champ Dolent. I have been pretty underwhelmed by Dol-de-Bretagne's treatment of tourists and distortion of history on many previous visits, but yet another example can be seen at this famous menhir, one of the best known in Brittany and a feature of various TV films needing a bit of mysterious atmosphere. The new noticeboard is a jokey cartoon of the legendary origin of the menhir - no information whatsoever about the actual historical date and context of the stone, but only a silly story drawn in (dated) comic book style. What a pathetic service to offer visitors! Apparently no-one is capable of understanding or appreciating anything unless it is whimsical and trivial. Dol must be the dumbed-down capital of Brittany.

Otherwise we went to Cancale for my friend to eat those renowned local oysters but failed to see the sea despite lunching in a cliff-top restaurant at the Pointe du Grouin - a heavy mist lay over the NE corner of Brittany throughout the day and very little was visible. Went up Mont Dol to see the Devil's footprints anyway.

Statue of Chateaubriand below the chateau

Tuchenn Gador

Out early onto the moors this morning in glorious weather, all around the summit of Tuchenn Gador. This is topped by a natural rock formation (not a megalith, although many climb all the way up in hope) of schist and quartzite, hence the sparkles in the surface. Thanks to the mishearing or misunderstanding or sheer carelessness of an 18th century French map-maker who neither knew nor cared about the Breton language, it is often marked Tousaines (All saints) on maps to this day. Tuchenn actually means an eminence or mound, sometimes a burial mound, so Tuchenn Gador (Kador) is the 'mound of the chair,' in the sense of throne-like rocks. The views are exceptional from the summit, taking in the crests all around Lac St-Michel and the widespread tourbières or peat-bogs.
There are many little cairns of stones along the paths to the top, gradually built up by modern walkers and pilgrims. Some want to mark their own passage, out of a sense of personal achievement or in the age-old way of men determined to mark the landscape with evidence of their ability to conquer it. The inspiration of the neolithic megaliths is all around in this part of Brittany. Others are honouring elemental deities and nature itself, for it is on the moor on such a day as today that one is forcefully aware of the interplay of earth, air, fire and water.

St David's Day

Sadly no rugby today but daffodils were out in my garden to offer a button-hole to celebrate St David's Day. After meeting up with friends who are just back from Hong Kong, I bumped into Fred Dixon at the supermarket. His well-researched novel Ring of Minos (about ancient Thera and Crete) is just out, and definitely a recommended read - available now on Amazon.
I was pleased to receive in the post a contributor's copy of Now Write: Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, published in the USA by Tarcher/Penguin. I was asked to do something for this volume a long while back and publication is finally here. My article and creative exercise for those looking to develop their writing skills is entitled Leaping into Landscape, and mostly about the work on forest I was pursuing when the Signal contract came along and distracted me. The Mirror of Landscape themes will now form the major part of my output this year instead, but in conjunction with an artist for a pictures and text exhibition. We have our first meeting on the project coming up this week.

On the coast

Stayed with friends this week and we made a trip to the north coast at St-Samson. Ran the dogs on the beach and then walked south past the Pierre Double towards Terenez. Perfect weather, lively sea and great company.

Book Fair

I was at Cloitre-St-Thegonnec today for the annual book fair. Good day chatting with fellow authors and visitors, and lunching with my good friends Paul and Yvonne, who took some photos of the day.

Stormy spring

Been a rough old couple of weeks since finishing the book - storms and long power-cuts wearying enough, but a severe throat infection and the totally impossibility of getting warm or dry inside my hovel have created something of an endurance test when I have no energy to deal with it.
Walking has been very limited for these reasons lately - I even missed the Brittany Walks event last week, only the third absence in 10 years - but I did get into the forest in Huelgoat on Sunday. More trees are down but water levels are now lower than during the December deluge. The river bridges were passable although signs they had been underwater earlier. Yesterday on a brief sortie in the rain the atmosphere was spring-like with banks of primroses, budding trees and excited bird song all around.

Double celebration

Wales won AND I've finished my book. Look out for it later in the year with Signal Books (www.signalbooks.co.uk) in their Landscapes of the Imagination series. Now I am excavating my desk and the dining table, having seen the surface of neither for many months. Then will be time for friends, cooking, cleaning, meditating, poetry and exercise. After a rest, I have a little megalithic book to sort out, two articles in the pipeline and a much bigger writing project for later in the year. So today is a great day, despite the weather - even the dogs were happy to curtail their walk in the rain.

Landscape talk

The Great Cairn of Barnenez

I'm working pretty much day and night to finish the book at the moment, but was pleased to take a few hours off yesterday to talk to the AIKB association in central Brittany about Landscape and Legends. This was about the relationship between natural sites and the stories that are developed to 'enhance' them. The Forest of Cranou and Rumengol church, for example, where we have a nautical cross-dresser, Le Chevalier de Freminville (nick-named La Chevalière for obvious reasons) to thank for a Druid connection.
It was a really enjoyable occasion, the highlight being given a gift of postcards of her paintings by Jill Jamieson. One was based on a guided visit I did with the AIKB to the Cairn of Barnenez last year. My photo here in no way does justice to Jill's work, which presents the physical and emotional layers of landscape in a way I really appreciate. Have a look at her website - www.jilljamieson-12640-painter-brittany.com - to get the full flavour.

Moor wind, moor rain

After being up most of the night - unable to sleep so used the long dark hours to work on the completed first draft of the book - I needed a burst on the moor this morning despite feeling hardly able to put one foot in front of the other, exhausted and aching in every bone and joint. It was a real battle to meet the storm blasts head on, but turning north-east came as a sudden relief and it seemed as if rather than trudging I was suddenly moving  at the speed of a galloping horse (actually about 4kph). The wind is less forceful today than at the weekend, but still racing about with all the energy of anger. I missed the rain, so came back dry, but weary as could be.

New Year's Day

Odet rising in Quimper, Dec 24th

Stormy weather to see in 2014 in western Brittany. I've returned this morning in torrential rain from a week's stay in Huelgoat, where many trees are down in the forest from the pre-Christmas gales. My hovel was without power all the night of the worst storm I've known here on December 23rd so it was good to pass some days in warmth and comfort. But work must resume today and I need to be in my own office with access to all books and documents accumulated during this year long travail on the new book - only a few weeks until deadline, so no time to be lost.
Instead of resolutions for the New Year I'm adopting the ZenHabits policy of habit-breaking on a month by month basis. In January I will abstain entirely from my favourite computer game and one website where I waste a lot of time - the idea being to channel those extra hours into something constructive. I have made a long list of small creative projects I'd like to do this year, mostly unconnected with the day-job writing, so that should work well. If only my fingers are not so cold there is little possible beyond emerging from a nest of blankets to press buttons on the TV remote... No, I'm very positive and looking forward to 2014.
Happy New Year to you all.

Happy Yule and 2014 to all my readers

Wishing everyone a very happy holiday break, with thanks for all the phenomenal support I've had from friends and readers during this year. Looking forward to 2014!

Quimper - new perspective

Made a quick dash to Quimper today in beautifully clear weather. Everyone knows about the unusual crooked nave of the cathedral, but a crooked spire too?  Who knew.

Came home in a violent storm.

Pliny the Younger and Penmarc'h

This morning I've had the strange experience of baking Christmas biscuits in my Breton hovel whilst listening to Melvyn Bragg and his guests talking about Pliny the Younger. It brings back my decades of teaching ancient history and many relatively tedious hours of Pliny's letters in Latin. What made me glad to have come out of that world is the fact that eveything being said by scholars this morning was pretty much exactly what I was taught at university and what I went on to relay to my pupils. Pliny is inevitably something of a finite figure despite his prissy verbosity. How I prefer to be working now in the context of a living culture, attested by many thousands of individuals, alive and dead, and a range of source material to make any ancient historian weep.
Yesterday I was in very familiar territory in Pays Bigouden, renewing my close links with Penmarc'h and St-Guenolé on that unique flatly perilous coast on the south-west tip of Finistère. Highlight? The Phare Eckmuhl.

Parish closes

The Parish Closes, particularly those of north Finistère (like Guimiliau - pictured above), will of course feature in the new book. They are very special to me and I've enjoyed teaching a course on the subject, including practical visits, from time to time. No consideration of Breton culture could really ignore these supreme expressions of faith, community and artistic achievement. They also represent a period of great commercial prosperity, based on the cloth trade with England, when thousands of locals were involved in one or other of the many stages of process from growing the flax to selling the finished product.
The symbolism of death and resurrection and tales from the story of Christ predominate in the decoration, but there are plenty of oddities from a more pagan tradition including Green Men, monsters and bare-breasted women. What a lot those early saints had to put up with!

Reflections of nuclear power

Today in the Monts d'Arrée

Sardines and surrealism

In Douarnenez today: one of my regular haunts and part of the Coast chapter of the new book. The prosperity brought by the prolific sardine harvest in such a vast, shallow bay was abruptly snatched away when stocks inexplicably failed in the early years of the 20th century. The hardship was brutal, as, when business resumed, were conditions in the factories, which led to one of the most notorious strikes of the inter-war years by women desperate to be paid a living wage for their gruelling efforts. An armed attack on the communist mayor was one of the strike-breakers' tactics.
On a contrasting note, the town has long attracted artists of many persuasions, drawn to the coastal scenes of everyday life and natural beauty. Englishman Kit Wood produced some of his last (and best) paintings here before his suicide in 1930. The church in Tréboul (see photo) was one of his subjects - in those days at the heart of a tiny village, today part of Douarnenez and home to the pleasure marina. Surrealist Yves Tanguy, whose mother was from nearby Locronan, not only painted many of his bizarre but compelling pictures here, but asked in his will that his ashes be scattered on the bay, far from his adopted home in the USA.

Winter is here

We've had an abrupt autumn in western Brittany, shortened by the Indian summer and dulled by the earlier lack of rain. Walked today along the Nantes-Brest canal near Chateaulin. The Aulne is grey and smooth in sharp, cold air without a breath of wind. Some trees are still green, other unleafed to skeletons without any transitory colour. Here and there along the Aulne valley there are splashes of orange, brown and gold, but that's a deceptive sideshow. Winter is here.

Rennes again

I've been working in Rennes this week, looking especially at modern art and architecture. The photos above show the sculptural shadow-play of Alignement du XXI siècle by Aurelie Nemours at Beauregard.
Below, Georges Maillols' Horizons tower block (1970), is still a mesmorising spectacle from any angle, like its contemporary the Tour de l'Eperon by Louis Arretche.

I was also on the Odorico trail. This famous mosaicist and football fan has left his mark on many buildings in the city.

Great trip! Now time to write it all up...

Moor (and the language of landscape)

Out early this morning on the moor, after a night of torrential rain and storm-force winds. The sun did put in a short appearance but it's hard to enjoy our puny extremes of weather with images of the Philippines in mind. The top photo shows Tuchenn Gador, often marked Toussaints on maps as early French map-makers did not understand the Breton Tuchenn (a mound or prominent spot) and assumed a word that sounded like it - hence All Saints!

Rennes

Writing about Rennes at the moment, mainly on the architerctural development of the city in line with its political fortunes and redevelopment after the great fire of 1720. It's interesting that few observers over the centuries seem to have anything positive to say about the regional capital. In 1788 Arthur Young was surprised by the people's affection and support for the exiled Parliament despite the huge gulf between the nobility and the poor, and terrible living conditions at the lower end of the social scale. A French visitor in 1636 had never seen so many rats and mice in his life, and everyone complained about the smell ...

Now we are six...

We still like playing on the beach...

We are still a young pup at heart...

And we like staying in hotels with this kind of view from our window...
And having HAM for breakfast ... just once a year.