The poorer families have better habits. They wash their few possessions regularly and out of doors in large pools constructed for the purpose, where hundreds of women congregate, kneeling on the flagstones around the pond, beating their linen energetically on boards, with a flat wooden tool, to economize soap. This I consider a far cleaner method than that of our British cottagers, who wash their clothes in their one living-room, inhaling impure steam.
In spite of the winds and the tempests which desolate it, the Bretons love their country. They live in liberty; they are their own masters. The past holds profound and tenacious root in the hearts of these men of granite, and the attachment to old beliefs is strong. The people still believe in miracles, in sorcery, and in the evil eye. The land, rich with memories of many kinds,--with its menhirs, its old cathedrals, its pilgrimages, its _pardons_--sleeps peacefully in this century of innovations. In Brittany everything seems to have been designed long ago. Wherever one goes one comes across a strange and ancient Druidical monument, menhirs, and dolmens of fabulous antiquity, an exquisite legend, a ruined château, ancient stone crosses, _calvaires_, and carvings. It is a country full of signs and meanings. The poetical superstitions and legends have been left intact in their primitive simplicity. Nowhere do you see finer peasantry; nowhere more dignity and nobility in the features of the men and women who work in the fields; nowhere such quaint houses and costumes; hardly anywhere more magnificent scenery. You have verdant islands, ancient forests, villages nestling in the mountains, country as wild and beautiful as the moors of Scotland, fields and pasture-lands as highly cultivated as those of Lincolnshire.
Brittany is especially inspiring to the painter. You find villages in which the people still wear the national dress. Perhaps, however, the time is not far distant when new customs will arise and the old beliefs will be only a remembrance. Little by little the influence of modern times begins to show itself upon the language, the costume, and the poetic superstitions. The iron and undecorative hand of the twentieth century is closing down upon the country.