Rambles in Brittany

M. F. Mansfield wrote Rambles in Brittany. The text says that when the Duchess Anne took Louis XII. for her second husband, Brittany became a part of the royal domain, never to be separated from it. The text calls the province commonly a land of granite, but also a land most picturesque, melancholy, and dreamy, with immense horizons of sea and sky.

The remains of the old Abbaye de la Joie, a famous establishment of the monks of the Cistercian order, are to be seen in suburban Hennebont, on the left bank of the Blavet, the text says. The abbey was founded in the thirteenth century by Blanche of Champagne, wife of John the Red-haired. The text says Pont Scorff has not the magnitude or the antiquity of Hennebont, and that its two parts are known as the upper town and the lower town. The text notes many simple crosses throughout Brittany, for the most part unpretentious pieces of wood put together in the form of a cross, or a like symbol, rudely hammered out of a piece of iron by the local blacksmith.