The order of the day includes the massing of the pilgrims at open-air services, the placing of candles before the shrine, the inspection of the relics of the saint, the drinking of, or bathing in, the miraculous fountain, and sermons and admonitions uncounted, all in the Breton tongue, incomprehensible to outsiders, but to be taken as salutary. The great feature is the procession of priests and pilgrims, the former in their brilliant vestments, many of the latter bearing tall, gaudily coloured candles and gay silken banners. Grouped around each banner will be found the Breton men and women from a particular section, each group differently clad from those of other sections, but all gay with brilliant colouring.
"Saint Anne, pray for us!" is the cry one would hear were it in English, or "_Sainte Anne, priez pour nous_" in French; in Breton, its sadness is indescribable, more like the wail of a _banshee_ than anything else.
Usually the Bishop of Vannes delivers an exhortation, in the Breton tongue, of course, from the top of the Holy Steps, after which the throng--or, at least, such as are truly and sincerely devout--climb to the top on their knees. According to the printed notice at the foot, each step mounted on the bended knee, accompanied of course by a prayer, is good for a nine years' absolution of a soul in purgatory. In the cloister behind the church is a great crucifix, in which the peasant pilgrims stick pins, each recording a prayer said or a vow made.
On the night of July twenty-sixth, St. Anne's Day, a grand torchlight procession marches. The "Marche aux Flambeaux," a celebrated painting by Jules Breton, now owned in America, well shows the effect of one of these great demonstrations, except that it lacks the weirdness of the sombre background of night itself.
This ends the great days of the pardon, but throughout the year pilgrims make their way to the shrine to say a prayer, or to drink or bathe in the waters of the fountain, or perhaps to carry a jugful home to some bedridden member of their families.
Among the offerings in fulfilment of vows made at the shrine of Ste. Anne d'Auray are a number of very ancient inscriptions, such as the following best illustrate: