To enter the Breton peasant's farmhouse, one almost invariably descends a step. The interior is badly lighted, and worse ventilated, but, as it is mostly the open-air life that the peasant and his family lead, perhaps this does not so much matter. Usually the house is composed of but one room, with a floor of hard-trodden earth. This is the dining-room, kitchen, and bedroom of all the family. The ceiling is composed of great rough-hewn rafters, sometimes even of trunks left with the bark on, and from it are hung the knives and forks and dishes, as in a ship's cabin.
Furniture has been reduced to the most simple formula. Two or three great closed and panelled beds or bunks line one side of the wall, with perhaps a wardrobe, where the "Sunday-best" of the whole household is kept. Beneath the great beds is a series of oaken chests, and there the household linen is stored. These, with a long table, with a bench and a wide passage on either side, the great, yawning fireplace, with its crane and the inevitable highly polished pots and pans, form the furnishings of this remarkable apartment. All this is homely and strange, but it is comfortable enough for the occupants, if one does not mind being crowded, and it is the typical dwelling throughout Brittany.
Everywhere in the Breton country one sees oxen, cattle, and, above all, the horses of the indefatigable Breton race, "ready and willing to work and full of spirit in warfare." So said Eugene Sue, and the same observation holds true to-day. None of the animals are so large or so fat as in the neighbouring provinces, but this is not because of malnutrition or because they are ill-tended. The cows of Brittany are by no means such plump, dainty animals as the cows of the Cotentin, and the Breton horses are certainly undersized when compared to the Norman sires and the great-footed Percherons, but one and all possess good qualities purely their own, and one thing above all should be noted,--Brittany is exceedingly rich grazing country, if not agricultural.
[Illustration: _From the_ ARTIST'S SKETCH BOOK.]
Much of the local character is shown in the dress of the people, and throughout the country-side and the seacoast villages alike both men and women show that remarkable attention to dress which marks the strong individuality of the race,--individuality which has come down through the ages, and endures to this day in very nearly, if not quite all, its original aspect. One knows this dress through photographic reproductions, and from having occasionally seen it on the comic opera stage, but actually to live among such picturesquely dressed folk is like a step back into the past.