St Malo, Brittany
Our moorings couldn't be better. The Quai St Louis lies opposite the Grande Porte, principal gateway through the thickly reconstructed ramparts of the old mediaeval city of St Malo. The city is named after a sixth-century Celtic saint, a reminder that we are now in a Celtic country where the Breton language—close cousin of Welsh and Cornish in the Celtic family of languages—is here fighting for its life. Brittany is the last redoubt of the Celtic peoples on the mainland of continental Europe. The country lost its political independence early in the sixteenth-century through a forced alliance between the King of France and the Duchesse Anne de Bretagne and has been governed directly from Paris ever since.
Independence of spirit is another matter. To the French, the Bretons can seem a stubborn, recalcitrant people. Why persist in speaking an apparently dying language on this remote Atlantic peninsula of the Hexagon that is forever France? Or would resilience be a better word? The Bretons have been here for two millennia and, come what may, intend to go on being themselves for a few more years yet. Scratch the apparently homogenous French surface and differences soon appear. There are culinary differences, of course—crepes and cider, oysters and Muscadet—but that is true of all French "regions." That independent streak runs deeper. We are moored next to replica of a Malouine corsaire, for this has ever been a city of seafarers: fishermen, privateers and explorers. The Spanish name for the Falkland Islands—Las Malvinas—derives from the their pronunciation of Les Iles Malouines, the St Malo Islands. For these rich, south Atlantic fishing-grounds were the basis of the city's wealth in the sixteenth century and the privateers of St Malo secured influence for their city in defense of French maritime interests. From this city, Jacques Cartier set sail en route to Quebec.
The special place of the town in French history can be best understood by looking carefully at the flags on the town hall. The French tricolor and the Breton gwenn ha du fly equally, but above them flies the flag of the city itself. Nowhere else in France is any flag allowed to fly above the national tricolor but here in St Malo. Stubborn? Maybe, but not provincial or inward-looking. Brittany may have its back turned on Paris but it faces out across the Atlantic. An intense civic pride demanded that the old city, destroyed by Allied bombing at the end of the Second World War, be rebuilt in situ whereas other towns that had suffered the same fate—Cherbourg, Caen or Brest, for example—were rebuilt according to the dictates of Parisian town-planners. I once spent a few weeks on the little island of Ushant off the Breton coast and was there told a wonderful story. A Parisian holiday-maker decided to strike up a conversation with an elderly Breton who was gathering lettuce from his garden for the evening salad. "I don't suppose you've ever been on the Metro?" he asked somewhat condescendingly. "Which one?" came the innocently cosmopolitan reply; "Boston, London, Valparaiso…."It should not surprise us that the great nineteenth French poet Chateaubriand—the one who like his steak cooked that way—who was born in St Malo, should have asked to be buried on a little island off the coast here, facing the wind and the waves.
Our moorings couldn't be better. The Quai St Louis lies opposite the Grande Porte, principal gateway through the thickly reconstructed ramparts of the old mediaeval city of St Malo. The city is named after a sixth-century Celtic saint, a reminder that we are now in a Celtic country where the Breton language—close cousin of Welsh and Cornish in the Celtic family of languages—is here fighting for its life. Brittany is the last redoubt of the Celtic peoples on the mainland of continental Europe. The country lost its political independence early in the sixteenth-century through a forced alliance between the King of France and the Duchesse Anne de Bretagne and has been governed directly from Paris ever since.
Independence of spirit is another matter. To the French, the Bretons can seem a stubborn, recalcitrant people. Why persist in speaking an apparently dying language on this remote Atlantic peninsula of the Hexagon that is forever France? Or would resilience be a better word? The Bretons have been here for two millennia and, come what may, intend to go on being themselves for a few more years yet. Scratch the apparently homogenous French surface and differences soon appear. There are culinary differences, of course—crepes and cider, oysters and Muscadet—but that is true of all French "regions." That independent streak runs deeper. We are moored next to replica of a Malouine corsaire, for this has ever been a city of seafarers: fishermen, privateers and explorers. The Spanish name for the Falkland Islands—Las Malvinas—derives from the their pronunciation of Les Iles Malouines, the St Malo Islands. For these rich, south Atlantic fishing-grounds were the basis of the city's wealth in the sixteenth century and the privateers of St Malo secured influence for their city in defense of French maritime interests. From this city, Jacques Cartier set sail en route to Quebec.
The special place of the town in French history can be best understood by looking carefully at the flags on the town hall. The French tricolor and the Breton gwenn ha du fly equally, but above them flies the flag of the city itself. Nowhere else in France is any flag allowed to fly above the national tricolor but here in St Malo. Stubborn? Maybe, but not provincial or inward-looking. Brittany may have its back turned on Paris but it faces out across the Atlantic. An intense civic pride demanded that the old city, destroyed by Allied bombing at the end of the Second World War, be rebuilt in situ whereas other towns that had suffered the same fate—Cherbourg, Caen or Brest, for example—were rebuilt according to the dictates of Parisian town-planners. I once spent a few weeks on the little island of Ushant off the Breton coast and was there told a wonderful story. A Parisian holiday-maker decided to strike up a conversation with an elderly Breton who was gathering lettuce from his garden for the evening salad. "I don't suppose you've ever been on the Metro?" he asked somewhat condescendingly. "Which one?" came the innocently cosmopolitan reply; "Boston, London, Valparaiso…."It should not surprise us that the great nineteenth French poet Chateaubriand—the one who like his steak cooked that way—who was born in St Malo, should have asked to be buried on a little island off the coast here, facing the wind and the waves.
