Jean-René Guérin spends an evening on gallo and lets the language show its many facets. The session mixes short films, slideshows and told stories, and the audience is there to join in, not to sit still. What holds it together is the langue gallèse itself, carried by a host who works for it, not explained from outside. A friendly get-together follows at the salle polyvalente of Lamballe-Armor.
Topic: events
Three trades behind the forest of Brocéliande
Brocéliande is known for its legends, and this walk asks what work goes on behind them. Around the Jardin aux Moines, three parties read the same stretch of forest in turn: a storytelling guide from the Office de tourisme de Brocéliande-Paimpont, timber professionals from Fibois Bretagne, and foresters from the CNPF. Visitors hear how the forest is told, then how it is cut and sold. The trail runs two kilometres and sets out only if five sign on.
La langue des crêpes, a tongue not handed down
Jean Philippe Davodeau turns crêpes on stage and asks why the langue bretonne his grandparents spoke was never passed down to him. The question sends him to psychanalyse and sociologie to work out what happened au pays. What comes back is a cabaret conférence that keeps slipping out of his hands into situations with no sense in them. Two comédiens chanteurs hold the stage with him, Bob Simon among them.
Livre & Mer, salon du livre maritime de Concarneau
The Festival Livre & Mer gathers the authors of the sea at the complexe sportif du Porzou in Concarneau, for its forty-first edition. Novelists, scientists, historians, comic-book authors and sailors meet readers across one large maritime bookshop. Lectures and round tables run beside the stands. Three prizes are handed out, led by the Prix Livre&Mer Henri Quéffelec, and this edition carries the label 400 ans de la marine.
L’Assemblée des Bourdons at Plumergat
Compagnie Pied en Sol draws L’Assemblée des Bourdons out of Breton popular tradition: the troménies, the danses macabres, animal figures and gargoyles. Six dancers, Mathieu Hamon’s voice and Ronan Pellen’s viole de gambe build it as a bal du monde where step, voice and rhythm are one. Brigitte Trémelot and Denis Madeleine choreographed the fifty-minute piece. The Festival Un Automne Autrement hosts it at Plumergat with Ti Douar Alré.
Kalon Eusa, contes et légendes d’Ouessant
Kalon Eusa guides the oral heritage of Ouessant on two separate routes. The Armor walk leaves Lampaul at nightfall and turns to the sea, where the island’s magical characters surface, sometimes benevolent and often malevolent. The Argoat walk goes inland to the marshes, springs and fountains, and to groves of willows, alders and chestnut trees where a small magical people shelters. Armor names the sea-facing country and Argoat the interior.
Visite gratuite du Grand Cairn de Barnénez
The Grand Cairn de Barnénez is opened to visitors without a ticket, and it is considered the oldest mausoleum in Europe, raised some six thousand years ago. Its facade runs 72 metres long, 28 metres wide and nearly eight high, and eleven passage burial chambers give it its rhythm. Some tombs still carry engraved messages nobody has read. Guided visits are offered, and the cairn stands on a promontory above the bay of Morlaix.
Visite des huîtres Legris, Plouguerneau
Maison Legris is a conchylicole house whose oysters are raised in the Archipel de Lilia, off Plouguerneau. The visit sets out from the family’s oyster bar facing the open sea and crosses a few hundred metres to the chantier. The oysters are then sorted, graded and packed for dispatch while the work is explained. The thread running through it is the métier de l’ostréiculteur, worked on the beds of the archipelago.
Les clés de la Ville-Close, walled Concarneau
A guide from Concarneau’s own heritage service walks the Ville-Close, the historic heart of the town. The route traces its maritime history, then its civil and its military past, so that the medieval walled town is read closely instead of simply crossed. The service that leads it carries the Ville d’Art et Histoire label, and the Maison du Patrimoine takes the bookings. The visit takes thirty-five people at most.
Dans les coulisses des algues bretonnes
The drying facility of a Trégunc seaweed business opens for this visit, and the stages of seaweed processing are presented in order. With them comes the trade of the professional seaweed harvester, who works wild food seaweed, not a cultivated crop. A tasting closes it: seaweed as broth, as crackers, as tartare, as chips, and in cheeses aged with it. The Maison de l’Alimentation Itinérante of the association Aux Goûts Du Jour runs the stop.