The "Tombe à la Fille"

It is the suffering, finally, of this young woman of 1796 which has been erected into a sacred phenomenon.

Françoise Gründ, ethnoscénographe, speaking in 2011

The "Tombe à la Fille" in 2007 (photo posted on X by Paul Chopelin)

Again associated with a sainte-bleue, the "Tombe à  la Fille" in the  Forest of Teillay, is still an active - indeed oddly thriving - place of pilgrimage.  Attention was drawn to its existence in a notice which appeared in the AHRF in 1952, shortly after Lefebvre's article on Perrine Dugué, and the two sites are often considered together in the academic literature. The name of the girl involved is given as Marie Martin (occasionally Marguérite or Thérèse), her age "about 19".  She is also often referred to as  "Sainte-Pataude", "pataud" being a pejorative term for "patriot" in the local patois.  It is not known why she was killed; in some versions she is said to have revealed a rebel hideout; in others, perhaps more plausibly, she is said to have refused to betray her master.

There is only one surviving contemporary account, a report of September 1797, written by the Directory's Commissaire in nearby Bourg-des-Comptes (identified as a lawyer from Bain, Paul François Martin).  This document dates events to the beginning of Year IV, that is late 1795, about six months prior to the death of Perrine Dugué. The writer specifies only that the young woman had "showed her aversion" to the Chouans. In 1833 the Orléanist journal L'Auxilliaire Bréton briefly included the case in a catalogue of royalist  atrocities in the region. Otherwise, nothing was written down before the 1870s and we are reliant on oral tradition. The fullest modern account is in Michel Lagree and Jehanne Roche's Tombes de mémoire, published in 1993.

A half-forgotten history...

Marie Martin is universally agreed to have been a native of Tresboeuf, a commune a dozen or so kilometres to the east of the district capital of Bain-en-Bretagne and ten kilometres from Teillay.  Her father is known to have died in 1791. She is often said to have been living at a local farm, perhaps with an uncle, or alternatively "en chambre" in Teillay itself. 

The house in Tresboeuf where
 Marie Martin perhaps lodged

An archived version of the Teillay commune website has a different version. It states that Marie was lodging at at the time of her death not in Teillay but in the centre of Tresboeuf, with a merchant named Jean Martin (no known relation); he said elsewhere said to have been a "livestock dealer".  His house, on the place de l'Église, still stands and is now the agence de poste.  Martin had fallen foul of the Chouans through his acquisition of biens nationaux.  

This information doesn't quite make sense geographically - Marie was surely more likely to have been living in Teillay close by  the forest where she was left for dead.  However, according to Michel Lagree, several purchasers of  biens nationaux in Tresboeuf did indeed have the surname Martin; the insurgents reserved for such beneficiaries "their most ferocious hatred and cruellest treatment"(Lagree (1978) nt.37)

Marie is presumed to have been accosted and dragged into the woods where the tomb now stands.  What happened next is recounted luridly in report of 1797:

Like Perrine Dugué, Marie Martin
was supposedly hanged from a tree

 They first satisfied their brutality.  Then they successively pulled out her toe- and finger- nails, her teeth, her eyes, and cut off her breasts.  They took three days over torturing this unfortunate victim of their anger and barbarity.  Then, when they saw that they would soon be exercising their cruelty on a cadaver, they hanged her from a tree in the Forest of Teillay, wearing only her chemise.

This is not an eye-witness account and we may be well be suspicious of its accuracy - note the familiar trope of the female victim left  hanged on a tree.  As with Perrine Dugué, folk memory emphasises the gruesome and prolonged nature of her torture. Significantly, although the attack has some sexual overtones, it is not clearly stated that the girl was either raped or successfully resisted her attackers.  One source gives the name of a man from a nearby village who was said to have shot her through the mouth to put an end to her misery.  She is presumed to lie buried on the spot where she was found. 

... A modern site of memory 

In marked contrast to Perrine Dugué's memorial chapel, the "Tombe à la Fille" remains a focus for modern pilgrims and visitors. 

Today, the Forest of Teillay, which covers over two thousand hectares, is privately owned, but footpaths on the edge make it possible to walk as far as the Tomb and the nearby Chapel of St.-Eustache. You can get almost all the way by car.  From the departmental boundary on the D772 between Bain-de-Bretagne and Chateaubriant, a side turning runs south-west (right coming from Bain-de-Bretagne and Teillay) for about a kilometre.  An oak tree on the right painted with a red cross indicates the path to the clearing where the tomb is located.

The grave is surrounded by trees, including a particularly prominent oak. It was originally marked by a wooden cross, but now there is clearly a stone replacement. Until the 1930s an unofficial custodian lived in a hut in the woods nearby.  Later the site was said to be "overseen by the members of the community".

Until very recently at least, the grave was not primarily a tourist attraction but a genuine place of pilgrimage. In 2008 the mayor of Teillay, Yvon Mellet, noted that he had sometimes seen sixty cars queued along the route - all the more surprising since the site was not at that time listed in any of the regional guidebooks.

Michel Lagree and Jehanne Roche, writing in 1993, inquired into the attitude of the clergy.  The tomb was largely ignored by the priest from the local church. But there were links to the 19th-century chapel of  Saint-Eustache, a thirty-minute walk away,  which for several years had received the offerings left by visitors.  Every year on 21st September a "pardon" - a traditional Breton pilgrimage of penance - took place, starting with an open air mass outside the chapel in the morning and a act of evangelisation directed at children. Thirty years on, however, this probably no longer happens. 

Today the site attracts interest not so much through its Christian associations as through its link with oral folk tradition.  

The Tombe as it looked in the early 20th century - from an old postcard

There is no circumstantial detail to be had regarding the start of the cult. The 1797 report states only that there was an "astonishing press of pilgrims" who were not to be deterred by priestly interdictions.  Nor can we assume veneration has been continuous:  there is quite likely to have been a gap in Napoleonic times when popular observances of this sort were actively discouraged following the Concordat of 1802. The body (if it indeed exists) has never been transferred nor any form of formal observance set up.

Like her story itself, the miracles attributed to "Sainte-Petaude" are  vague.  A set of supposed cures, listed by the folklorist Adolphe Oraine in 1898, reflects the usual health concerns of peasant society - fevers, crippled limbs, infertility, ailing children. There was a particular association with helping children to walk - hence the numerous shoes left at the site - though  this is by no means unique among Breton saints.  Even today, hesitant toddlers are occasionally made to perambulate ritually the grave, thereby inadvertently echoing that lost world of nourished infants and twisted limbs.

One ritual survival hints at more arcane practices.  Michel Lagree and Jehanne Roche recorded that at the beginning of the 20th century sufferers would plunge their afflicted limbs into a hole which had been dug at the foot  the tomb.  In 1950 the hole was still there as a receptacle for offerings.  Like the pilgrims who rubbed themselves with dirt from Perrine Dugué's grave, the faithful  sought thereby to draw closer to the power of the saint.  Original impulse or half-remembered pagan tradition?  There is clearly no way to be sure. 

Nowadays, the favours asked of Sainte-Petaude are more diverse and, arguably, a little less serious.  As well as good health, she now dispenses luck in love, success at work, even lottery wins.....

A longstanding tradition of leaving ex-votos still flourishes.  With the 21st century, the rationale is no longer very coherent but the range gets bigger and bigger.  An old cine film from the '90s posted on You Tube (below) shows the site festooned with odd articles of clothing like an abandoned washing line, and in 2008 an intrepid visitor described the grave  as "saturated with ready-made ex-votos".  Since then the excess debris has been cleaned up, but there has also been a certain evolution. More recent photos, notably the one posted on Wikipedia, often feature boughten memorial plaques which would once been in a churchyard. (In 2020 Paul Chopelin even noticed a portrait of  the pop-singer Grégory Le Marchal who died of cystic fibrosis in 2007)

The woodland site in itself clearly adds to the resonance of the tomb as  a  "place of memory"  The splendid old oak tree which grows next to the grave is held in particular reverence. One may be forgiven for assuming this tree was the one on which the saint was found hanged from; but, according to the website Arbres monumentaux, it was planted only in around 1900 (give or take 30 years). 

Nonetheless, as with the Chêne des Évêts in the story of Perrine Dugué, the tree has now become an integral part of the myth. It is often described on the internet as an "Arbre à loques", that is to say a kind of fetish tree. In France such trees are commonly credited with curative powers, and visitors will attach scraps of cloth or paper to their branches.  There are notable examples at Senarpont in the Somme (shrine of Saint Claude) and at Haslon in the Nord.  In the UK too trees of this sort occasionally develop near sacred sites - there is, or used to be one at the entrance to the West Kennet Longbarrow; at home though the tradition seems more neo-pagan and makeshift.

If the tomb of "Sainte-Pataude" is beginning to lose its Christian trappings,  it continues to be valued as a place of memory, and as an expression of Breton tradition - see particularly the comments of the ethnoscénographe Françoise Gründ in the Readings below.  In 2023 a project by the local photographer Goulven le Bahers made the site central to his exploration of regional identity.

At the site the debris has been cleared and a information plaque added.  I can't find many recent pictures on the internet, but from the photos added to GoogleMaps in 2022, it is now a bit tidier and less festooned with articles of clothing, but still as yet not entirely stiffled by the "heritage" agenda.

The plaque beside the tomb.
Photo from the site Arbres, chapelles à loques, taken in 2015.

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References

"La tombe à  la fille" on Wikipedia.fr
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombe_%C3%A0_la_fille

Roger Joxe, "Encore une sainte patriote: Sainte Pataude", AHRF (1952) No.125. p.91-9
https://www.persee.fr/doc/ahrf_0003-4436_1952_num_125_1_503

Michel Lagree and Jehanne Roche, Tombes de mémoire.  La dévotion populaire aux victimes de la Révolution (1993), p.72-5.

Michel Lagrée,“Piété populaire et Révolution en Bretagne l’exemple des canonisations spontanées (1793-1815)”.  Religion et modernité, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2003, p.105-120. Originally published in 1978. [OpenEdition]

"Le chêne du tomb à la fille" on the website Arbres monumentaux 

https://www.monumentaltrees.com/fr/fra/illeetvilaine/teillay/22783_foretdeteillay/

Goulven le Bahers, "Le territoire invisible" - Photographic project, exhibited  at the musée Eugène-Aulnette in Le Sel-de-Bretagne in 2023.
https://goulvenlebahers.com/fr/portfolio-21764-le-territoire-invisible

 

Readings

THE HISTORICAL RECORD

Tombe à la fille 
La Grande-Ligne, forêt de Teillay, route de Châteaubriant, Teillay, France

Many different accounts and theories have circulated concerning the origin of the "Tombe à la fille" in the Forest of Teillay.  A report by the commissaire of the Directory, states that at the end of 1795, Marie Martin, a young girl from Tresboeuf aged around 19 years, had signalled to the National Guard of Bain-de-Bretagne that a band of Chouans was hidden in the  forêt de Teillay.  In vengeance, several Chouans seized the girl, attached her by her hair to the tail of a horse and dragged her to the forest where she suffered various outrages before being hung by the hair from the branch of an oak tree.  Another version adds that a  Royalist, a certain Jouon from the village of Saint-Malo-en-Teillay, put an end to her suffering by shooting her through the mouth.

The body was buried in situ beneath the oak tree.  Since then Marie Martin, popularly known as "Sainte Pataude", has been the recipient of offerings, prayers and invocations for the cure of fevers, sterility, paralysis, infant disabilities, and to make children walk.  A multitude of objects - clothing, shoes, little crosses, photographs, coins, envelops with messages, flowers surround the tomb like so many ex-votoes.  "A veritable cult is devoted to the place and the tomb is regularly maintained".
From the website TopicTopos (archived 2017, version)

https://web.archive.org/web/20170417233848/http://fr.topic-topos.com/tombe-a-la-fille-teillay

Marie Martin lodged with a merchant  in Tresboeuf,  Jean Martin (who was neither her uncle nor her father - the later having died on 15th January 1791 at la Peltrie), whose house was in the Place de d'Eglise (on the site of the present post office).

He had need of help since he had no children to succeed him.  Since he had profited from the purchase of  biens nationaux, he was wanted by the Chouans.  The latter were very well aware what was going on - they had their informers or were able to make people talk.  At the beginning of Year IV (end of 1795) they presented themselves at the merchant's house in order to make him pay for his attachment to the Republic and his acquisitions.  Marie, who was there alone, did not want to reveal her masters' whereabouts, so they took her into the forest of Teillay, to a place where no-one could see her, near their camp.  They hid themselves by going several dozen metres into the interior of the wood.  What happened next then was no doubt as described by Paul François Martin, a lawyer from Bain-de-Bretagne in September 1797....
From the website of the Commune of Teillay (archived)
https://web.archive.org/web/20080207193605/http://www.teillay.fr/vie_culturelle_et_sportive/tradition/tradition.php
Jean Martin is perhaps the "municipal officer" referred to here.
Département d'Ille-et-Vilaine. Documents relatifs à la vente des biens nationaux (1911), p.574-5; 578.
https://archive.org/details/dpartementdill00guil/page/574/mode/2up

THE REPORT OF SEPTEMBER 1797

Bain, 4 Vendémiaire
Year VI of the Republic (25th September 1797)

From the Commissaire of the Executive Directory attached to the administration of Bourg des Comptes.

To the Citizen Commissaire General of the Executive Directory with the central administration of the department of Ille et Vilaine. 

A young woman from Tresboeuf who had openly shown her attachment to the new regime and her aversion to the Chouans, was seized by the latter at the beginning of Year IV.  They first satisfied their brutality.  Then they successively pulled out her toe- and finger- nails, her teeth, her eyes, and cut off her breasts.  They took three days over torturing this unfortunate victim of their anger and barbarity.  Then, when they saw that they would soon be exercising their cruelty on a cadaver, they hanged her from a tree in the Forest of Teillay, wearing only her chemise.  She was taken down from the tree and buried at its foot.

Curiosity made several people go to see the tomb and, when the rumour circulated that the sick were returning cured, the press of pilgrims became astonishing.  Refractory priests, who heard about this pilgrimage, threatened with excommunication, from both pulpit and confessional,  those who went to the tomb or promoted such a trip.  Their manoeuvres had almost no effect; aristocrats or patriots, everybody still went!  The Chouans had the nerve to congratulate themselves that they had made a saint."

(Departmental archives of Year I and V) 
(Dossier L309 Canton de Bourg des Comptes)

Text as cited on the website of the Commune of Teillay (archived version).  Lagree and Roche date the report to September 1795 but that is surely an error.

OTHER EARLY ACCOUNTS

Article in L’Auxiliaire Breton, 11th December 1833.
A poor young woman, Marguerite (sic) Martin, who could not suppress a cry of indignation at the story of so many atrocities, was taken from her uncle's house and dragged into the Forest of Teillay.  The Chouans raped her; she was tied to tree, her eyes put out, her breasts cut off; it took three days before death put an end to her sufferings.  Public piety had a cross erected on the fatal spot and a stone placed on her grave. Locals have composed a lament on the martyrdom of the virgin of Teillay.
Text given in Michel Lagrée,“Piété populaire et Révolution en Bretagne l’exemple des canonisations spontanées (1793-1815)”.  Religion et modernité, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2003, p.105-120. Para. [OpenEdition]

Charles Goudé, Histoires et légendes du pays de Châteaubriant (1872)

This account by a local historian from Châteaubriant was the earliest I was able to find:

La Tombe à la Fille.  The sanctity of this last is doubtful; and yet, the faith of certain of the local peasants is robust enough to go there to pray.  She was they say, one of those enraged patriot women who abandoned their spinning and their sheep for politics; innocent chatter at first perhaps; but then denunciations which betray one's brothers...   They say that this girl came across a band of royalists hiding in the forest and denounced them to the National Guard in Bain. The later were surprised and all, or almost all, killed.  The Chouans... surprised her in her turn, shot her and buried her in the place where her tomb now stands.  In mockery the enemies of the Republic sometimes call her Sainte-Pataude. I can confirm nothing; I only echo what is said in the area.

Goudé, op.cit. p. 352. [On GoogleBooks]

Adolphe Oraine in 1898

Adophe Oraine,  from Bain-en-Bretagne, was one of the most renowned 19th-century collector of Breton folklore.  His account is more sympathetic....

Leaving the township of Teillay and entering the forest of the same name, by the route to Livières, one comes across at the end of the road, almost beside [la grande ligne], a tomb covered with a hundred crosses.  The trunk of an oak tree whose branches shelter the grave is also decorated with flowers, crowns, reliquaries, attached by pilgrims who come to the Tombe à la fille - as they call it - to ask the poor victim, who lies beneath the mossy ground, to cure their afflictions.

It is here that was buried, in 1793, Marie Martin.  Although the Church has never canonised her, she is considered a martyred saint by the people of these parts, who tell her story as follows:

At the time of the Terror, bandits who passed as Chouans, committed abominable crimes in our region.  M. Rocher, the director of the forges at Moisdon, was killed in a barbarous fashion: they mutilated him, cut off his nose, his tongue, then left him to bleed to death.

When she learned of this murder, Marie Martin could not restrain a cry of indignation.  She was overheard, denounced and,  carried off from her uncle's house, where she lived, and taken into the Forest of Teillay.

There the wretches raped her, attached her to a tree, put out her eyes, cut off her breasts.  It took her three whole days to die.

Some woodcutters buried her poor little torn corpse.

Since that day numerous miracles have always rewarded prayers made at the Tombe à la fille. Fevers disappear as if by magic, paralytics leave behind their crutches, barren women become fertile, ailing children recover their strength, and infants that cannot walk begin to trot along like rabbits.  The crowns hanging from branches and the offerings deposited at the foot of the oak tree testify to the gratitude and trust shown by the afflicted towards the victim of the brigands.

Oraine, Folk-lore de l'Ille-et-Vilaine: de la vie à la mort (suite)" vol. 34 of Les littératures populaires de toutes les nations (1898), p.5- [On Google Books]

A notice from 1937:  

La Tombe à la fille or Sainte Pataude. This young girl, killed by the Chouans, continues to receive popular homage. The trees surrounding the tomb are decorated with strange ex-votos including children's shoes and marble plaques.  The path there is well beaten down and indicated by a red cross cut into an oak three.  On the tomb is a wooden cross.  This tomb is kept in a state of perfect cleanliness by an old woman who lives off the alms left on the tomb.  This old woman lives nearby in a miserable hut in the forest.  

The abbé Raison, reported  in the Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Ille-et-Vilaine for 1937 [On Gallica]:  

From the Journal de Chateaubriant for 1950
The Forest of Taillay contains several modern tombs, the best known of which is called "La Tombe à la fille".  It is to be found, covered in crosses and funerary ornaments, in a small clearing not far from the stream that forms the boundary between the two departments of the Loire-Inférieure and Ille-et-Vilaine.  She was a tall, fine girl; she was called Marie Martin and she came from Tresboeuf.  According to some, she had revealed to the National Guard in Blain, or to the Republican troops, the hiding place of a band of royalists, who were surprised and massacred as a result.  In revenge for their death, the Chouans captured Marie Martin and, after ill-using her, killed her on the spot.

According to others, she was in service in a farm near Tresboeuf.  Left alone in her masters' house, she refused to give away their hiding place.  In order to track them down, the Chouans took refuge in the forest.  Faced by her persistent refusals, they made a martyr of her."

[Three days later one of the band, passing that way, found her still alive, killed her and buried her].

"Two crosses were planted at her head and little niches were cut in neighbouring oak trees to hold statuettes.  On of these niches, which remained empty, served as a place for offerings of money, as did a hole of 50cm dug at the foot of the tomb."

[Before the 1914 War a woman used to come on Sundays and pilgrimage days to collect the offerings.]

"They make pilgrimages to the tomb from all the neighbouring communes, particularly at the summer festival of Saint John, and on Easter and Whit Mondays. "Sainte Pataude", as they call her locally, grants all the graces that are asked of her.  Mothers bring their children so that they will learn to walk at an early age...They lead the infants round the tomb three times, obliging them to take proper steps."

[The tomb, says the article, is still maintained by people who come to invoke "Sainte Pataude" and leave ex-voto gifts. As they say of tree branches, the axe cannot fell the trunk to which they are attached.]
Quoted by Roger Joxe, "Encore une sainte patriote: Sainte Pataude", AHRF (1952) No.125. p.91-9
https://www.persee.fr/doc/ahrf_0003-4436_1952_num_125_1_5039

THE TOMBE  TODAY

With a little luck, you can still hear today the story of the "passion"  [of Sainte-Pataude] from local visitors to the site.  ("visitors" as distinct from "pilgrims" - the latter arrive alone, usually on weekdays, and are customarily allowed a discreet distance). Traditional gwerziou [ie.Breton ballads] once traced the life of saints and the  Auxiliaire Breton mentions a ballad on the "virgin of Teillay"; so too modern visitors willingly recount the martyrdom of Marie Martin. Burned on a grille, hanged by her hair, her breasts chopped off...details are added: there is a need to embellish.  "I only just learned that," said one visitor: perhaps the tradition is still being enriched?

In the same way, you can learn about the blessings bestowed by the "Saint".  Multiple cures: for rheumatisms, fractures etc. and, with more discretion, for romantic problems.  On the tomb, ex-votos pile up - medals, rosaries, images, artificial flowers and, on the bushes all around, even recently on the smaller tree branches, hang items of clothing, both old and new. "One just gives something, no matter what, when one is cured", comments a bystander.  The offerings rapidly deteriorate in the weather, giving the place a neglected feel, despite evident efforts to keep the clearing clean.  On the nearby oak tree there are more offering. No axe is allowed near this tree: someone jokes tastelessly that it needed a chainsaw; he is met with disapproving silence....

Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was possible to witness a very ancient rite, that of  passing through ("passer au travers").  A hole was dug at the foot of the tomb into which people placed their afflicted limbs.
Michel Lagree and Jehanne Roche, Tombes de mémoire (1993). p.74-5

...A visit to the "saint" became a primitive cult  ("un culte sauvage"), with offerings and gifts, but without liturgy.  And also without particular gestures (except the sign of the cross, borrowed from Catholicism).

Some Catholic prayers were muttered, without great conviction, by  visitors.  The process of ritualisation is still ongoing.

Today a little crowd clings together under the tree, near the tomb, still with its flowers, at the time of Catholic festivals. 
People come from great distances ... sometimes a hundred kilometres. 
They formulate their request in a whisper and deposit  their offering in a hollowed out tree trunk. They ask for the cure of the  sick... particularly those with walking difficulties, but also for success in exams or job applications.
Since 1793 the place has remained very "active", obliging the owners of the forest to allow access to the miraculous sepulchre.

Chérif Khaznadar "L'arbre à la fille par Françoise Gründ", paper on Academia

Françoise Gründ, "La tombe à la fille" expliquée par Françoise Gründ (Video, 2011).
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xju1fl

If I preferred to  remain silent, and not go on about the hazardous paths which lead to the sanctuary of Sainte-Pataude, where the only guides are ribbons attached to the branches by the faithful, it is because this place, saturated with ready-made ex-votos seemed to me to be incredibly authentic.   And everyone know that media coverage can seriously harm such "magical" places, where fervour combines so well with the fetishism of bits of rubbish as to  effortlessly create collective art.  
Comments from the blog Anumula Vugula, post of 20.11.2008.

The tomb and the tree

One of the most mysterious pagan cults still practised in France is without doubt that of the "arbres à loques".  Adherents come in the night, alone or in little groups, to hang the clothes, shoes, layettes and shirts of sick loved ones in the branches of trees.  They then they invoke the majestic forces of nature to obtain favours from the gods of forests and clearings.  These pilgrims, who come from all walks of live, celebrate a cult from the distant past, chanting their litanies in a curious mixture of German and ancient Gaullish tongues.

We can give as an example Thérèse Robin, an accountant from a large firm in Châteaubriant who, in the Autumn 1989, went secretly every evening  for five days to invoke the graces of Saint Pataude at the "tombe à la Fille" in the middle of the Forest of Teillay.  She prayed for her mother, who suffered from a facial paralysis and was despaired of by the medical profession. To supplicate the invisible forces, she suspended one of her mother's scarves from the tree branches.  Whether by chance or by their intervention, her mother left hospital at the end of the week, completely cured.

Today, the cult continues to flourish and the tomb is always covered with tulips, camelias etc, plus hundreds of letters address to Saint Petaude asking her for health, good fortune in love or work ...even lottery wins.  Behind the tomb, the garments of the sick flutter on the branches and, in the cool of the evening, little groups gather in prayer. Legend has it that this tomb festooned with flowers belonged to a young Republican who was tortured and hanged on this spot two hundred years ago by the Chouans.  

The magic practices at the tombe à la Fille are not isolated examples...
"Forêt de Teillay" in  A la découverte de la France Mystérieuse  2001. [Reproduced on the blog Gavroche60]. https://gavroche60.wordpress.com/tag/foret-de-teillay

In the forests of the Marches de Bretagne, isolated tombs are the object of popular devotions which remain alive today.  From generation to generation, the inhabitants of the surrounding area have come to seek out the graces of these saints and also of the official ones.  Such veneration often originated in the troubles of the Revolution, which were particularly violent in this region; so too, their revival today tells us of the hopes and fears of those who turn to them, in the face of the upheavals of the modern world.

Underlying this, can be traced profound changes in the relationship between the people and their territory, the bocage, the forests and wild nature, in a region deeply marked by industrial and agricultural development.  

Goulven le Bahers, "Le territoire invisible" - Photographic project, exhibited  at the musée Eugène-Aulnette in Le Sel-de-Bretagne in 2023.
https://goulvenlebahers.com/fr/portfolio-21764-le-territoire-invisible