About half way between Caen and Bayeux, is the village of Bretteville l’Orgueilleuse, the lofty tower of whose church, perforated with long lancet windows, and surmounted by a high spire, excites curiosity.  Churches are numerous in this neighborhood, and there is no other part of Normandy, in which, architecturally considered, they are equally deserving of notice.  Scarcely one is to be seen that is not marked by some peculiarity.  I know not why Bretteville acquired the epithet attached to its name; and I am equally at a loss for the derivation of the word Bretteville itself; but the term must have some signification in Normandy, at least eleven villages in the duchy being so called.

The first part of the road to Bayeux passes through a flat and open district, resembling that on the other side of Caen; in the remaining half, the country is enclosed, with a more varied surface.  Apple-trees again abound; and the old custom of suspending a bush over the door of an inn is commonly practised here.  For this purpose misletoe is almost always selected.  Throughout the whole of this district and the neighboring province of Brittany, the ancient attachment of the Druids to misletoe continues to a certain degree to prevail.  The commencement of the new year is hailed by shouts of “au gui; l’an neuf;” and the gathering of the misletoe for the occasion is still the pretext for a merry-making, if not for a religious ceremony.

Bayeux was the seat of an academy of the Druids.  Ausonius expressly addresses Attius Patera Pather, one of the professors at Bordeaux, as being of the family of the priesthood of this district:—­

      “Doctor potentum rhetorum,
    Tu Bajocassis stirpe Druidarum satus;”

And tradition to this hour preserves the remembrance of the spot that was hallowed by the celebration of their mystic rites.  This spot, an eminence adjoining the city, has subsequently served for the site of a priory dedicated to St. Nicholas de la chesnaye, thus commemorating by the epithet, the oaks that formed the holy grove.  Near it stood the famous temple of Mount Phaunus, which was flourishing in the beginning of the fourth century, and, according to Rivet, was considered one of the three most celebrated in Gaul.  Belenus was the divinity principally worshipped in it; but, according to popular superstition, adoration was also paid to a golden calf, which was buried in the hill, and still remains entombed there.  Even within the last fifty years, two laborers have lost their lives in a fruitless attempt to find this hidden treasure.  Tombs, and urns, and human bones, are constantly discovered; yet neither Druidic temples, nor pillars of stone, nor cromlechs or Celtic remains of any description exist, at least, at present, in the neighborhood of Bayeux.