There is also a large ossuary in the corner of the small churchyard, now disused.  These ossuaries, or reliquaires, in the graveyards of Brittany were built to carry out a curious and somewhat barbarous custom.  It was considered by “those of old time” to be paying deference to the dead to dig up their coffins after a certain number of years, and to place the skulls and bones in the ossuary, arranging them on shelves and labelling them in a British Museum style so that all might gaze upon them as they went by.  This custom is still kept up in some places; for, as we have said, the Bretons are a slow moving people in the way of progress, and cling to their habits and customs as tenaciously as the Medes and Persians did to their laws.  They are not ambitious, and what sufficed for the sires a generation or two ago suffices for the sons to-day.

But to us, the chief beauty of the town was its little port, with its stone pier.  The houses leading down to it are the quaintest in Roscoff, of sixteenth century date, with many angles and gables.  In one of them lodged Charles Stuart, the Young Pretender, when he escaped after the battle of Culloden, the quaintest and most interesting of all.

Looking back from the end of the jetty, it lies prominently before you, together with the whole town, forming a group full of wonderful tone and picturesque beauty.  In the foreground are the vessels in the harbour, with masts rising like a small forest, and flags gaily flying.  The water which plashes against the stone pier is the greenest, purest, most translucent ever seen.  It dazzled by its brilliancy and appeared to “hold the light.”  Before us stretched the great Atlantic, to-day calm and sleeping and reflecting the sun travelling homewards; but often lashed to furious moods, which break madly over the pier, and send their spray far over the houses.  Few scenes in Brittany are more characteristic and impressive than this little unknown town.

A narrow channel lies between Roscoff and L’Ile de Batz, which would form a fine harbour of refuge if it were not for the strong currents for ever running there.  At high water the island is half submerged.  It is here that St. Pol first came from Cornwall, intending to live there the remainder of his life; but, as we have seen, he was made Bishop of Leon, and had to take up his abode in the larger town.

No tree of any height is to be seen here, but the tamarisk grows in great abundance.  All the men are sailors and pass their lives upon the water, coming home merely to rest.  The women cultivate the ground.  The church possesses, and preserves as its greatest treasure, a stole worn by St. Pol.  Tradition has it that when St. Pol landed, the island was a prey to a fierce and fiery dragon, whom the monk conquered by throwing his stole round the neck of the monster and commanding it to cast itself into the sea; a command it instantly and amiably obeyed by rushing to the top of a high rock and plunging for ever beneath the waves.  The rock is still called in Breton language Toul ar Sarpent, signifying Serpent’s Hole.