From the north coast of Brittany, there are stories about a submerged land (and/or town) known as Lexobie (or La Ville des Sept‐ Îles or Triagoz), although it is unclear whether these refer to the same place or to one or more of the many other stories of submerged lands further east in the Gulf of St Malo.
One of the earliest written accounts spoke of Lexobie being off the coast of Saint‐Michel‐ en‐Grève or perhaps further east off Tréguier; it was
‘one of the great and ancient cities, of which the old Breton traditions speak so often, and which are today entirely erased from the surface of the earth’.
In the 1834 original,
‘une de ces grandes et antiques cités, dont parlent si souvent les vieilles traditions bretonnes, et qui sont aujourd’hui entièrement effacées de la surface du sol’.
In some accounts, La Ville des Sept‐Îles was a huge land, even stretching to the west coast of Brittany, but more often, it is confined to the seven islands off the Renote (Trégastel) Peninsula, where a comparable history to that proposed for the Scilly Isles may explain stories of land submergence here.
Further west, we encounter the story of the former city of Tolente, capital of the now‐submerged land of Ach (Aginense) off the northwest Brittany coast near Plouguerneau.
Possibly the same place as (or more likely, close to) the Gallo‐Roman port of Gesocribate, Tolente is said to have been submerged during a ‘great subsidence’, a ‘grand affaissement’, during the 7th century AD. This is unlikely to have been the case: just another example of how recent catastrophic floods become linked to older narratives of submergence. Recent research concludes that these tales of Tolente are only the latest expression of an older story recalling the earlier submergence of this coastline.
The most famous of the “lost city” stories from Brittany is that of the city of Ys (Ker‐Is). Ys is commonly located in the Baie de Douarnenez (possibly the adjoining Baie des Trépassés), although no certain evidence of it has been found here and other locations are possible. The most common story is that Ys was the seat of King Gradlon, whose daughter (like the drunken Seithennin) was persuaded to open the flood gates at high tide, inundating the city and forcing its abandonment.
King Gradlon remains a prominent part of history in this part of Brittany, and until recently, stories of Ys were kept alive by traditions of holding church services above the submerged city, the remains of which, when the sea is calm ‘may be clearly seen at the bottom of the bay’, it was claimed.
A final story from Brittany refers to islands (notably Île du Loc’h) in the Glénan Archipelago off the south coast of Finistère, recalling a time when these were contiguous with the mainland. For example, geographer Elisée Reclus noted that
‘west of the Quiberon peninsula, other detached lands, the island of Groix and the Glénan archipelago continue the old coast. The traditions even state that the nine islets of Glénan were once a sizeable island: their destruction by the waves of the sea is a geological process that the people living there at the time would have witnessed’;
in the 1877 original,
‘À l’ouest de la presqu’île de Quiberon, d’autres terres détachées, l’île de Groix et l’archipel des Glénan, continuent l’ancienne côte. Les traditions racontent même que les neuf îlots des Glénan étaient jadis une île considerable: leur destruction par les flots de la mer est une oeuvre géologique à laquelle les indigènes auraient assisté’.
More details of these traditions were described by Paul Sébillot in 1905;
‘The memory of the time when this archipelago was joined to the continent has not been forgotten yet: on the coast of Fouesnant they say it was once possible to travel on foot from Becmeil [Beg Meil] to Île aux Moutons, today a great distance out to sea; the tip of Trévignon touched the island of Stork, and every spring a procession leaving the church of Loctudy [mainland] went to one of the islands, following an alley of large trees. It is said in Carnac that in the past there was only a horse jump between Île de Houat and Pointe de Quiberon, now separated by eight kilometres of salt water’.
In the original,
‘Le souvenir du temps où cet archipel tenait au continent n’est pas encore effacé: sur la côte de Fouesnant on dit qu’on allait autrefois à pied de Becmeil à l’île aux Moutons, aujourd’hui à une grande lieue en mer; la pointe de Trévignon touchait à l’île de la Cigogne, et à chaque printemps une procession sortie de l’église de Loctudy se rendait à l’une des îles, en suivant une allée de grands arbres’. On raconte à Carnac que jadis il n’y avait qu’un saut de cheval entre l’île de Houat et la pointe de Quiberon, séparées maintenant par huit kilomètres d’eau salée’.
Like stories from Jersey and many others discussed above, this story is a plausible memory of a time when the sea level here was lower and what are today offshore islands were joined to what is now the mainland.
Recent research suggests that traditions of submerged places from the Gulf of St Malo date from at least 7100 years ago while those from northwest Brittany date from around 6100 years ago. As with similar stories from Cardigan Bay in Wales, calculating minimum ages for those about Ys in the Baie de Douarnenez depend very much on where Ys was located (which is unknown) yet we estimate an age of more than 8300 years for this particular tradition – meaning that memories of the drowning of Ys have been passed down orally for this long, from one generation to the next across 300-400 generations. An extraordinary feat, yet not one that is unprecedented.
The final set of Breton stories involving the Glénan Archipelago is easier to date precisely because they specify exactly which places were submerged. We assume a minimum age of 10,000 years for these particular traditions.
There are compelling reasons for regarding ancient stories of the kinds described here and in other such stories LINK as authentic memories of sea-level rise witnessed by pre-literate people, encoded in their traditions, and passed down orally for hundreds of generations to reach us today. More in my 2021 book Worlds in Shadow about which you can read more here and can even order here.
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