rioche is
coming!" Of one who appears to have received a shock, also, it is
said: "He has seen the Mourioche." Unlucky is the person who gets in
his way; but doubly so the unfortunate who attempts to mount him in
the belief that he is an ordinary steed, for after a fiery gallop he
will be precipitated into an abyss and break his neck.

_The Ankou_

Perhaps there is no spirit of evil which is so much dreaded by the
Breton peasantry as the Ankou, who travels the duchy in a cart,
picking up souls. In the dead of night a creaking axle-tree can be
heard passing down the silent lanes. It halts at a door; the summons
has been given, a soul quits the doomed house, and the wagon of the
Ankou passes on. The Ankou herself--for the dread death-spirit of
Brittany is probably female--is usually represented as a skeleton. M.
Anatole le Braz has elaborated a study of the whole question in his
book on the legend of death in Brittany,[38] and it is probable that
the Ankou is a survival of the death-goddess of the prehistoric
dolmen-builders of Brittany. MacCulloch[39] considers the Ankou to be
a reminiscence of the Celtic god of death, who watches over all things
beyond the grave and carries off the dead to his kingdom, but greatly
influenced by medieval ideas of 'Death the skeleton.' In some Breton
churches a little model or statuette of the Ankou is to be seen, and
this is nothing more nor less than a cleverly fashioned skeleton. The
peasant origin of the belief can be found in the substitution of a
cart or wagon for the more ambitious coach and four of other lands.

_The Youdic_

Dark and gloomy are many of the Breton legends, of evil things, gloomy
as the depths of the forests in which doubtless many of them were
conceived. Most folk-tales are tinged with melancholy, and it is
rarely in Breton story that we discover a vein of the joyous.

[Illustration: THE DEMON-DOG]

Among the peaks of the Montagnes d'Arree lies a vast and dismal peat
bog known as the Yeun, which has long been regarded by the Breton folk
as the portal to the infernal regions. This Stygian locality has
brought forth many legends. It is, indeed, a remarkable territory. In
summer it seems a vast moor carpeted by glowing purple heather, which
one can traverse up to a certain point, but woe betide him who would
advance farther, for, surrounded by what seems solid ground, lies a
treacherous quagmire declared by the people of the neighbourhood to be
unfathomab