The city of Is according to Jacques Cambry

English trans. Erik Stohellou
© 2011Erik Stohellou

have already said that at the headland of the Goat was found ancient ruins. It was there that seated according to tradition, the beautiful city of Is, ruled by King Gralon. I'll give you the story. Serious people will not forgive me for having mixed stories, marvels, with a description of Finistere, but in describing the customs, the spirit, the state of a race, can we not speak of its mind, its gaps, its imagination ? Pausanias is my parangon, he told us so much nonsense of the Greeks! I have neither his genius nor his style, no doubt, but I speak of Lower Brittany, he spoke of Corinth and Athens in Greece, to Athens.

The beautiful city of Is, thus, as told in legends, hymns and by bards of Britain, was under the power of king Gralon; all kinds of luxury and debauchery reigned in this wealthy city. In vain the friends of God, most holy men, preached to the decency and reform; Saint Gwennole himself was losing his Latin. Princess Dahut, daughter of the king, forgetting modesty and moderation natural to her sex, set an example for all kinds of depravity. The time for vengeance arrived, the calm before the most horrific storms, songs, music, love, wine, any hopes of entertainment and debauchery, intoxicated, put to sleep the hardened inhabitants of the city. Gralon King, alone, was not insensible to the voice from heaven; attended the Holy Office, and attended the servants of God.

One day Saint Gwennole, seized with enthusiasm, as the prophets or the Sibyl of Cumae, said in a somber voice, the words in front of the king Gralon:

"Prince, the disorder is at its height, the arm of the Lord rises, the sea swells, the city of Is will disappear: let us leave."

Gralon, docile to the voice of the holy man, rides, walks away at full speed, his daughter Dahut rides behind him... The hand of the Lord descends, the tallest towers in the city are submerged, the waves roaring crowd in the steed of the holy king, who can not escape therefrom; a terrible voice is heard:

- "Prince, if you want to save yourself, shake the devil behind you."

If the prince obeyed, and he drowned his daughter; if the princess rushing, sacrificed herself for his father, if Lucifer takes Dahut to save the prince the inconvenience of drowning her... I do not know. Historians have not much time telling the fact, and commentators have failed to clear it.

The beautiful Dahut was killed, drowned near the place called Poul-Dahut. The storm ceased, the air became calm, the sky was clear, but since that time, the large basin on which lay a part of the town of Is was covered with water: the Bay of Douarnenez. One made me see on the shore, near Ris, a monument irrefutable of that terrible event. It is a rock nicknamed Garrec, which is marked by the foot of Gralon's horse Gralon; so Jesus, rising to heaven, left the trace of his foot on the summit of Mount Tabor, and the highest mountain in Ceylon, which formerly bore the earthly paradise, is marked up the great Adam. What should we believe of the past without this kind of monuments by which we write history.

Sources : Jacques Cambry, Voyage dans le Finistère, 1799