Marguerite Philippe | |
---|---|
Born | 12 August 1837 Pluzunet |
Died | 14 January 1909 (aged 71) Pluzunet |
Marguerite Philippe (Breton Marc'harid Fulup 12 August 1837 Pluzunet - 14 January 1909), was a beggar from the province of Trégor in Brittany, and a storyteller in the Breton language.
She was illiterate, but endowed with a prodigious memory; she knew about 150 songs ("gwerz") and a large quantity of tales and stories of all kinds, which she had begun to learn from her parents.[1]
She was handicapped, and she could not work with her hands.[2] She also earned her living by attending pilgrimages to Léon and Cornouaille, and by making pilgrimages by proxy, notably to Sainte-Anne-d'Auray or the Tro Breizh, for those who paid her.[3]
On 6 November 1875, she married René Salaün.[4]
Many of the songs and tales they knew were collected by François-Marie Luzel, and published in his works.[5]
Her tomb, in the cemetery of Pluzunet, was sculpted by Yves Hernot. In 1898,[4] Ange M. Mosher, an American patron of Breton culture, commissioned a monument to her memory, in Pluzunet with Anatole Le Braz and other Breton regionalists.
Her statue, by Morley Troman[4][6] A street in Quimper, and a street in Lannion, is named for her. Henri Vincenot described Marguerite Philippe in his novel L'Œuvre de chair.
, is located in the square of Pluzunet.