beliefs were retained more untouched than in Britain, not clear of paganism till the seventeenth century. Here especially did Christianity have to adapt the old belief to her own ends.
Gaul, as we have seen from Cæsar's account, had been one of the chief seats of Druidical belief. The religious center was Carnutes, now Chartrain. The rites of sacrifice survived in the same forms as in the British Isles. In the fields of Deux-Sevres fires were built of stubble, ferns, leaves, and thorns, and the people danced about them and burned nuts in them. On St. Jolin's Day animals were burned in the fires to secure the cattle from disease. This was continued down into the seventeenth century.
The pagan belief that lasted the longest in Brittany, and is by no means dead yet, was the cult of the dead. Cæsar said that the Celts of Gaul traced their ancestry from the god of death, whom he called Dispater. Now figures of l'Ankou, a skeleton armed with a spear, can be seen in most villages of Brittany.
