Conférence de François de Beaulieu : "À la découverte des landes avec Lucien Pouëdras"

Lecture by François de Beaulieu, ethnologist and writer.

Nothing is more misunderstood than the moors. Their terrible decline has hardly mobilized the Bretons, who had heard too much that the moors were the image of the misery to which they wanted to turn their backs. And yet, heathlands, which have spread with land clearing since Neolithic times, were at the heart of inventive, generous and particularly sustainable agriculture for almost eight centuries.

The moors also remain an essential element of Brittany?s landscape and cultural identity, but they have not been given the same prominence as the islands, the traditional houses, the bocage, the ports or the chapels. Those who lived on farms until the 1960s still remember the smell of gorse crushed for the horses, but at a time when new threats are hanging over the last moors, it is important to restore their memory to all Bretons, in the perspective opened up by Lucien Pouëdras.