Brocéliande — the forest of Paimpont

OVERVIEW

Brocéliande, earlier Brécheliant and Brécilien, is the legendary enchanted forest of medieval European imagination, identified since the nineteenth century with the forest of Paimpont in Ille-et-Vilaine. It appears in several medieval texts, most of them Arthurian.

HISTORY

It first appears in literature in Wace's chronicle Roman de Rou of 1160, which reports the tales surrounding its location in Brittany. Wace names the fountain of Barenton and describes how hunters scoop water from it and wet a stone to summon rain; he mentions the rumours of fairies and magic, numbers the Bretons of Brecheliant 'about whom there are many legends', and — the detail that matters — records that he travelled to Brittany in search of these wonders himself. In the romances the forest shelters Morgan's Val sans Retour, the fairy fountain of Barenton, and the place of Merlin's retirement, imprisonment or death.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The named sites are real places you can walk to: the Tombeau de Merlin, the Fontaine de Barenton, the Val sans Retour, the Fontaine de Jouvence. Most of the identifications are nineteenth-century, laid over a genuinely medieval body of belief; the entry says so. What is documented is that by 1160 a writer thought this forest worth a journey because of what was said about it.

VISITING

Paimpont village is the base; the sites are signposted and reached on foot. Much of the forest is private land with rights of way — stay on the paths. The Tombeau de Merlin is a ruined megalith, not a tomb.