Deux menhirs dits Les Causeurs - Île de Sein, Finistère, FRA
N 48° 02.282 W 004° 51.072
30U E 362012 N 5322185
Two megaliths, the "Grands Causeurs" at the Ile de Seine church.
Waymark Code: WM13E5Z
Location: Bretagne, France
Date Posted: 11/21/2020
Views: 1
Two megaliths, the "Grands Causeurs" (Prégourien-Bras in Breton, two menhirs facing each other as if they were talking to each other), located on a mound near the church, once surrounded by standing stones (it was therefore a cairn ), testify to the antiquity of human occupation. They have been classified as a historical monument since 1901. Hyacinthe Le Carguet has identified eleven traces of Neolithic settlement on the island, including tumuli and menhirs and dolmens more or less destroyed. There is no longer any trace of the Nifran tumulus, destroyed by the gold diggers.
The island of Sein, Enez Sun in Breton, is undoubtedly the Insula Sena of the Romans. In the 1st century, a Roman author, Pomponius Mela, reports that an oracle of a Gallic deity was installed on the island, served by 9 priestesses, the Gallisènes, having taken a vow of perpetual virginity; these were called by the Gauls the Seers.
“The island of Sena, located in the British Sea, opposite the Osismicians, is renamed by a Gallic oracle, including priestesses, dedicated to perpetual virginity, number nine. They are called Gallicenes, and are credited with the singular power of raging the winds and the rise of the seas, of metamorphosing into animals as they see fit, of curing ailments elsewhere considered incurable, of knowing and predict the future, favors that they only grant to those who come expressly to their island to consult them. "
- Pomponius Mela, III, 6 (transl. Louis Baudet, 1843)
For a long time, Sein was given a mythical past. Jacques Cambry, for example, writes in his Voyage dans le Finistère (trip made in 1794-1795): "the island of Sein, which, in the most remote times, was a place of fairyland, nymphs and dryads" .
Source: (
visit link)