All over the world and through the ages, man has certainly always been worried about the afterlife. The belief that the dead can still have somme influence on people's lives led the living to try to propitiate them. Not to do so was to invite misfortune upon the family or the community. As a consequence, certain gestures, rituals and behaviours were and are still respected today, although those who perform them now may not always understand their original meaning. In Brittany as in the other Celtic countries, traditional folk beliefs die hard, and this paper will consider one such belief which is mentioned in the eighteenth century in Jacques Cambry's Voyage dans le Finistère ('Travel in Finistère').