hen eus ket unan,
N'hen eus ket uer Zant evel Sant Erwan.

This, in French, runs:

Il n'y a pas en Bretagne, il n'y en a pas un,
Il n'y a pas un saint comme saint Yves."

He began his legal education when he was fourteen, and studied law in
the schools of Paris, becoming an ecclesiastical judge, and later
(1285) an ordained priest and incumbent of Tredrig. Subsequently he
was made incumbent of Lohanec, which post he held till his death. As a
judge he possessed a quality rare in those days--he was inaccessible
to bribery! That this was appreciated we find in the following _bon
mot_:

Saint Yves etait Breton,
Avocat et pas larron:
Chose rare, se dit-on.

He invariably endeavoured to induce disputants to settle their
quarrels 'out of court' if possible, and applied his talents to
defending the cause of the poor and oppressed, without fee. He was
known as 'the poor man's advocate,' and to-day in the department of
the Cotes-du-Nord, when a debtor repudiates his debt, the creditor
will pay for a Mass to St Yves, in the hope that he will cause the
defaulter to die within the year! St Yves de Verite is the special
patron of lawyers, and is represented in the _mortier_, or lawyer's
cap, and robe.

St Yves spent most of his income in charity, turning his house into an
orphanage, and many are the stories told of his humanity and
generosity. The depth of his sympathy, and its practical result, are
shown in an incident told us of how one morning he found a poor,
half-naked man lying on his doorstep shivering with cold, having spent
the night there. Yves gave up his bed to the beggar the next night,
and himself slept on the doorstep, desiring to learn by personal
experience the sufferings of the poor. On another occasion, while
being fitted with a new coat, he caught sight of a miserable man on
the pavement outside who was clad in rags and tatters that showed his
skin through many rents. Yves tore off the new coat and, rushing out,
gave it to the beggar, saying to the astonished and horrified tailor:
"There is plenty of wear still in my old coats. I will content myself
with them." His pity and generosity led him to still further kindness
when he was visiting a hospital and saw how ill-clad some of the
patients were, for he actually gave them the clothes he was wearing at
the time, wrapping himself in a coverlet till he had other garments
sent to him from home. He was wont to walk beside the ploughmen in the
fie