Marguerite Philippe

Marguerite Philippe (Breton Marc'harid Fulup 12 August 1837 Pluzunet - 14 January 1909), was a beggar from the province of Trégor in Brittany, and a storyteller in the Breton language.

Life
She was illiterate, but endowed with a prodigious memory; she knew about 150 songs ("gwerz") and a large quantity of tales and stories of all kinds, which she had begun to learn from her parents.

She was handicapped, and she could not work with her hands. She also earned her living by attending pilgrimages to Léon and Cornouaille, and by making pilgrimages by proxy, notably to Sainte-Anne-d'Auray or the Tro Breizh, for those who paid her.

On 6 November 1875, she married René Salaün.

Many of the songs and tales they knew were collected by François-Marie Luzel, and published in his works.

Legacy
Her tomb, in the cemetery of Pluzunet, was sculpted by Yves Hernot. In 1898, Ange M. Mosher, an American patron of Breton culture, commissioned a monument to her memory, in Pluzunet with Anatole Le Braz and other Breton regionalists.

Her statue, by Morley Troman, is located in the square of Pluzunet. A street in Quimper, and a street in Lannion, is named for her. Henri Vincenot described Marguerite Philippe in his novel L'Œuvre de chair.