In Dark Age Brittany, Hyvarnian, a Welsh bard, marries a Breton hermitess named Rivanone. Both of them, chaste and pious, have dreams of an angel who decrees that they must marry one another to conceive a child predestined to be a servant of God. Duty done, they go their separate ways. But first they offer up prayers for the forthcoming infant. Rivanone's prayer is that their offspring shall never be deceived by the false appearances of the world; Hyvarnion requests celestial visions for the future prodigy. In the event both get their wish: Hervé (which means bitterness) is born blind but throughout his life he is the recipient of heavenly revelations.

Hervé is among the best loved of the many Breton saints who go unrecognised by the Roman Catholic Church. He is portrayed in statues across Brittany in the company of a disciple (the hermit Guilharan) and a snarling beast. The story tells of a hungry wolf that killed Hervé's beloved dog and thereafter was inseparable from the saint, remaining at his side to serve as the blind man's eyes. In another version, Hervé persuaded a wolf that brought down and ate his ox to submit to the yoke and to plough the fields in repentance.

Like his father before him Hervé followed the bardic tradition, but he became sought after for his aptitudes as an animal healer and an exorcist. It is as a 'veterinarian saint' that he is best remembered, and at his chapel in Gourin flows a fountain that has the reputation of miraculously curing animals in his name.

The most shocking and poignant of the miracles attributed to Hervé came at the end of his life. The saint's devoted young niece was praying at his deathbed to be allowed to meet with him again in paradise: she seized her uncle, clasping herself to his body, and at his last breath expired with him.

C H-J. 2006