Ile-d'Yeu / Île-d'Yeu

Described and illustrated in Le Patrimoine... de la Vendée (2001, v. 1: 406) as the holy-water stoup from the nearby grotte de St-Amand; the same source informs that, although legend has that this grotte was St-Amand's refuge, in reality it was a secret place used by the monks of the monastery of St-Hilaire to hide the monastery's valuables during the Sarracen and Viking invasions. It may have been a stoup at the monastery or a container for ablutions [neither of these functions would appear very likely but, least of all the latter]. The stoup is a crude, perhaps rounded, rather amorphous block of granite with a shallow well.