Brittany: Its People and its Poems.
Progress is the order of the day; the very watchword of the nineteenth century. Our times are possessed by an ever-active, restless spirit. Here and there only, in this surging sea, sheltered havens are found, where the quiet waters can reflect the fair forms and hues of heaven, floating above them in the deep and far-off blue. Here and there, out of the beaten track of the world's highways, lie rich and fertile retreats, among whose hills and fountains, woods and mossy stones, the spirit of the past, with music on her lips, poetry in her soul, and the cross clear and bright on her brow, still loves to dwell.
In scarcely another corner of Europe is the influence of this spirit so tenacious, so pervading, as in Brittany. Nor to those among us who may be descended from, or linked with, the original inhabitants of the British island, can Europe furnish many more interesting studies than this granite promontory—the bulwark of France against the wild Atlantic—and the Celtic tribes there, who guard, even to-day, their old Armorica from invasion of the novelties of Paris in manners and in thought.
Brittany preserves the same characteristic relations with regard to France as Wales, Ireland, and the Highlands of Scotland preserve toward England. Its geographical position, its mountains, and the sea, have continued to protect it in a great degree from foreign influences. Indeed, this isolation is observable throughout its history. Almost from the first, the Breton Celts were the sole occupants of their own corner of the earth. The Gauls, the original inhabitants of the country, were outnumbered and absorbed by the influx of British emigrants; who, of the same original stock with themselves, speedily became the dominant sept, and possessors of the country.
The first extensive emigration of the insular Britons from what is now Great Britain into Armorica, took place about the year 383, by order of the tyrant Maximin. It was not, however, undertaken by compulsion, but was a willing adventure. The second took place when they fled in great numbers from the Saxon domination, after A.D. 450, when Ambrose and the great Arthur had fought so bravely and so long, in vain. This time they were driven from their land, and as they crossed the sea to find a home with their brethren in Armorica, they sorrowfully chanted the psalm which their Christian bards had translated into their native tongue, "Thou hast given us, O Lord, as sheep for the slaughter; and thou hast scattered us among the nations." A terrible pestilence with which, about this time, various parts of Britain were visited, is said to have done more than anything else toward confirming the sway of the Saxons in England, and diminishing the old Britons to a mere remnant in the island. They themselves regarded it as a sign that the kingdom was taken from them, and given by God to their enemies. The emigrations thenceforward became so frequent and so numerous that the British isle was almost depopulated of its ancient inhabitants; and King Ina, of Wessex, who was also Bretwalda, coming to the throne in A.D. 689, grieved to lose so many of his subjects, sent to entreat the emigrants to return. At that period, they more than equalled the indigenous population of Armorica, upon whom they had imposed their own laws and form of government. Thus, in the fifth century, Armorica was, like Cambria, divided into small independent states: those of Vannes; Kerne, or Cornouaille; Leon; and Tréguier—all Celtic in language, customs, and laws, and each division having its own bishop and its own chief. Among the chiefs, one often obtained a predominating power over the rest, with the title of konan, or crowned chief. Hence, all the earlier kings of Armorica of whom we hear in history, Meriadek, Gradlon, Budik, Houel, and others, were Britons from the Island. Their bards, who formed an essential part of every noble family among the Cambrians, accompanied them into their adopted country. Of this number was Taliessin, "the prince of the bards, the prophets, and the Druids of the West." He took up his abode in the land of the Venetes, (Vannes,) near to his friend and brother bard, Gildas, who had emigrated thither, and who is said to have converted Taliessin to the Christian faith. Three other celebrated bards of the same period were Saint Sulio, Hyvarnion, and Kian Gwench'lan.
Tradition gives the following account of the manner in which St. Sulio received his vocation. When very young, he was one day playing with his brothers near the castle of their father, the lord of Powys, when a procession of monks passed by, led by their abbot, and chanting, to the sound of his harp, the praise of God. The sweetness of their hymns so delighted the child, that, bidding his brothers return to their sports, he followed the monks, "in order to learn of them how he might compose beautiful songs." His brothers hastened to tell their father of his flight, who sent thirty armed men, with a charge to kill the abbot and to bring back Sulio. He had, however, been sent at once to a monastery in Armorica, of which in due time he became prior. The Welsh, who call him Saint Y Sulio, possess a collection of his poems.
The Christian faith won its way more slowly in Armorica than it had done in Britain. They who had inherited the harp of the ancient Druids, with the mysteries of their religion and the secrets of their knowledge, were often reluctant to submit to the belief which despoiled them of their priesthood. "If Taliessin," says M. de la Villemarqué, "consecrated to Christ the fruits of a mysterious science, perfected under the shadow of proscribed altars; if the monks, taking the harp in hand, attracted to the cloister the children of the chiefs; if the Christian mother taught her little one in the cradle to sing of him who died upon the cross, …. there were, at the same time, in the depth of the woods, dispersed members of the Druidic colleges, wandering from hut to hut, like the fugitive Druids of the Isle of Britain, who continued to give to the children of Armorica lessons on the divinity, as their fathers had been taught; and they did so with sufficient success to alarm the Christian teachers, and oblige them to combat them skilfully with their own weapons."
Even after paganism had fallen before the cross, we find curious traces of the Druidic element scattered here and there in the early poems of Brittany. Her bishops of that period are spoken of as "Christian Druids, who grafted the faith of Christ on the Druid oak;" and of her poets it is said, "They did not break the harp of the ancient bards; they only changed some of its chords."
The most ancient poems preserved in Brittany which bear evidences of being the scientific compositions of the bards, are: The Series, or the Druid and the Child; The Prediction of Gwench'lan; The Submersion of the City of Ys; The Changeling; The Wine of the Gauls; The March of Arthur; and Alain the Fox. These are the last breathings of the learned poetry of the Bretons of Armorica.
But, besides the scientific poems of the descendants of the Druids, there grew up, at the same time, a large amount of popular poetry, both in Wales and in Armorica. As early as the sixth century, this divided itself into three distinct kinds: theological, heroic, and historical poems; domestic poems and love-songs; and poems on religious subjects, including the versified histories of saints. This whole class of poetry sprang from the people; it was the expression of their heart, the echo of their thoughts, the depository of their history and of their belief.
Upon this poetry of the people, both in the British island and in Brittany, the bards made war. And when, among the Bretons, the popular minstrels overcame the bards, the Welsh triads put the Armoricans in the number of "the three peoples which have corrupted the primitive bardism by mixing with it heterogeneous principles."
"It is only the kler, (scholar-poets,) the vagabonds, and the beggars," says Taliessin, "who give themselves no trouble."
"Bark not against instruction in the art of verse. Silence! miserable pretenders, who usurp the name of bards! You know not how to judge between truth and fables! … As for me, I am diviner and general-in-chief of the bards of the west!"
Gildas is equally energetic in protesting against all "who take pleasure in listening to the vociferations" of the popular poets of his time.
Reality and good faith are the two principal qualities inherent in popular poetry in its primitive state. The poet's aim is always to paint faithfully something which actually occurred, or which he believed did occur.
Chronicler and novelist, legendary and sacred psalmodist, the poet of Brittany is all this to the mass of the Breton population—to twelve hundred thousand uneducated persons, without any other learning than that which they gain from the oral instruction of their clergy. A thoughtful and imaginative people, full of poetic instinct, and of the desire of knowledge; and to whom every event, possessing a moderate share of interest, furnishes subject-matter for a song.
We will now attempt translations of a portion of the bardic poems which remain to us. We omit the first, entitled Ar Rannoce, or The Series: a dialogue between a Druid and a child who is one of his disciples. Its length would unduly prolong the present article; but, inasmuch as it conveys an interesting sketch of the cosmogony and theology of the bardic system, we may find for it a place in some future page.
To come, then, to the second poem on our list, The Prophecy of Gwench'lan. The bard Kian, surnamed Gwench'lan, or "Pure Race" was born in Armorica at the beginning of the fifth century, and was never won to the Christian faith. His enmity to it, indeed, was embittered by the treatment he received at the hands of a foreign prince, calling himself a Christian; who threw the bard into a dungeon, and, after depriving him of sight, left him there to die. During his hard captivity he composed the following poem, called Diougan Gwench'lan, or The Prophecy of Gwench'lan, in which he predicts the fate of his captor, who was shortly afterward slain in battle fighting against the Bretons.
The composition of this poem is exactly after the pattern of the ancient Welsh bards. Like Taliessin, Gwench'lan believes in the three cycles of being of the Druidic theology, and in the doctrine of metempsychosis. "I have been born three times," says Taliessin. … "I have been dead; I have been alive; I am that which I was. … I have been a wild goat upon the mountains; I have been a spotted cock; I have been a fallow-deer; now I am Taliessin."
Like Lywarc'h-Hen, he mourns over his old age and decrepitude. He is melancholy, and a fatalist.
Like Aneurin, who had been made prisoner after the battle of Kattracz, and in his captivity composed The Song of Gododin, Gwench'lan sings in his chains and in the darkness of his dungeon.
It was not unusual among the bards to compare the leader of the enemy to the wild boar of the woods, and the champion who withstood him to the war-horse, or the white horse of the sea.
Gwench'lan is said to have composed many songs in praise of the warriors of his country—those who marched to battle invoking the Sun-god, and, on returning victorious, danced in his honor to the "Sword, King of Battle." A collection of his poems and prophecies was preserved until the French revolution, in the abbey of Landevenec; but the ferocious joy with which, in some fragments that remain, he contemplates the slaughter of the Christians in the Menez Bré, and the extermination of their faith, makes their destruction small matter of regret to any but the antiquary.
Gwench'lan, however, continues to be famous throughout Brittany, where the remnants of his compositions still are sung; especially The Prophecy, of which a part has been translated by M. de Villemarqué from Barzaz Breiz, (Breton Ballads.)
Diougan Gwench'lan.
Prophecy Of Gwench'lan.
I.
When the sun is setting,
When the sea is swelling,
I sit upon the threshold of my door.
I sang when I was young,
And still, grown old, I sing,
By night, by day, though with sad heart and sore.
If my head is bent low,
If my trouble presses;
It is not causeless care that weighs me down.
It is not that I fear;
I fear not to be slain:
For long enough my life has lingered on.
When they seek not Gwench'lan,
Gwench'lan, they will find him:
But find they shall not, when they seek for me.
Yet, whatsoe'er betide,
To me it matters not
That alone which ought to be, will be.
Thrice all must die, ere rest at last they see.
II.
Wild boar, I behold him,
From the wood forth comes he;
Much he drinks; he hath a wounded foot:
His hair is white with age;
Round him his hungry young
Are howling. Bloodstained is his gaping throat.
White horse of the sea, lo!
Comes to the encounter.
The shore for terror trembles 'neath his tread.
Bright and dazzling he,
Bright as the sparkling snow;
And silver horns are gleaming on his head.
Foams the water 'neath him,
At the thunder-fire
Of those fierce nostrils. Sea-horses around
Press, thick and close as grass
Upon a lakelet's bank.
Horse of the sea! strike well! Strike—strike him to the ground!
…
III.
As I was sweetly sleeping, in my cold, cold tomb.
I heard the eagle calling, at midnight calling, "Come!
Rise on your wings, O eaglets! and all ye birds of heaven.
To you, nor flesh of dogs, nor sheep, but Christians, shall be given!"
"Old raven of the sea,
What hold'st thou?—say to me."
"The chieftain's head I bear away:
His two red eyes shall be my prey,
For taking thy two eyes away."
"And thou too, what hast thou, O Reynard sly?"
"His heart, which was as false as mine, have I;
It sought thy death, and long hath made thee die."
"What dost thou by the corner of his mouth, O toad?"
"I wait to seize his soul upon her road,
Long as I live must I be her abode."
Thus he meeteth his reward
For his crime against the bard
Who dwells no more between Roch-allaz and Porz-Gwen'n.
The Submersion of the City of Ys, or Is, presents to us one of those legends which has its counterpart in so many other branches of the Celtic race. Its historical basis is as follows:
"In the year 440, there reigned in Armorica King Gradlon-veur, or the Great. His capital was the city of Is, since destroyed; and he occasionally consulted a holy man named Gwenolé, founder and abbot of the first monastery erected in Armorica.
"This is all which contemporary and authentic history tell us of this city, this prince, and this monk; but popular tradition, always more rich than history, furnishes us with additional particulars. According to this, the city of Is was protected from the invasions of the sea by an immense basin or reservoir, which at high tide received the waters of the ocean, as formerly the Lake Moeris those of the Nile. This basin had a secret door, of which the king alone had the key, and which he opened or closed himself when needed. One night, while he slept, the Princess Dahut, wishing to crown the follies of a banquet given to a suitor, stole the key; she, or, according to another variation of the story, her suitor, who was in truth the author of evil under an assumed form, opened the door, and, as had been foretold by Saint Gwenolé, submerged the city.
"This tradition, adds M. de Villemarqué, ascends to the very cradle of the Celtic race, and is common to its three great branches, the Bretons, Welsh, and Irish.
"The Is of Armorica is the Gwaeleod of Wales, and the Neaz of Ireland; the name in each instance signifying low or hollow. According to all three, the daughter of the king is the cause of the catastrophe, and is punished by being changed into a siren, after a death by drowning. The Welsh version of this ballad, which is apparently of the date of the fifth century, and composed by the bard Gwezno, contains two strophes which are almost literally repeated in the Armorican. It begins in a way very like the conclusion of the latter. Some one comes to awaken the king, whom the bard calls Seizenin:
"'Seizenin! arise, and look! The land of warriors, the country of Gwezno, is overwhelmed by the ocean.'
"The Welsh sailors in Cardigan Bay, which, they assure us, now occupies the submerged territory, declare that they can see beneath the waters the ruins of ancient edifices. The same is said of the Bay of Douarnenez in Basse-Bretagne.
"Also, the Irish fishermen, at a much earlier epoch, (according to Giraldus Cambrensis,) the middle of the second century, believed that they could see glimmering under the waters of the lake which covers their city of Neaz the round towers of ancient days.
"With regard to the horse of Gradlon, Marie de France assures us that, in struggling through the flood, the force of the water bore his master off his back; that the life of Gradlon was saved by a beneficent fay, but the horse, on reaching the land without the king, became wild with grief.
"The original tradition says that Gradlon, fleeing for his life, bore his daughter behind him, when a terrible voice cried three times, 'Push off the demon that sits behind thee.' The unhappy king obeyed, and forthwith the waters were restrained."
Submersion Of The City Of Is.
I.
Oh! hast thou heard—oh! hast thou heard
Of Gwenolé the rede,
Which unto Gradlon, king of Is,
He spake, but gat small heed?
"To earthly love, ah! yield thee not,
With evil cease to toy;
For after pleasure cometh woe,
And sorrow follows joy.
"Who bites the flesh of fishes, soon
The fishes him shall bite;
And he who swallows, shall himself
Be swallowed up some night.
"And he who drinks both beer and wine,
Shall water drink amain:
To him who cannot scan my speech
It soon shall be made plain."
II.
One eve spake Gradlon, king of Is,
King Gradlon thus spake he
"My merry friends, by your fair leave,
A little sleep would we."
"To-morrow 'twill be time enough—
With us this evening stay;
But if it be thy mind to sleep,
We would not say thee nay."
And thereupon her lover spake,
Full softly whispered he,
To Gradlon's daughter, "Sweet princess,
Sweet Dahut—and the key!"
"Hush! I will bear the key away
That locks the floodgates fast,
And Is shall be within thy power
Ere little time be past."
III.
Now, whosoe'er had seen the king,
As on his couch he lay,
With admiration had been filled
At sight of his array.
The aged king, in purple robed,
With long and snow-white hair,
Which o'er his shoulders flowed upon
His golden collar fair.
And whosoe'er had lain in wait
Had spied the princess white,
Unsandalled, steal into that room,
In silence of the night.
She to the king her father crept,
Sank softly on her knee,
Loosed from his neck the golden chain,
And bore away the key.
IV.
He sleepeth on—he sleepeth on,
Till, from the plains, a cry—
"The deep is o'er us! Is overwhelmed
Beneath the waters high!
"My lord the king, arise, arise!
To horse! and swiftly flee.
The dykes are burst—the land o'erflowed
By the triumphant sea."
Accursed be the treacherous maid
Who opened thus the gate
After the feast—who drowned the land,
And made it desolate!
V.
"Oh! tell me now, brave forester,
The wild-horse hast thou seen
Of Gradlon? Hast thou seen it pass
Along this valley green?"
"The horse of Gradlon saw I not
At any time pass by;
But in deep night 'trip trap' I hear,
With lightning swiftness fly."
"Say, hast thou seen, O fisherman!
The daughter of the sea,
Combing her golden hair at noon,
Where sparkling breakers be?"
"Yes, I have seen the mermaid white:
She sings among the waves.
Her songs are plaintive as the sound
Of deeps o'er dead men's graves."
We come now to The Changeling; and here again we trace not so much a resemblance as an all but literal reproduction of an Irish legend, known to all readers of The Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland under the title, The Brewery of Egg-shells. It must be confessed, however, that the non-Catholic medium through which the Irish version reaches us, has deprived it of the religious turn it may possibly have had in the original. Our Lady does not appear in it, as here in the Breton ballad.
The Changeling.
Grieved to the heart is la belle Marie.
Where may her Laoik, her little one, be?
Carried away by the Korrigan he.
"Forth to the fount as I went on a day,
Safe in his cradle my little one lay;
Home when I came he had vanished away.
"This wretched monster I found in his place.
Rough, like a toad, with a horrible face,
Dumb, greedy, fierce, like the rest of his race.
"Mary most pure, on your snow-gleaming throne,
In your maternal arms holding your Son,
You are in joy, while in sorrow I moan.
"Your Holy Child evermore you are keeping,
Mine I have lost, whom I thought safely sleeping;
Mother of Pity, ah! pity my weeping!"
"Daughter, my daughter, oh! sorrow no more.
Lost is he not whom you thus would deplore,
Laoik, your darling, short time shall restore.
"Who in an egg-shell shall feign to prepare
All that ten laborers need for their fare,
Forces the dwarf into speech, then and there.
"When he has spoken, then whip—whip again!
Whip, till he cry out with anger and pain!
He will be heard: and be borne off amain."
"Prithee, my mother, what do you?" he cries,
"What make you, mother?" he asks in surprise.
Dwarfling can scarcely believe his own eyes.
"What am I doing, my son, would you ken?
Dinner I make, in this egg-shell, for ten,
Ten of the farm-servants, laboring men."
"Ten! in an eggshell! The egg I have seen
Fresh, of the oldest white hen that has been:
Acorn, whose oak is far-spreading and green.
"Oaks have I seen, widening out from their core,
Old oaks of Brézal wood, rugged and hoar;
Nothing like this have I e'er seen before."
"Too many things hast thou seen," she replies:
Flip, flap! flip, flap!—thus upon him she flies.
"Little old man, now I have thee!" she cries.
"Whip not, nor strike, but restore him to me;
Harm hath been none to thy boy, belle Marie;
King over all in our country is he!"
When to her home returned Marie that day,
Safe in his cradle her own baby lay,
Sweetly asleep, as if wearied with play.
While she stands gazing, entranced at the sight,
Bending to kiss the fair cheeks with delight,
Laoik, her lost one, his eyes opens bright.
Half rising up, and with wondering eyes,
Soft arms outstretched in a dreamy surprise,
"Mother! how long I've been sleeping!" he cries.
We will conclude our present instalment from these interesting relics of Celtic antiquity by a spirit-stirring fragment; for the reader will perceive that it is incomplete. This is Arthur's March, (Bale Arzur,) written, like the last, in the Ies Kerne, or dialect of Cornouaille—Cornu Galliae—a district of Brittany. There is a complete change of metre between the parts marked I. and II.; the former being so arranged, that the poetical foot composing the lines is of three short syllables following a long one, and produces a spirited and martial effect, somewhat like the beat of a modern drum.
M. de Villemarqué, from whose Barzaz Briez, or Breton Ballads, we have drawn so largely in these pages, speaks thus of the ballad before us:
"The popularity which the name of Arthur enjoys in Brittany is one of the most curious phenomena in the history of Breton fidelity. Neither defeat nor exile could make the Bretons forgetful of Arthur. His magic renown, crossing the sea with them, received new life in Armorica; he became there, as he was in the Isle of Britain, an armed symbol of national liberty; and the people, at all periods from the sixth century to our own time, repeated, with adaptation to circumstances, the traditions and the sayings or prophecies of which he was the subject. Thus, whenever war is impending, they see, as a warning sign, the army of Arthur defiling at break of day over the summit of the Black Mountains; and the poem here given has for twelve centuries been in the mouth of Bretons armed to defend their hearths and altars. I learnt it from an aged mountaineer named Mikel Floc'h, of Leuhan, who told me that he had often sung it when marching against the enemy in the last wars of the west."
The last strophe, which is of later date than the preceding ones, may in some measure have contributed to save from oblivion the March of Arthur. It is always sung three times over, and with the greatest enthusiasm.
Some of the strophes, breathing the savage vengeance of pagan times, have been omitted in the English translation. They retain in the original so much of the Cambrian dialect and idiom as to be scarcely in the least understood by the Bretons who sing them.
The March Of Arthur.
I.
Haste, haste to the combat! Come kinsman, come brother,
Come father, come son, to the battle speed forth!
The brave and the dauntless, come, speed one another!
Come all! there is work for the warriors of worth.
II.
Said to his father, at day-dawn, the son of the warrior,
"Horsemen I see, on the far mountain summits, who gather.
"Horsemen all mounted on war-steeds of gray, like the mist-wreaths;
Coursers that snort with the cold on the heights of the mountains.
"Close ranks of six by six: three by three: thousands of lances
Flash in the beams of the sun, to our vale yet unrisen.
"Double ranks follow the banners that wave in the death-wind,
Measuring nine casts of a sling from the van to the rearward."
"Pendragon's army! I know it! Great Arthur Pendragon
Leading his warriors, marches 'mid clouds of the mountain.
"If it be Arthur, then quick to our bows and swift arrows!
Forward, and follow him. Set the keen death-winged dart flying!"
E'en as he spake rang the fierce cry of war through the mountains:
"Heart for eye: head for arm; death for wound!" through hill and valley.
If in such manner we die as befits Breton Christians,
Too soon we cannot sink down on the field of our conflict!
If our readers are not yet wearied with details of the ancient poetry of this exceptional part of France, we hope to present them in our next number with further specimens; including the death of Lord Nann from the spells of a malignant Korrigan, or Breton fairy, and the argument by which a Breton maiden persisted in choosing the cloister against all the persuasions of a suitor to her hand. Both these poems date at least from the sixth century of Christianity.