[4] M. de Ker-Gwen. A joke on the paleness of death; gwen signifying white.
[5] The allusion is to a proverbial Breton verse, in which the inhabitants of the four dioceses are facetiously characterised as thievish, false, stupid, and brutal.
[6] Douez signifies in Breton the moat of a fortified town; but as these moats were formerly full of water, and served the purposes of the washerwomen, the name douez has gradually been appropriated to the washing-places.
Robin Redbreast.
Long, long ago, ere the acorns were sown which have since furnished timber for the oldest vessels of the port of Brest, there lived in the parish of Guirek a poor widow called Ninorc’h Madek. Her father, who was very wealthy and of noble race, had left at his death a manor-house, with a farm, a mill, and a forge, twelve horses and twice as many oxen, twelve cows and ten times as many sheep, to say nothing of corn and flax.
But Ninorc’h was a helpless widow, and her brothers took the whole for themselves. Perrik, the eldest, kept the house, the farm, and the horses; Fanche, the second, took the mill and the cows; whilst the third, whose name was Riwal, had the oxen, the forge, and the sheep. Nothing was left for Ninorc’h but a doorless shed on the open heath, which had served to shelter the sick cattle.
However, as she was getting together her little matter of furniture, in order to take possession of her new abode, Fanche pretended to take pity upon her, and said,
“Come, I will deal with you like a brother and a Christian. Here is a black cow; she has never come to much good, and, indeed, gives scarce milk enough to feed a new-born babe; but you may take her with you, if you will, and May-flower can look after her upon the common.”
May-flower[1] was the widow’s daughter, now in her eleventh year, and had been called after the colourless blossom of the thickets from her unusually pale complexion.