The enthusiasm of his companions burst out afresh. Falling into loose ranks they followed him. His wife marched by his side in the first rank, carrying a reaping-hook on her shoulder and singing as she marched.
“Quickly, quickly, my children! We go to strike a blow for liberty! Have I brought thirty sons into the world to beg their bread, to carry firewood or to break stones, or bear burdens like beasts? Are they to till the green land and the grey land with bare feet while the rich feed their horses, their hunting-dogs, and their falcons better than they are fed? No! It is to slay the oppressors that I have borne so many sons!”
Quickly they descended the mountains, gathering numbers as they went. Now they were three thousand strong, five thousand strong, and when they arrived at Langoad nine thousand strong. When they came to Guérande they were thirty thousand strong. The houses of those who had ground them down were wrapped in flames, fiercely ends the old ballad, “and the bones of those who had oppressed them cracked, like those of the damned in Tartarus.”
History tells us nothing concerning Kado the Striver, but it is most unlikely that he is a mere figment of popular imagination. What history does record, however, is that the wicked Duchess and her host of mercenary Normans were forced to flee, and that her place was taken by a more just and righteous ruler.
The Marquis of Guérande
Breton tradition speaks of a wild young nobleman, Louis-François de Guérande, Seigneur of Locmaria, who flourished in the early part of the seventeenth century. He was wealthy, and lived a life of reckless abandon; indeed, he was the terror of the parish and the despair of his pious mother, who, whenever he sallied forth upon adventure bent, rang the bell of the château, to give the alarm to the surrounding peasantry. The ballad which tells of the infamous deeds of this titled ruffian, and which was composed by one Tugdual Salaün, a peasant of Plouber,[46] opens upon a scene of touching domestic happiness. The Clerk of Garlon was on a visit to the family of his betrothed.
“Tell me, good mother,” he asked, “where is Annaïk? I am anxious that she should come with me to dance on the green.”
“She is upstairs asleep, my son. Take care,” added the old woman roguishly, “that you do not waken her.”
The Clerk of Garlon ran lightly up the staircase and knocked at Annaïk’s door.