Thou craven priest, go, get thee hence!
No fear have I of fate so fell.
Go, suck the milk of innocence,
Leave me to quaff the wine of hell!
It is difficult to over-estimate the folk-lore value of such a ballad as this. Its historical value is clearly nil. We have no proof that Héloïse was a Breton; but fantastic errors of this description are so well known to the student of ballad literature that he is able to discount them easily in gauging the value of a piece.
In this weird composition the wretched abbess is described as an alchemist as well as a sorceress, and she descends to the depths of the lowest and most revolting witchcraft. She practises shape-shifting and similar arts. She has power over natural forces, and knows the past, the present, and the things to be. She possesses sufficient Druidic knowledge to permit her to gather the greatly prized serpent’s egg, to acquire which was the grand aim of the Celtic magician. The circumstances of the ballad strongly recall those of the poem in which the Welsh bard Taliesin recounts his magical experiences, his metamorphoses, his knowledge of the darker mysteries of nature.
Nantes of the Magicians
The poet is in accord with probability in making the magical exploits of Abélard and Héloïse take place at Nantes—a circumstance not indicated in the translation owing to metrical exigencies. Nantes was, indeed, a classic neighbourhood of sorcery. An ancient college of Druidic priestesses was situated on one of the islands at the mouth of the Loire, and the traditions of its denizens had evidently been cherished by the inhabitants of the city even as late as the middle of the fourteenth century, for we find a bishop of the diocese at that period obtaining a bull of excommunication against the local sorcerers, and condemning them to the eternal fires with bell, book, and candle.[53]
The poet, it is plain, has confounded poor Héloïse with the dark sisterhood of the island of the Loire. The learning she received from her gifted lover had been her undoing in Breton eyes, for the simple folk of the duchy at the period the ballad gained currency could scarcely be expected to discriminate between a training in rhetoric and philosophy and a schooling in the grimoires and other accomplishments of the pit.