“Ah, seigneur,” she replies, the tears falling fast, “I had rather be at home with my mother counting the chips which fall from the fire.”
“Let us descend, then, to the cellar, where I will show you the rich wines in the great bins.”
“Ah, sir, I would rather quaff the water of the fields that my father’s horses drink.”
“Come with me, then, to the shops, and I will buy you a sumptuous gown.”
“Better that I were wearing the working dress that my mother made me.”
The seigneur turns from her in anger. She lingers at the window and watches the birds, begging them to take a message from her to her friends.
At night a gentle voice whispers: “My father, my 147 mother, for the love of God, pray for me!” Then all is silence.
In this striking ballad we find strong traces of the Breton love of country and other national traits. The death-bird alluded to is a grey bird which sings during the winter in the Landes country in a voice soft and sad. It is probably a bird of the osprey species. It is thought that the girl who hears it sing is doomed to misfortune. The strange and ghostly journey of the unhappy Tina recalls the mise en scène of such ballads as The Bride of Satan, and it would seem that she passes through the Celtic Tartarus. It is plain that the Seigneur of Jauioz by his purchase of their countrywoman became so unpopular among the freedom-loving Bretons that at length they magnified him into a species of demon—a traditionary fate which he thoroughly deserved, if the heartrending tale concerning his victim has any foundation in fact.
The Man of Honour
The tale of the man who is helped by the grateful dead is by no means confined to Brittany. Indeed, in folk-tale the dead are often jealous of the living and act toward them with fiendish malice. But in the following we have a story in which a dead man shows his gratitude to the living for receiving the boon of Christian burial at his hands.