There is much amusement to be got out of a journey across Brittany from St. Malo to Nantes, with mob-capped peasant-folk and blue-bloused and picturesque farmers, all laden with huge baskets and bundles, and an occasional live fowl, or perhaps a rabbit, or even a guinea-pig, though one must not believe that Frenchmen eat guinea-pigs. The writer, at least, never saw one being eaten, though what use they are really put to is an open question.
Occasionally there will be a want of elbow-room in a third-class carriage, but this is no great inconvenience, as the Breton mostly travels short distances only, and at the next station one may be left alone with only a drowsy Breton sailor—off on a furlough from a man-of-war—to keep him company, with his red-knobbed tam-o’-shanter rakishly over one ear.
Often a foreigner will throw himself into one’s compartment,—an American or an English artist, with his sketching paraphernalia, white umbrella and all,—for artist-folk are mostly of the genus who travel third-class. Good-naturedly enough, if his journey be a long one, he will tell you much of the country round about, for your artist is one who knows the byways as well as the highways—and perhaps a little better. By this procedure, one stands a chance of gathering information as well as being edified and amused.
CHAPTER V.
THE BRETON TONGUE AND LEGEND
THE speech of Brittany, like its legend and folk-lore, has ever been a prolific subject with many writers of many opinions.
The comparison of the speech of the Welshman with that of the Breton has often been made, but by no one so successfully as by Henri Martin, the historian, who, in writing of his travels in Wales, told how he had chatted with the Celtic population there and made himself thoroughly understood through his knowledge of Breton speech.
In its earliest phases, the Breton tongue had a literature of its own, at least a spoken literature, coming from the mouths of its bards and popular poets. In our own day, too, Brittany has its own songs and verses, which, though many of them have not known the medium of printer’s ink, have come down from past generations.
The three ancient Armorican kingdoms or states, Domnonée, Cornouaille, and the Bro-Waroch, had their own distinct dialects.
There is and was a considerable variation in the speech throughout Brittany, though it is and was all Breton. The dialects of Vannes, Quimper, and Tréguier are the least known outside their own immediate neighbourhood; the Léonais of St. Pol de Léon is the regular and common tongue of all Bas Bretons.
The old-time limits of the Breton tongue are wavering to-day, and from time to time have drawn appreciably toward the west, so that the boundary-line, which once ran from the mouth of the Loire to Mont St. Michel, now starts at the mouth of the Vilaine, and finishes at a point on the northern coast, a little to the westward of St. Brieuc.