"'Little Queen, I pray thee, give me the first of these plants.'
"'Save your grace, my Lord, I shall give it only to him whom I shall marry.'
"'Thou hast given it! Give it then,' cried the royal officer, 'Thou hast given it to this young man, who has just come to ask thee in marriage.'"
And the Little Queen of the Fountain gave to the bard, in pledge of her faith, the plant which produces gaiety. [Footnote 191]
[Footnote 191: The Breton text of the legend of Saint Hervé, in verse appears in the fifth edition of the Barsas[??] Breis, Chante populaires de la Bretagne. ]
If we may credit the legend, it was even in the same mind that Rivanone, as she was called, went to the fountain; for she also had a dream the preceding night, a dream altogether like the bard's. She herself confessed it, and if she had not avowed it, we could divine it, "Those who love, have they not dreams?" An qui amant, ipsi sibi somnia fingunt? Seeing in this a certain proof of the will of heaven, the Frank count brought the brother of Rivanone, an Armorican chief, in whose manor the young girl had lived since the death of her father and mother, and having related to him all that had passed, he demanded of him his sister in marriage for the favorite of the king.
Thus was settled this well-assorted union, and the wedding was celebrated at the court of the Frank count.
Tradition has described it in a manner almost epic. The small as well as the great, the poor as well as the rich, were guests at the feast; churchmen and warriors, magistrates and common people, arrived there from all sides. Neither wine, nor hydromel, drawn from casks, was wanting to the guests. Two hundred hogs were immolated, and two hundred fat bulls, two hundred heifers, and one hundred roebucks, two hundred buffalos, one hundred black, one hundred white, and their skins divided among the guests. A hundred robes of white wool were given to the priests, one hundred collars of gold to the valiant warriors, and blue mantles without number to the ladies. The poor had also their part; there was for them a hundred new suits; they could not receive less at the marriage of a poet who placed duty to them at the head of the most beautiful virtues. But in order worthily to do him honor for himself--in order properly to celebrate the union of the Armorican muse [{814}] with the genius of the island bards--a hundred musicians did not seem too many--a hundred musicians who from their high seats played for fifteen days in the court of the count. In order to complete this by an act destined to crown the glory of the young couple, we are assured the king of the bards of the sixth century, the last of the Druids, the famous Meri, finally celebrated the marriage.
Be this as it may, in regard to an honor which another popular tradition appears to claim with more reason for the heroes of another legend of the same century, the wedding at last at an end, the bride, accompanied by a numerous suite, was conducted with her husband to the manor of her brother, and if the Armorican customs of our days already existed at that epoch, the minstrels at the wedding played on their way a tender and melancholy air, named the Air of the Evening before the Festival, which always brought tears to the eyelids of the bride.
"God console the inconsolable heart, the heart of the girl on her wedding night."