"Seeing the little blind child of seven years without other guide than his little white dog.
"Hearing him sing, shivering, beaten by the wind and the rain, without covering on his little feet, and his teeth chattering with cold."
It was the festival of All Saints, as the legend tells us; the festival of the Dead follows it, and is prolonged during the second night of this month which the Bretons call the Month of the Dead. Having feasted the blessed, every one goes to the cemetery to pray at the tomb of his parents, to fill with holy water the hollow of their gravestone, or, according to the locality, to make libations of milk. It is said that on this night the souls from Purgatory fly through the air as crowded as the grass on the meadow; that they whirl with the leaves which the wind rolls over the fields, and that their voices mingle with the sighs of nature in mourning. Then, toward midnight, these confused voices become more and more distinct, and at each cottage door is heard this melancholy canticle.
"In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, greeting to you, people of this house, we come to you to ask your prayers.
"Good people, be not surprised that we have come to your door; it is Jesus who has sent us to wake you if you sleep.
"If there is yet pity in the world, in the name of God, aid us.
"Brothers, relatives, friends, in the name of God, hear us; in the name of God pray, pray; for the children pray not. Those whom we have nourished have long since forgotten us; those whom we have loved have left us destitute of pity."
Bands of mendicant singers, poor souls in trouble, they also, wanderers like those of the dead, go by woods and graves, to the sound of funereal bells, lending their voices to the unhappy of the other world.
The blind orphan, who, from the bed of his sick mother, went to kneel on the couch of his dead father, commenced in their company his apprenticeship as a singer, and if it is believed, as is claimed, that the chant des ames, such as it has come to us, was composed by a blind singer, under the inspiration of his father, whom he would have delivered from pain, the blind singer should be Hervé, and the inspirer Hyvarnion.