Brittany preserves the same characteristic relations with regard to France as Wales, Ireland, and the Highlands of Scotland preserve toward England. Its geographical position, its mountains, and the sea, have continued to protect it in a great degree from foreign influences. Indeed, this isolation is observable throughout its history. Almost from the first, the Breton Celts were the sole occupants of their own corner of the earth. The Gauls, the original inhabitants of the country, were outnumbered and absorbed by the influx of British emigrants; who, of the same original stock with themselves, speedily became the dominant sept, and possessors of the country.
The first extensive emigration of the insular Britons from what is now Great Britain into Armorica, took place about the year 383, by order of the tyrant Maximin. It was not, however, undertaken by compulsion, but was a willing adventure. The second took place when they fled in great numbers from the Saxon domination, after A.D. 450, when Ambrose and the great Arthur had fought so bravely and so long, in vain. This time they were driven from their land, and as they crossed the sea to find a home with their brethren in Armorica, they sorrowfully chanted the psalm which their Christian bards had translated into their native tongue, "Thou hast given us, O Lord, as sheep for the slaughter; and thou hast scattered us among the nations." A terrible pestilence with which, about this time, various parts of Britain were visited, is said to have done more than anything else toward confirming the sway of the Saxons in England, and diminishing the old Britons to a mere remnant in the island. They themselves regarded it as a sign that the kingdom was taken from them, and given by God to their enemies. The emigrations thenceforward became so frequent and so numerous that the British isle was almost depopulated of its ancient inhabitants; and King Ina, of Wessex, who was also Bretwalda, coming to the throne in A.D. 689, grieved to lose so many of his subjects, sent to entreat the emigrants to return. At that period, they more than equalled the indigenous population of Armorica, upon whom they had imposed their own laws and form of government. Thus, in the fifth century, Armorica was, like Cambria, divided into small independent states: those of Vannes; Kerne, or Cornouaille; Leon; and Tréguier—all Celtic in language, customs, and laws, and each division having its own bishop and its own chief. Among the chiefs, one often obtained a predominating power over the rest, with the title of konan, or crowned chief. Hence, all the earlier kings of Armorica of whom we hear in history, Meriadek, Gradlon, Budik, Houel, and others, were Britons from the Island. Their bards, who formed an essential part of every noble family among the Cambrians, accompanied them into their adopted country. Of this number was Taliessin, "the prince of the bards, the prophets, and the Druids of the West." He took up his abode in the land of the Venetes, (Vannes,) near to his friend and brother bard, Gildas, who had emigrated thither, and who is said to have converted Taliessin to the Christian faith. Three other celebrated bards of the same period were Saint Sulio, Hyvarnion, and Kian Gwench'lan.
Tradition gives the following account of the manner in which St. Sulio received his vocation. When very young, he was one day playing with his brothers near the castle of their father, the lord of Powys, when a procession of monks passed by, led by their abbot, and chanting, to the sound of his harp, the praise of God. The sweetness of their hymns so delighted the child, that, bidding his brothers return to their sports, he followed the monks, "in order to learn of them how he might compose beautiful songs." His brothers hastened to tell their father of his flight, who sent thirty armed men, with a charge to kill the abbot and to bring back Sulio. He had, however, been sent at once to a monastery in Armorica, of which in due time he became prior. The Welsh, who call him Saint Y Sulio, possess a collection of his poems.
The Christian faith won its way more slowly in Armorica than it had done in Britain. They who had inherited the harp of the ancient Druids, with the mysteries of their religion and the secrets of their knowledge, were often reluctant to submit to the belief which despoiled them of their priesthood. "If Taliessin," says M. de la Villemarqué, "consecrated to Christ the fruits of a mysterious science, perfected under the shadow of proscribed altars; if the monks, taking the harp in hand, attracted to the cloister the children of the chiefs; if the Christian mother taught her little one in the cradle to sing of him who died upon the cross, …. there were, at the same time, in the depth of the woods, dispersed members of the Druidic colleges, wandering from hut to hut, like the fugitive Druids of the Isle of Britain, who continued to give to the children of Armorica lessons on the divinity, as their fathers had been taught; and they did so with sufficient success to alarm the Christian teachers, and oblige them to combat them skilfully with their own weapons."
Even after paganism had fallen before the cross, we find curious traces of the Druidic element scattered here and there in the early poems of Brittany. Her bishops of that period are spoken of as "Christian Druids, who grafted the faith of Christ on the Druid oak;" and of her poets it is said, "They did not break the harp of the ancient bards; they only changed some of its chords."
The most ancient poems preserved in Brittany which bear evidences of being the scientific compositions of the bards, are: The Series, or the Druid and the Child; The Prediction of Gwench'lan; The Submersion of the City of Ys; The Changeling; The Wine of the Gauls; The March of Arthur; and Alain the Fox. These are the last breathings of the learned poetry of the Bretons of Armorica.
But, besides the scientific poems of the descendants of the Druids, there grew up, at the same time, a large amount of popular poetry, both in Wales and in Armorica. As early as the sixth century, this divided itself into three distinct kinds: theological, heroic, and historical poems; domestic poems and love-songs; and poems on religious subjects, including the versified histories of saints. This whole class of poetry sprang from the people; it was the expression of their heart, the echo of their thoughts, the depository of their history and of their belief.
Upon this poetry of the people, both in the British island and in Brittany, the bards made war. And when, among the Bretons, the popular minstrels overcame the bards, the Welsh triads put the Armoricans in the number of "the three peoples which have corrupted the primitive bardism by mixing with it heterogeneous principles."
"It is only the kler, (scholar-poets,) the vagabonds, and the beggars," says Taliessin, "who give themselves no trouble."