"Bark not against instruction in the art of verse. Silence! miserable pretenders, who usurp the name of bards! You know not how to judge between truth and fables! … As for me, I am diviner and general-in-chief of the bards of the west!"
Gildas is equally energetic in protesting against all "who take pleasure in listening to the vociferations" of the popular poets of his time.
Reality and good faith are the two principal qualities inherent in popular poetry in its primitive state. The poet's aim is always to paint faithfully something which actually occurred, or which he believed did occur.
Chronicler and novelist, legendary and sacred psalmodist, the poet of Brittany is all this to the mass of the Breton population—to twelve hundred thousand uneducated persons, without any other learning than that which they gain from the oral instruction of their clergy. A thoughtful and imaginative people, full of poetic instinct, and of the desire of knowledge; and to whom every event, possessing a moderate share of interest, furnishes subject-matter for a song.
We will now attempt translations of a portion of the bardic poems which remain to us. We omit the first, entitled Ar Rannoce, or The Series: a dialogue between a Druid and a child who is one of his disciples. Its length would unduly prolong the present article; but, inasmuch as it conveys an interesting sketch of the cosmogony and theology of the bardic system, we may find for it a place in some future page.
To come, then, to the second poem on our list, The Prophecy of Gwench'lan. The bard Kian, surnamed Gwench'lan, or "Pure Race" was born in Armorica at the beginning of the fifth century, and was never won to the Christian faith. His enmity to it, indeed, was embittered by the treatment he received at the hands of a foreign prince, calling himself a Christian; who threw the bard into a dungeon, and, after depriving him of sight, left him there to die. During his hard captivity he composed the following poem, called Diougan Gwench'lan, or The Prophecy of Gwench'lan, in which he predicts the fate of his captor, who was shortly afterward slain in battle fighting against the Bretons.
The composition of this poem is exactly after the pattern of the ancient Welsh bards. Like Taliessin, Gwench'lan believes in the three cycles of being of the Druidic theology, and in the doctrine of metempsychosis. "I have been born three times," says Taliessin. … "I have been dead; I have been alive; I am that which I was. … I have been a wild goat upon the mountains; I have been a spotted cock; I have been a fallow-deer; now I am Taliessin."
Like Lywarc'h-Hen, he mourns over his old age and decrepitude. He is melancholy, and a fatalist.
Like Aneurin, who had been made prisoner after the battle of Kattracz, and in his captivity composed The Song of Gododin, Gwench'lan sings in his chains and in the darkness of his dungeon.
It was not unusual among the bards to compare the leader of the enemy to the wild boar of the woods, and the champion who withstood him to the war-horse, or the white horse of the sea.