Then raised it, neighing dismally,
He wept, so some men said.
“Tell me, O venerable sire,
Who to the fountain come,
Who is it that beneath this mound
Sleeps in his narrow home?”
“Lez-Breiz it is who lies at rest,
Here in this lonely spot.
Famed will he be through Brittany
Till Brittany is not.
He with a shout shall wake one early day,[159]
And chase the hated Frankish hosts away.”
Of the two warriors mentioned in the poem, the first is unknown except under the opprobrious epithet of “Lorgnez,” or “the leper.” The “Moor of the King” appears to have been one of those whom Louis took captive, after having conquered the city of Barcelona, and retained in his service. With regard to the avenging of his master’s death by the esquire, tradition relates that, at the moment when a Frankish warrior named Cosl struck off the Breton’s head, the esquire of Morvan pierced his back with a mortal wound. According to Ermold Nigel, a Frankish monk who accompanied the army of Louis, the head of Morvan was carried to the monk Witchar, who, when he had washed away the blood and combed the hair, recognized the features to be those of Lez-Breiz. He also relates that the body was carried away by the Franks, and that Louis le Débonnaire thought proper himself to arrange the ceremonies for its sepulture, doubtless with the intent to guard his tomb from the rebellious piety of the Bretons. The popular belief declared, as it has done with regard to other heroes, and in other lands, that from his unknown grave he should one day awake, and restore to his country the independence of which his death had deprived her. Seven years after the death of Morvan and the consequent subjugation of Brittany, Guiomarc’h, another viscount of Leon, of the race of Lez-Breiz, in 818 again roused his country to arms, and, after a vigorous struggle, succeeded in throwing off the foreign domination so hateful to his countrymen.
Nomenöe, one of the most astute as well as determined of the Breton kings, after deceiving Charles le Chauve for some time by a feigned submission, suddenly threw off the mask, drove the Franks beyond the Oust and Vilaine, seized the cities of Nantes and Rennes—which have ever since formed a part of Brittany—and delivered his countrymen from the tribute which they had been compelled to pay to the French king. M. Augustin Thierry considers the following description of the event which occasioned the deliverance of Brittany to be “a poem of remarkable beauty, full of allusions to manners of a remote epoch, ... and a vividly symbolical picture of the prolonged inaction and the sudden awakening of the patriot prince when he judged the right moment to have come.”
The fierce exultation of the poet when the head of the Intendant is swept off to complete the lacking weight, recalls the words of Lez-Breiz not many years before: “Can I but see this Frankish king, he shall have what he asks. I will pay tribute with my sword!”
“Si fortuna daret possim quo cernere regem,
Proque tributali hæc ferrea dona dedissem.”[160]