BRITTANY: ITS PEOPLE AND ITS POEMS. SECOND ARTICLE.

More than a year has elapsed since we expressed a hope to present our readers with some further specimens of the ancient poetry of Brittany. We then gave, translated from their rendering into French by M. de Villemarqué, a portion of bardic poems, for example, The Prophecy of Gwench'lan; The Submersion of the City of Is; The Changeling, and The March of Arthur. These, as well as the dialogue between a Druid and a child, (which is perhaps too long for insertion here,) The Plague of Elliant, and portions of Lord Nann and the Fay, retain much of their scientific and often alliterative form, a part of which is their arrangement in tercets, or strophes of three lines rhyming together.

We now proceed to fulfil our promise with regard to the ballad of Lord Nann, which, however, it may be well to preface with some remarks upon that portion of Breton mythology which it illustrates.

The principal supernatural agents in the popular poetry of Brittany are the dwarfs and the fairies.

The common appellation of these elfish beings is Korrigan, whether masculine or feminine, from korr, little, (diminutive, korrik,) and gan or gwen, genius.

The Goddess Koridgwen is said by the Welsh bards to have had nine attendant virgins, called the nine Korrigan. This also was the name of the nine priestesses of the Isle of Sein.

The Breton fairies not only bear the same name as the Keltic goddesses and consecrated virgins, but are accredited with the same powers of foretelling future events, of curing by magical charms diseases otherwise incurable, of transporting themselves from one end of the world to the other in a moment of time, and of taking whatever forms they please.

Every year, at the return of spring, they hold, on the green turf near some fountain, a grand nocturnal feast. In the midst of the most delicate viands there sparkles a cup of crystal, of which the splendor is so great that there is no need of torches, and like the magic vase of the British Keridgwen, containing a marvellous liquid, one single drop of which conveys the knowledge of all sciences, and of all events, past, present, and to come.

The favorite haunts of the Korrigan are always by springs of water, especially those which are in lonely places in the neighborhood of Druidic remains called dolmens, and from which the Holy Virgin, who is said to be their especial enemy, has not yet chased them. Their traditional aspect is much the same as that of the other fairy races of European nations; their delicate and aerial frames being about two feet in height, perfect in symmetry, and clad in the very thinnest of ethereal textures. But all their beauty is nocturnal only. By the light of day, which they hate above all things, they are hideous, red-eyed, wrinkled, and old; their whole appearance betokening fallen intelligences. The Breton peasants assure us that they are great princesses who were struck by the curse of heaven for refusing to embrace the Christian faith when the first missionaries preached it in Armorica. The peasants of Wales declare them to be the souls of Druidesses, condemned to do penance.

Their breath is deadly. Should any wayfarer trouble the waters of their fountain, or, near their dolmen, come upon them suddenly, he is almost sure to perish; particularly if it be on a Saturday, the day consecrated to the Blessed Virgin, against whom they bear an especial hatred. They also have a great aversion to any token of religion, fleeing at the sound of a consecrated bell or at the sight of a soutane.

Like certain of their European cousins, the Korrigan have a decided penchant for stealing the infant offspring of the human race, with the object of regenerating their own. Therefore does the peasant mother of Brittany place round the neck of her babe a scapular or a rosary, that he may be secured against every elfish device, under the protection of Our Blessed Lady.

The changelings whom the Korrigan are accused of leaving in the place of the children whom they carry away are of the race of dwarfs, and also bear the name of korr, korrik, and korrigan; as well as kornandon, gwanzigan, or duz. This last name is that of the father of Merlin, and of an ancient divinity worshipped in that part of Britain which is now the county of York.

These dwarfs, we are told, are little, black, and hairy monsters, with the claws of a cat, the hind legs of a goat, and a voice harsh and broken with age. They it was who, ages ago, raised the huge stones of the menhir and dolmen, and hid beneath them untold hoards of treasure. Around these, when the stars are out, they are fond of dancing, to the primitive song which consists in an incessant repetition of the names of all the days of the week except Saturday and Sunday, of which they studiously avoid all mention. Wednesday, the day of Mercury, is always observed by them with especial festivities. It was they, say the peasants, who engraved the mystic characters on the Keltic stones of the Morbihan, and especially those at Gawr-iniz, or the Isle of the Giant. He who, like Taliessin, could read them, would learn all the places of their hidden treasure, and to him all the secrets of science would be revealed.

The dwarfs are less dreaded by the country people than the fays, as being rather comically mischievous than wholly malicious. The peasant who has taken the precaution to sprinkle himself with holy-water passes fearlessly by the lonely dolmen in the solitudes which they haunt.

We were taught in our early youth that it is to her white cliffs that Albion owes her name; but M. de Villemarqué suggests that she is more probably indebted for it to the god Mercury, the Keltic Hermes, who was the chief divinity worshipped by the insular Britons, under the name of Gwion. Their island was especially placed under his protection, and called for that reason the Isle of Gwion, or of Alwion. The same learned author remarks upon the apparent identity of the Gwion of Britain and the Gigon of the Tyrians and Phoenicians, the divinity being in each case revered as the god of commerce, the inventor of letters, and the patron of all the arts, and represented in each case by the figure of a dwarf carrying a purse.

The dwarfs of Brittany possess all the attributes of Gwion, the heavy purse included, and are evidently a part of the Keltic mythology. It is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to determine the date of poems of which they form the subject. The burden of the ballad of Lord Nann comes down from the cradle of the Indo-European nations, and, in numerous localities, finds expression in various forms. The one of which we here give a translation probably dates from the fifth or the sixth century.

The name Nann is the diminutive of the Breton Reunan.

LORD NANN AND THE FAY.

The foregoing ballad is reproduced under no fewer than fifteen different variations in Sweden and Denmark, where it is entitled, Sire Olaf and the Dance of the Elves. In its Servian form of Prince Marko and the Wila, the latter, instead of taking the life of the hero, exacts both his eyes and the four feet of his horse.

Numerous as are the traditions relating to the dwarfs, the songs of which they are the subject are very rare. The one we are about to give is apparently intended as a satire upon the tailors, that ill-used class which in all warlike nations has been condemned to ridicule. In Basse-Bretagne, no one pronounces their name without raising the hat, and adding, "Saving your presence."

It will be remarked that the name of Duz (diminutive, duzik) is, among others, given to the dwarfs, which, M. de Villemarqué observes, was that borne by the genii of Gaul in the days of St. Augustine, who speaks of them as "Dæmones quos Duscios Galli nuncupant."[137]

It is said that a traveller being upon one occasion drawn into their circling dance, and finding the refrain of "dilun, dimeurs, dimerc'her," etc., somewhat monotonous, ventured to add the words Saturday and Sunday, when the sudden explosion of outcries, threatenings, and rage among the assembly was so great that the rash adventurer was half-dead with fear. We are told that if only he had added, "And so the week is done," the long penitence to which the dwarfs are condemned would have ended.

AR C'HORRED. (THE DWARFS.)

The Plague of Elliant commemorates a frightful pestilence which, in the sixth century, desolated not only Armorica, but the whole of Europe. Those who were attacked by it lost their hair, their teeth, and their sight; became yellow and languid, and speedily died. The parish of Elliant, in Cornouaille, was one of several from which the whole population perished. The neighboring country, especially that around Tourc'h, was preserved from the scourge by the prayers of a hermit named Rasian.

We are told by M. de Villemarqué that the ballad of The Plague of Elliant is never sung without the addition of the following legend:

"It was the day of the Pardon (the feast of the patron saint) at Elliant; a young miller, arriving at the ford with his horses, saw a fair lady in a white robe seated on the bank of the river, a little staff in her hand, and who requested him to convey her over the water. 'Oh! yes; assuredly, madame,' replied he, and already she was on his horse's crupper, and soon deposited on the other side. Then the fair lady said to him, 'Young man, you know not whom you have brought over: I am the Plague. I have just made the tour of Brittany, and I go to the church of the town, where they are ringing for mass; all whom I strike with my staff will quickly die; as for yourself, fear nothing; no harm shall happen to you, nor yet to your mother."

"And the Plague kept her word," adds the Breton peasant; for does not the song itself say that none but

"A widow poor of sixty, and her only son, are left?"

The following is most probably only a fragment of the original:

THE PLAGUE OF ELLIANT.

There is no surer remedy, in the estimation of the Breton peasantry, against an epidemic than to make a song about it. "The Plague, finding herself discovered, fled away." Thus, as one among many examples of the practical utility of the popular poetry, we find that when, some years ago, Brittany was severely visited by the cholera, no attention was paid to the printed circulars which were issued by medical and magisterial authority; all the preparation made by the people to meet it was to dig an extra number of graves, until a popular poet put into verse the good advice concerning preventives and remedies which, when placarded in official prose, had been passed by with no more notice than a grave and incredulous shake of the head. But a week after the composition of the "Song upon the Cholera" it was heard in every remote hamlet or farm throughout Brittany. The verses in themselves were detestable, in the way of poetry; no matter, the cholera, finding itself the subject of a song, would take flight. From the power attributed by the people to poesy arises the Breton proverb, "Poesy is stronger than the three strongest things: stronger than evil, than tempest, or than fire." And again, "Song is the calmer of all sorrow." All the Keltic poems, which, like The Plague of Elliant, are written in strophes, are sung throughout to some national air, however lengthy they may be. "I remember," writes M. Émile Souvestre, "that one day, arriving at the Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt, near Morlaix, I heard a blind man who was singing Breton verses on the Nativity: in passing by again in the evening, I found him still in the same place, continuing his subject, which was by no means concluded, and which, he informed me, it required an entire day to get through, though he did not yet know the whole."

It is impossible to compute the number of the popular poems of Brittany. The author just quoted considers that eight or ten thousand would not reach the reality; and he proceeds to describe the manner in which they mingle with the very air of the country, as follows:

"No words can do justice to the intoxicating sensation which he who understands our old language experiences, when, on a fine summer evening, he traverses the mountains of Cornouaille, listening to the songs of the shepherds. At every step the voice, perhaps of a child, perhaps of an aged woman, sends forth to him from the distance a fragment of some antique ballad, sung to melodies such as are never now composed, and narrating the miracle of a former time, or a crime committed in the valley, or an attachment which has broken the heart. The couplets answer one another from rock to rock; the verses sport in the air like the insects of the evening; the wind carries them by gusts into your face, with the perfume of the black-wheat and the rye; and, immersed in this poetic atmosphere, enchanted and meditative, you advance into the midst of the rural solitudes. You perceive great Druidic stones, clothed with moss, leaning toward the border of the wood; feudal ruins, half-hidden in the thickets or breaking the slope of the hills, while at times, on the heights of the mountain, figures of men, with long hair flying in the wind, and strangely clad, pass like shadows between you and the horizon, marked out against the sky, which is just beginning to be illumined by the rising moon. It is like a vision of bygone times; like a waking dream that one might have after reading a page of Ossian."

We will close our present article with a translation of the Sône of Per Cöatmor, as promised in our last; hoping in a future one to conclude our notice of the more ancient and "learned" poetry of Brittany, that is, that which was composed according to the bardic rules, with some curious fragments relating to Merlin the Magician and Merlin the Bard; to be followed by specimens of the historical poems of Brittany.

BRETON SONE.