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FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY.
The publication in 1859 of Count Hersart de Villemarque's Barzaz Breiz, or collection of ancient Breton ballads and folk-songs, excited almost as much interest in the literary world as Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry a century earlier, if not reaching to the point of that evoked by Macpherson's Ossian. The interest was historical and ethnological as well as literary. Here were historical ballads, full of fire and passion and pathos, dealing not alone with such comparatively recent and recognized historic figures as Bernard du Guesclin and Jean de Montfort, but dating back to the sixth century and earlier, having for definite characters Merlin and King Arthur, and containing distinct traces of Druidic and bardic influence, which had been preserved, not in manuscript, as were the remains of Celtic poetry in Wales and Ireland, but by oral tradition and as a part of the still living folk-poetry of the people. It was no wonder that great interest was excited by the apparent evidence that a people living in the midst of European civilization had preserved an |
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