, pp. 37
ff.; Albert Le Grand, _Vies des Saints de la Bretagne_, p. 63;
Villemarque, _Chants populaires_, pp. 38 ff.

[43] See MacCulloch, _Religion of the Ancient Celts_, p. 372 and
notes.

[44] MacCulloch, _op. cit._, p. 274.

[45] Villemarque avouches that this version was taken down by his
mother from the lips of an old peasant woman of the parish of
Nevez. It bears the stamp of ballad poetry, and as it has
parallels in the folk-verse of other countries I see no reason
to question its genuineness.

[46] See "Maro Markiz Gwerrand," in the _Bulletin de la Societe
Academique de Brest_, 1865.

CHAPTER VIII: HERO-TALES OF BRITTANY

Soon after the Vicomte Hersart de la Villemarque published his
_Barzaz-Breiz_, a collection of popular ballads from the Breton,
critics who possessed a knowledge of the language and were acquainted
with its literature exposed the true nature of the work, acting,
indeed, as did British critics when Macpherson published his
fragments of Ossian. Villemarque was, in fact, a Breton Macpherson. He
would hear a Breton ballad sung or recited, and would then either
enlarge upon it and torture it out of all resemblance to its original
shape, or he would instigate a literary friend to do so. We must
remember that such a proceeding was fashionable at the time, as no
less a personage than Sir Walter Scott had led the way, and he had
been preceded by Burns in the practice. But whereas Burns made no
secret of what he did and greatly enhanced the poetical value of the
songs and ballads he altered, Scott and his friends, Kirkpatrick
Sharpe, Leyden, and others, indulged in what they described as the
"mystification" of their acquaintances by these semi-forgeries.
Like theirs, Villemarque's work had usually an historical or
legendary basis, but it is impossible to say how much of it is
original matter of folk-song and how much his own invention,
unless we compare his versions with those furnished by M. Luzel in
his _Guerziou Breiz-Izel_ (1868), which, however, only contains a few
of the originals of the tales given in the _Barzaz-Breiz_, and those
not the most interesting.

I have cast the following tales into narrative form from the ballads
published in the _Barzaz-Breiz_, where they obviously appear as
traditional tales in a polished, modern dress.[47] They may be
regarded, largely, as efforts of the modern imagination regarding t