n the subject has been spoken of as a "naif
and horrible" production, in which one will find "a bizarre mixture of
Druidic practice and Christian superstition." It describes Heloise as
a sorceress of ferocious and sanguinary temper. Thus can legend
magnify and distort human failing! As its presentation is important in
the study of Breton folk-lore, I give a very free translation of this
ballad, in which, at the same time, I have endeavoured to preserve the
atmosphere of the original.

THE HYMN OF HELOISE

O Abelard, my Abelard,
Twelve summers have passed since first we kissed.
There is no love like that of a bard:
Who loves him lives in a golden mist!

Nor word of French nor Roman tongue,
But only Brezonek could I speak,
When round my lover's neck I hung
And heard the harmony of the Greek,

The march of Latin, the joy of French,
The valiance of the Hebrew speech,
The while its thirst my soul did quench
In the love-lore that he did teach.

The bossed and bound Evangel's tome
Is open to me as mine own soul,
But all the watered wine of Rome
Is weak beside the magic bowl.

[Illustration: HELOISE AS SORCERESS]

The Mass I chant like any priest,
Can shrive the dying or bury the dead,
But dearer to me to raise the Beast
Or watch the gold in the furnace red.

The wolf, the serpent, the crow, the owl,
The demons of sea, of field, of flood,
I can run or fly in their forms so foul,
They come at my call from wave or wood.

I know a song that can raise the sea,
Can rouse the winds or shudder the earth,
Can darken the heavens terribly,
Can wake portents at a prince's birth.

The first dark drug that ever we sipped
Was brewed from toad and the eye of crow,
Slain in a mead when the moon had slipped
From heav'n to the fetid fogs below.

I know a well as deep as death,
A gloom where I cull the frondent fern,
Whose seed with that of the golden heath
I mingle when mystic lore I'd learn.

I gathered in dusk nine measures of rye,
Nine measures again, and brewed the twain
In a silver pot, while fitfully
The starlight struggled through the rain.

I sought the serpent's egg of power
In a dell hid low from the night and day:
It was shown to me in an awful hour
When the children of hell came out to play.

I have three spirits--seeming snakes;
The youngest is six score years young,
The second rose from the nether lakes,