Since the early 1970s, Brittany has experienced a tremendous revival of its folk music. Along with flourishing traditional forms such as the bombard-binou pair and fest-noz ensembles incorporating other additional instruments, it has also branched out into numerous subgenres.
Denez Prigent is a Breton folk singer-songwriter of the gwerz and kan ha diskan styles of Breton music. From his debut at the age of 16, he was known for singing traditional songs a cappella, and has moved on to singing his own songs with techno music accompaniments. He has performed in France as well as internationally and has recorded seven studio and two live albums.
Gwenc'hlan is the cognomen of a legendary 6th century Breton druid and bard called Kian, the subject and purported author of a Breton song called "Diougan Gwenc'hlan", published by Hersart de la Villemarqué in his 1839 anthology Barzaz Breiz.
In Breton folklore, a Korrigan is a fairy or dwarf-like spirit. The word korrigan means "small-dwarf". It is closely related to the Cornish word korrik which means gnome. The name changes according to the place. Among the other names, there are korrig, korred, korrs, kores, couril, crion, goric, kornandon, ozigan, nozigan, teuz, torrigan, viltañs, poulpikan, poulpiquet, and paotred ar sabad.
Barzaz Breiz is a collection of Breton popular songs collected by Théodore Hersart de la Villemarqué and published in 1839. It was compiled from oral tradition and preserves traditional folk tales, legends and music. Hersart de la Villemarqué grew up in the manor of Plessix in Nizon, near Pont-Aven, and was half Breton himself.
Breton literature may refer to literature in the Breton language (Brezhoneg) or the broader literary tradition of Brittany in the three other main languages of the area, namely, Latin, Gallo and French – all of which have had strong mutual linguistic and cultural influences.
Théodore Claude Henri, vicomte Hersart de la Villemarqué was a Breton philologist and man of letters.
Nora Kershaw Chadwick CBE FSA FBA was an English philologist who specialized in Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Old Norse studies.
Morgens, morgans, or mari-morgans are Welsh and Breton water spirits that drown men.
The Reverend Thomas Price was a historian and a major Welsh literary figure of the early 19th century. Price was also "an essayist, orator, naturalist, educationalist, linguist, antiquarian, artist and musician". He contributed to learned and popular journals and was a leading figure in the revival of the Eisteddfod.
François-Marie Luzel, often known by his Breton name Fañch an Uhel, was a French folklorist and Breton-language poet.
Charles Jules-Joseph de Gaulle was a French writer who was a pioneer of Pan-Celticism and the bardic revival. He is also known as Charlez Vro-C'hall, the Breton language version of his name. He was the uncle of the army officer and statesman Charles de Gaulle.
Françoise Morvan is a French writer who specialises in Breton history and culture.
Morvarc'h is the name of a fabulous horse of Breton legend found in two folktales reworked in the 19th and 20th centuries. Though its name appears in older sources, it was invented or reinterpreted by Charles Guyot, who named it Morvark in his version of the legend of the city of Ys in 1926. It belongs to the "Queen of the North" Malgven, who gives it to her husband King Gradlon. Endowed with the ability to gallop on the waves, Morvarc'h is described as having a black coat and as breathing flames through its nostrils. It also appears in a Breton folktale about King Marc'h of Cornouaille. In the course of a deer hunt it is killed by its own rider's arrow, which has been turned around by the spell of Dahud, the daughter of Malgven. She then puts the ears of the horse Morvarc'h on the head of King Marc'h, who seeks in vain to hide them.
"Gwerz Skolan" is a gwerz with a long tradition in Lower Brittany, especially Léon-Trégor and Cornouaille. Its story is found in Gaulish texts also, and the oldest extant Gaulish version is found in the 13th-century Welsh Black Book of Carmarthen, and the poem is cited as evidence for the preservation in Brittany of cultural memories and traditions predating the entrance of Bretons into Brittany. The gwerz was performed in Brittany until the 19th century, with some late examples from the 20th century. Its content describes a man who had died after living a life of rape and murder, and now comes back from hell to ask for forgiveness.
Donatien Laurent was a French musicologist and linguist.
The Gwerz Santes Enori is a Breton gwerz, a type of folk song that combines literary with musical characteristics. The song, which is preserved in many versions and fragments, tells a story that resembles a saint's life, a 14th-century version of the hagiography of the Breton saint Budoc. Its general theme has been called that of "the girl with a golden breast", as told in stories throughout the Celtic world and surviving in oral form into the 20th century.
Carol Braun Pasternack (1950–2020) was a professor of medieval English literature and language at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) from 1988 to 2013. She chaired the Medieval Studies department, and was also Dean of Summer Sessions at UCSB in 2011–2013.
An Dialog etre Arzur Roe d'an Bretounet ha Guynglaff is an anonymous poem in 247 lines relating the apocalyptic prophecies which King Arthur extracted from one Guynglaff, a wild man, prophet and magician closely analagous to Merlin in the earliest Welsh tradition. It dates from about the middle of the 15th century, making it the oldest surviving work of literature in the Breton language.
"Mari Kelenn" is a Breton gwerz extant in only two 19th-c versions. The song tells the story of a young woman who is abused by her father and bears him seven children, all of whom she kills. For penance, she is locked in a chest for one year or for seven years ; in both cases, after the penance is done a piece of her heart is left in the chest, but Mari is gone. The coming of a white dove signifies she is absolved.
