![]() | |
Author | Mary-Ann Constantine |
---|---|
Subject | Breton literature |
Publisher | Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies |
Publication date | 1996 |
Awards | Katherine Briggs Prize, 1996 |
ISBN | 0952747804 |
Breton Ballads is an academic monograph by Mary-Ann Constantine, published in 1996. The book includes examples of the Breton ballad known as the gwerz , and follows their history, and that of scholarship on the genre, into the 19th and 20th centuries. It was awarded the Katharine Briggs Prize by The Folklore Society in 1996. [1]
The book was published by Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, a publisher based in Aberystwyth, which also publishes a semi-annual journal and a range of occasional books. [2] The monograph was released just after the 1995 International Ballad Conference in Brittany, in honor of the centenary of the death of Théodore Claude Henri, vicomte Hersart de la Villemarqué. [3]
Breton Ballads is a monograph with extensive apparatus. In the first two chapters, Constantine provides an overview of the study of the gwerz and its importance to Romantic nationalism and the Celtic Revival of the 19th century. The third and fourth chapter are case studies of two important ballads, and the last chapter investigates the relationship between source material and republication via cultural and textual translation. A lengthy appendix contains texts of Breton ballads with English translations of the Breton. [2] The source material, much of which is not available in the United States, is augmented by Constantine's own research. [4]
The introduction provides insight into the ongoing controversy over the status of Breton folk songs, and introduces the main concern of the book: the always-shifting understanding, interpretations, and meanings of the ballads. [5] In Chapter 1 Constantine gives an overview of the work of the three most important 19th-c collectors of oral Breton poetry: Théodore Claude Henri, vicomte Hersart de la Villemarqué (1815-1895), François-Marie Luzel (1821-1895), and Jean-Marie de Penguern (1807-1856).
Constantine explains the importance of the work of Villemarqué, whose 1839 collection of Breton poetry, Barzaz Breiz , set the tone for the study of this poetry. His supposedly chronological organization of texts created a timeline of Breton history, and promoted the idea that the ballads were uncorrupted remnants of a pure and simple Celtic past—after he had removed any Gallicisms. [6] Constantine discusses the subsequent controversy over the collection, which started in the late 1860s with accusations of falsifications, and came to the fore in 1872 when Luzel publicly took Villemarqué to task over the editorial liberties he took with his source material. Villemarqué died in 1895, having revised and expanded his collection a number of times without ever disclosing his source material. [7] (The ultimate denunciation of his work came from Breton writer Francis Gourvil (1889-1984), who argued that the entire Barzaz Breiz oeuvre was a forgery, though the discovery of his notebooks led Donatien Laurent (1935-2020) to partially defended Villemarqué. [2] ) In the rest of the chapter Constantine provides a social and geographical setting for the ballads, and discusses the influence of the Catholic Church and the position (and the extraordinary memory) of the singers of the ballads, who were typically "female, rural, poor, often illiterate". [8]
The following chapter explains the ballads themselves in the context of performance and history; only recently, Constantine explains, have the gwerz come to be studied as individual literary artifacts rather than as historical elements in the unbroken tradition posited by Villemarqué. In the typical 19th-c view of the ballad tradition, the songs were lumped together as if they came from an undifferentiated mass of commoners, a community voice whose assumed simplicity and honesty predetermined the interpretation of the poetry. [9] Villemarqué's view on the background of the poetry remained current: the ballads express a Celtic desire for "infinity", and since they were expressions of popular belief there could be no individual creativity. Villemarqué did not recognize the contradiction between this idea of oral poetry as an unfiltered popular expression and his practice of editorially restoring the supposed purity of the poetry. To explain the need for editorial emendation he must, like Sir Walter Scott, assume that language has degraded and the modern scholar needs to restore it to an original status. [10]
The next chapters are close readings and case studies of two gwerz, the textual groups Iannik Kokard and Mari Kelenn , [2] from the collection of texts collected by François-Marie Luzel. [11] Iannik Kokard is the story of a man who falls in love with a girl who suffers from leprosy; the latest (of around sixteen) versions was recorded in 1980. Constantine discusses two textual groups, and two individual textual outliers, provides translations, and then gives a detailed discussion of themes and topography. The gwerz Mari Kelenn , by contrast, exists in only two 19th-c versions; it is 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 (in the one version) or for seven years (in the other); in both cases, after the penance is done a piece of her heart is left in the chest, but Mari is gone.
The final chapter discusses the romanticism of the 19th century and its influence on readings and interpretations, and the role of collectors. [2] It is followed by a 40-page-long set of appendices, giving the text (with comments and glosses) and translation of nine Breton ballads.
Linda Gowans, in a review for the Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung , called the book "a pioneering guide". [2] Antone Minard, in a review published by the Journal of Folklore Research , said "it is an excellent introduction to the fields of textual ballad study and Breton folklore"; he also praises the translations and the appendix as a "good source for Breton-language students". Minard notes that although the primary texts were sung, Constantine does not deal with the music at all (it is not recorded in the manuscripts), but in general has high praise for the book: "Constantine has taken a corpus of interesting but sparse material and filled it out beautifully using modern folkloristic studies, history, and comparative studies. She has valuable insights into the relation between contemporary aesthetics and the collection, publication, and analysis of folklore. Her final observation is well taken: Modern folkloristics is guided as much by the 'late modern twentieth-century aesthetics of brokenness and flux' as nineteenth-century folklorists were guided by theirs". [4] (Constantine continued a "postmodern" reading of fragmentary ballads and songs in a later book, co-written with Gerald Porter, Fragments and Meaning in Traditional Song. [12] )
Where Minard praised the discussion of modern views of the texts, Isabelle Peere, reviewing the book for the journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, thought less of this shift toward literary history and away from literary analysis, an investigation "which is more concerned with collectors than with singers and audiences, and with the ballads' transcription rather than their meanings". She was "disappointed with her textual analyses and merely literal interpretations of these poetic representations of lived experiences." Still, she said, "Breton Ballads has all the merits of an introduction to the tradition; its carefully assembled contextual as well as textual data still offers the potential for further interpretation." [3]
A negative critique was published by Yann-Ber Piriou in Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l'Ouest; Piriou criticizes Constantine for relying too much on the work of Leon Fleuriot and Donatien Laurent, and leaving out the work and observations of a number of scholars including Roger Sherman Loomis. He also criticizes her text selection and faults her for not including religious and other texts that predate the 19th century. [13]
The book won the 1996 Katharine Briggs Award, given out annually by The Folklore Society. In its report, the jury said:
[Constantine's] book is both an observant history and an engaged social study. She is most enlightening on the relationship between collection, editing and publishing as well as on contemporary renderings of traditional themes in the Breton ballads. Breton Ballads is CMCS's first book: we think it marks the start of a promising list. [14]
Ys, also spelled Is or Kêr-Is in Breton, and Ville d'Ys in French, is a mythical city on the coast of Brittany that was swallowed up by the ocean. Most versions of the legend place the city in the Baie de Douarnenez.
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.
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.
"The Maid and the Palmer" is an English language medieval murder ballad with supernatural/religious overtones. Because of its dark lyrics, the song was often avoided by folk singers. Considered by scholars to be a "debased" version of a work more completely known in European sources as the Ballad of the Magdalene, the ballad was believed lost in the oral tradition in the British Isles from the time of Sir Walter Scott, who noted a fragment of it having heard it sung in the early years of the nineteenth century, until it was discovered in the repertoire of a living Irish singer, John Reilly, from whom it was collected in the 1960s, although subsequently other versions have surfaced from Ireland from the 1950s to the 1970s; an additional full text, collected and notated in around 1818, was also recently published in Emily Lyle's 1994 Scottish Ballads under the title "The Maid of Coldingham", having remained in manuscript form in the intervening time. Based on a tape of Reilly's performance provided by the collector Tom Munnelly, the singer Christy Moore popularised the song under its alternate title "The Well Below the Valley" with the Irish folk band Planxty and later solo performances/recordings, this song providing the title of that group's second album released in 1973; the song has subsequently been recorded by a number of more recent "folk revival" acts.
Nora Kershaw Chadwick CBE FSA FBA was an English philologist who specialized in Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Old Norse studies.
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.
Françoise Morvan is a French writer who specialises in Breton history and culture.
The Pontcallec conspiracy was a rebellion that arose from an anti-tax movement in Brittany between 1718 and 1720. This was at the beginning of the Régence (Regency), when France was controlled by Philippe II, Duke of Orléans during the childhood of Louis XV. Led by a small faction of the nobility of Brittany, it maintained links with the ill-defined Cellamare conspiracy, to overthrow the Regent in favour of Philip V of Spain, who was the uncle of Louis XV. Poorly organised, it failed, and four of its leaders were beheaded in Nantes. The aims of the conspirators are disputed. In the 19th and early 20th century it was portrayed as a proto-revolutionary uprising or as a Breton independence movement. More recent commentators consider its aims to have been unclear.
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 Old Welsh texts also, and the oldest extant Welsh version is found in the 13th-century Black Book of Carmarthen. 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.
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 analogous 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-century 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.
"Marv Pontkalleg" is a traditional gwerz, included as no. XLVI in Barzaz Breiz, a book of traditional Breton songs collected in Cornouaille, Brittany, in the 19th century by Théodore Hersart de la Villemarqué. The death of the Marquis de Pontcallec following a conspiracy against the kingdom of France, is an authentic historical incident recounted by Hersart De La Villemarqué in the Barzaz Breiz; this version praises the militant and valiant nobility of his country in opposition to the bourgeoisie. "Marv Pontkalleg" is one of the classics of Breton music, and has been recorded many times by, among others, Gilles Servat, Tri Yann, Alan Stivell, Andrea Ar Gouilh and Jacques Pellen.
The Gwerz an Aotrou Nann is a gwerz in the Barzaz Breiz, previously entitled La Korik and Le Seigneur Nann et la Korrigan.