Barzaz Breiz
Encyclopedia
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
popular songs collected by Théodore Hersart de la Villemarqué
Theodore Claude Henri, Vicomte Hersart de la Villemarque
Théodore Claude Henri, vicomte Hersart de la Villemarqué was a French philologist and man of letters.-Biography:La Villemarqué was born in Quimperlé, Finistère on 6 July 1815. He was descended from an old Breton family, which counted among its members a Hersart who had followed Saint Louis to the...
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
Pont-Aven
Pont-Aven is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in northwestern France.-Population:Inhabitants of Pont-Aven are called in French Pontavenistes.-History:...
, and was half Breton himself.
Significance
The collection was published in the original Breton languageBreton language
Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
with a French translation. It achieved a wide distribution, as the Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
generation in France that "discovered" the Basque language
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
was beginning to be curious about all the submerged cultures of Europe and the pagan survivals just under the surface of folk Catholicism. The Barzaz Breiz brought Breton folk culture for the first time into European awareness. One of the oldest of the collected songs was the legend of Ys
Ys
Ys , also spelled Is or Kêr-Is in Breton, and Ker-Ys in French , is a mythical city that was built on the coast of Brittany and later swallowed by the ocean...
. The book was also notable for the fact that La Villemarqué recorded the music of the ballads as well as the words. This was one of the first attempts to collect and print Breton traditional music, except religious hymns.
Until this publication the so-called "matter of Brittany" (Breton legends) was known only from references to some legends in French language Romances of the 13th and 14th centuries, in which much of the culture was also transformed to suit Gallic hearers.
The book is divided into two parts. The first part collects ballads about historical legends and heroic deeds of Breton leaders, including Nominoe, Erispoe and the warriors of the Combat of the Thirty
Combat of the Thirty
The Combat of the Thirty [known as Combat des Trente in French] was an episode in the struggle for the succession to the Duchy of Brittany...
. The second part records local culture, concentrating on religious festivals and seasonal events.
Authenticity
The publication of traditional folk literature was controversial at this time because of the dispute about the most famous of such collections, James MacPhersonJames Macpherson
James Macpherson was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector and politician, known as the "translator" of the Ossian cycle of poems.-Early life:...
's The Poems of Ossian
Ossian
Ossian is the narrator and supposed author of a cycle of poems which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic. He is based on Oisín, son of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill, anglicised to Finn McCool, a character from Irish mythology...
, which purported to be translated from ancient Celtic poetry, but was widely believed to have been largely written by MacPherson himself. After the publication of Barzaz Breiz François-Marie Luzel
François-Marie Luzel
François-Marie Luzel , often known by his Breton name Fañch an Uhel, was a French folklorist and Breton-language poet.- Early years :...
criticised the work at a scholarly conference in 1868. At the 1872 Congress of the Breton Association at Saint-Brieuc
Saint-Brieuc
Saint-Brieuc is a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department in Brittany in northwestern France.-History:Saint-Brieuc is named after a Welsh monk Brioc, who evangelized the region in the 6th century and established an oratory there...
, he argued that the songs had been completely manufactured in the manner of MacPherson, because, he said, he had never himself met with ballads in such elegant Breton and free of borrowed French words. The main problem raised by his opponents was that Villemarqué refused to show his notebooks to other scholars.
The dispute continued into the twentieth century. In 1907 La Villemarque's son, Pierre de la Villemarqué, published a defence of his father's work. However, in 1960 Francis Gourvil argued in a PhD that the Barzaz Breiz was a forgery. In 1974 Donatien Laurent partially rejected these accusations by demonstrating the authenticity of the material of the book thanks to the discovery in 1964 of Villemarqué's notebooks. Laurent's research was published in 1989. Laurent concluded that Villemarqué had rearranged the material he had collected in order to enliven and clean up the texts and music, but that this was common practice at the time, comparable to work of the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
.
Editions
The first edition was published in 1839 in Paris by Éditions Delloye, in the form of books in 2 °-8. Reprinted in 1840, 1845 and, at Didier et Cie, 1846, the book was then published in 1867 in Paris.In 1865 the standard English translation by Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine...
was published under the title Ballads and Songs of Brittany. The edition contained some of the original melodies "harmonized by Mrs. Tom Taylor", but omitted some of the ballads.
The 1867 edition was subsequently reprinted many times to the present day by the academic library Perrin, not counting the many English translations (Taylor, Fleay ...), German (Keller-Seckendorf. ...), Italian (Pascoli), Polish, and so on.
In 1981 a new edition appeared in pocket-sized format.
In 1989 Mouladurioù Hor Yezh issued a Barzhaz Breizh with only the Breton text, but transcribed into modern spelling and including the musical score.
In 1996, Coop Breizh published a pocket version of the book in French without the Breton text.
In 1999, Editions du Layeur issued a reprint of the 1867 edition, by Yann-Fañch Kemener
Yann-Fañch Kemener
Yann-Fañch Kemener is a traditional singer from Britanny, born in Sainte-Tréphine , France.He took part in reviving Kan ha diskan in the 1970s and 1980s, especially with Erik Marchand...
, singer and collector, plus the foreword to the 1845 edition. The main merit is that he put Breton and French versions of each poem together ensuring a very high readability. A compact disc accompanies the book provides a performance of twelve of the songs by Yann Fanch Kemener and "Maîtrise de Bretagne", solo and duo.