tormentors have so long compelled us to endure.
Let us remember, besides, that unless we Strike,
and that quickly, not only may we expect that
the existing collection of torture-chambers on
wheels, will be kept running until in some remoteage they tumble to pieces, but that, for
aught we know to the contrary, more of those
detestable vehicles may any day be put in course
of manufacture. Let this thought stimulate
afresh our flagging indignation, and make us
determine that, come what may, and let the
consequences be ever so terrible, we will turn
out, Strike, and give no quarter, till our
utmost demands are satisfied.

BRETON LEGENDS.

BRITTANY ought to be, to Englishmen in
general, and to Welshmen in particular, the
most interesting part of France. Ask an
archæologist why Little Britain in the City of
London is so called. Read up Richard the Third
again, and see how much the establishment of
the Tudors, and therefore of the Stuarts, and
therefore of the present reigning family, was
owing to Breton help. We might call the
Bretons the Welsh of France; though, when
we read all about them in their own Emile
Souvestre, who loved them, we might almost
fancy the book to be a translation of Carleton's
traits and stories. They are Welsh in
disposition, Irish in religion; Welsh and Irish
have (despite difference of creed) strong points
in common; they have the same deep religious
feeling— call it superstition if you please—and
they have the same gloom, underlying a surface
cheerfulness.

Brittany is the land whither (we are told)
those Britons who could not brook Saxon rule,
and for whom there was not room enough in
Cornwall and Wales, fled to seek shelter among
people of their own race. In Cornwall and
Brittany the names of half the towns still
imply identity of race. The very country
name (Cornouailles) is that of one of the
districts of the French province. Consider some
of the names we have to deal with.

Karnac. The word has been a battle-cry in
all the fiercely contested wars of Druid lovers
against unbelieving antiquaries.

Armorica. "The land on the sea-board,"
actually an independent state from the time of
Maximus, Gratian's rival, in 383, down all
through the stormy middle ages (except for a
while during the universal gloom of the tenth
century, when it, too, yielded to the Northmen),
right on to 1491, when heiress Anne married
Charles the Eighth.

Then, again, Vannes. What memories does
the name call up, of the old Veneti and their
war with Cæsar, and their towns all built out
into the sea, and their chain-cables, and their big
ships, which went by sails instead of by oars like
those of the Romans, and which were only beaten
in their grand fight because the wind fell, and
so they could not tack or move at all.

Take Hennebon, and think of Froissart
and Sir Walter Manny, noblest of free lances,
and the brave countess, and her friend the
widow of De Clisson. In Brittany then, there
were as many fighting-women as in Scotland,
when the Bruce was winning back his own.

And then Nantes and its later convictions, and
crowds more of towns that live in history, though
they don't make much noise in France just now.
Think of a land so rich in memories.

Mr. Crawfurd has lately read a paper to
prove that, as far as the structure of the
language goes, the Welsh and Armorican have
nothing to do with the Gael and Erse. What
we say is that, while by race the Breton is
very near of kin to the Welshman,* in feeling
he oftener resembles the Irishman or
Highlander. This is specially the case in all
matters connected with religion and religious
superstitions. The established church in Wales
(though we do not often realise the fact)
was for a long time in as bad a state as that
in Ireland. There were non-resident or otherwise
heedless dignitaries, and a pauperised
clergy. Hence the people became Methodists
almost universally; and so that peculiarly Celtic
feeling which leads the small farmer in Scotland,
or the Irish cottier, to train the bookish son for
the university, found a vent in class-leadership,
lay-preaching, and all the other devices whereby
scope is afforded for the ministrations of men
who do not (as in established Protestant
churches, and in the Romish Church always)
form, more or less, a class cut off from secular
business. This feeling is still strong in Brittany.
Every farmer is proud of having among his sons
a kloarek (clericus), or lad reading for orders.

But, after all, either name will do. Your
Welshman is as fond of a legend as your Irishman;
for, of all races who have yet been anatomised
by the ethnologist, none is such a faithful
guardian of old traditions as the Celtic,
whether you mean by that name, Highlander,
Irishman, Welsh, Breton, one or all! Hence
it is no wonder that, while from Auvergne we
brought a true tale of human endurance and
patient effort meeting its reward, from Brittany
we begin with a fiction, having, no doubt, an
excellent moral, but still a pure fiction. The
story which follows, is one that reappears in
many forms in the folk-lore of far distant lands.
How strange is the travelling of a legend from
far east even to remotest west; how characteristic
are the stains it derives from different
soils, the scraps of dress it gathers as it goes!
Dunlop, years ago, and Dr. Dasent more
recently, have traced the course of some of our
popular tales most ingeniously.

The following is, par excellence, a Christian
story: not but that the same idea occurs in
heathen myths,† for men had hearts before
Our Saviour came to give light to their spirits;
but as Christianity gave greater weight to
the kindly virtues, and taught men to look less

* The names of places (as Trequier) are
constantly Cornish in form. But Lanillis (Llaneglys),
church land, is (with multitudes more) pure Welsh.
† The Wanderings of Demeter contains the germ
of the same idea.