Sing, sing, nightingale, it is early you are singing.

Not earlier than you, young man. Hunting are you going?

Good luck to you, little comrade. I am not going a-hunt

ing.

I am on my way to Kerlosquet, where my love is dwelling.

The nightingale then asked him, being a curious gossip,

There are many houses at Kerlosquet, to which one are you

going?

The young man answered her in a tone of humor,

Good luck to you, little comrade, I am not at confession.

In a moment after he saw his mistress coming;

By her color and her looks he saw that she was ailing.

Anxiously he asked her, feeling for her sadness,

Are you sick at heart, or sick in your spirit?

And she answered, with a little smile so gracious,

I am not subject to sickness, no, by the mercy of Jesus.

—The spider does well to spin his web,

To spin and to spread it and to dry it on the meadow.

A breath of wind will come and bear it away.

The hearts of young men are like it.

The most numerous producers of love songs in the Breton folk-poetry are the cloer, or young theological students, to whose title the English word clerk, as it was understood in the time of Chaucer, is the nearest equivalent. These young men, mostly the sons of peasants or persons in humble circumstances, are destined for the priesthood, for which they have manifested a vocation by their special intellectual brightness or devotional temperament. They are naturally the pride and hope of their families, to whom the office of priest is a position of worldly advancement and religious reverence, and the ballads tell touching tales of sacrifices by poor parents to enable their son to pursue his studies. They are sent to the seminaries attached to the abbeys in the various cathedral towns, from which they return in the vacation to mingle with the life of the people. Although destined for the priesthood, the instinct of youthful passion breaks out, as they meet the young maidens of the neighborhood in the fields or at the village fÊtes and gatherings, and there are struggles of love and longing, which sometimes end peacefully in the surrender of the affection to the demands of the priestly vow, sometimes in the tragedy of broken hearts and a double devotion to religious celibacy, and sometimes, under the influence of a stronger passion, in the renunciation of the priesthood and marriage with the object of affection. These young clerks are, naturally, objects of great attraction to the young maidens by the contrast of their superior manners and education to the duller and coarser young men of the peasant class, and this attraction results in many dramas of love, not to mention the deeper tragedies of blighted passions and ruined lives. From their superior intellectual activity and education the young clerks are the most fertile and eloquent of the folk-poets, and by far the greater number of the love songs in the Sonniou are their production, and relate to the condition in which their affections are bound and limited. Their songs are genuine folk-poetry in their simplicity and strength of expression, except in the few instances where sophomoric pedantry overloads them with mythologie terms and academic phrases, and they often express a deep feeling with simple and natural eloquence. In The Ditty of Love the young girl appeals to the clerk to abandon the priesthood, since there are enough priests in the country, and expect the blessing of God in marrying the one who loves him, and then resigns herself to the consolation they will have in hearing the bells of each other's convents and their voices raised in psalm:—