Between Pontrieaux and Kerlouet

Is dead an old mare.

She cried, the old mare,

To have he£ shoes pulled off.

She cried loud enough to split her voice,

—Pull the nails from my sabots.

It is eighteen months, without falsehood,

Since I have been in a stable.

If it is not in the great barnyard of Kerlouet,

There I have often lodged.

I bequeath my patience

To him, Oliver le Judic.

Which he has cruelly proved this year,

In that he has lost his wife.

In that this year his wife is dead.

To live without one's half is not a pleasant thing.

I pray to give the hairs of my tail,

To him, Pierre Perrot.

That he may make a light fly-flap

To keep the flies from the horses in summer.

And when the other horses fling and kick,

He will remember the blind mare.

Carry my head to the ferry of Frinaoudour,

To serve as a little boat upon the water.

To pass from one bank to the other

Those who go to hunt at Plourivo.

Those who go to hunt at Plourivo,

The rabbit, the fox and the wild duck.

As has been said, the chief value of folk-song is in its genuineness, in the accuracy with which it reflects not only the emotions, but the habits and customs of the people, so that their peculiar life becomes visible before our eyes. There is an indefinable charm, not only in the impression of reality, but in the very rudeness and imperfection of the speech, which gives an effect beyond literary art, when deep emotion or domestic pathos are seen through it. We seem to get nearer the primitive heart of mankind than under the effect of the most accomplished literary skill, and there are awakened the homely and tender feelings which lie deep within our nature. The genuine fairy tale created by the vivid and credulous imagination of the uncultivated mind, and the genuine folk-song, the outburst of simple and natural emotion, take a hold upon even the most cultivated intellects as the highest literary art fails to do. The folk-songs of Brittany have this charm as well as their own peculiar provincial flavor; and the very crudeness and imperfection of the Sonniou in M. Luzel's collection have more power than all the elaborate poetry and picturesqueness of M. Yillemarque's Celtic fabrications.