A Celtic Poet Author(s): Frances M. Gostling Source: The Celtic Review, Vol. 5, No. 19 (Jan., 1909), pp. 202-224 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30070007 Accessed: 19-06-2016 18:47 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Celtic Review This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 18:47:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 202 THE CELTIC REVIEW lished, sold furiously at first; but the Gael is going back to his fancy of cheap coloured English comic cards again now. The author was asked when he thought the dictionary would be finished if he continued single-handed. Although nearly one-third of the type still remains to be set up, he says he hopes he is within sight of the goal at last, although he is at times nearly collapsing with the strain on eyes and head. When completed, the Faclair will run into about 900 pages, demy 8vo. The greatest difficulty he has encountered since commenc- ing this arduous undertaking is to obtain sufficient subscribers to keep the ball rolling, and we regret to hear that the deficiency due to this is now compelling him to offer for sale his library of Gaelic books which he has been collecting for about thirty years. This should not be necessary, and is not creditable to the many persons now professing an interest in Gaelic study, nor to the many Highland societies among whose 'objects' the 'promotion of the Gaelic language' occupies a foremost place. The 'Kent' Dictionary, as it is often called, deserves, and we trust will forthwith get, the hearty support of all such persons and societies. Six or seven pence a number is surely within the means of all such. QUOD ERAT INVENIENDUM. A CELTIC POET FRANCES M. GOSTLING AcRoss the grey waters of the English Channel, guarded by rocks and shoals, lies the twilight land of Armorica, or, as it is usually called, Brittany, birthplace and home of one of the great modern Celtic writers, Anatole le Braz. No doubt many travellers have, like the present writer, discovered the works of this author on the bookstall of some Breton station, and learned to love them as they transformed what would have been a monotonous railway journey into a romantic pil- grimage. Yet it is also certain that his writings are not This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 18:47:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A CELTIC POET 203 known as they should be in our very insular island, and there- fore for our own sakes, as well as for his, it seems but fitting that some one should attempt to introduce this author to the British public. Among the mountains of Ar6, very far from any town, is the village of Saint Servais, where, in 1859, Anatole le Braz was born. No surroundings could have accorded better with the future mapped out by fate for this Breton poet. The tiny village lies slumbering in the lap of the grey, mysteri- ous, mountain region, dreaming of superstitions and traditions long since forgotton in more accessible communes. Poor little village I mere handful of cottages, clustering round an ancient, moss-grown chapel! How many such do we not come across during a summer tour through Brittany. It is but a week or two since the writer of this article visited Saint Servais in company with Anatole le Braz, and heard the story of his childhood in the shade of the ancient chapel where once he worshipped. It was in the schoolhouse adjoining the graveyard that the boy's first years were passed, for his father was schoolmaster, with a very small income and a very large family. Of the chapel itself we hear in the introduction to Au Pays des Pardons, where the author tells of the yearly struggle for the little wooden statue of Saint Servais, the possession of which was supposed to insure a good harvest. Indeed the whole district teems with legends which early exercised an influence on the imaginative mind of the young Celt. There were the Death Legends, such as that ex- traordinary story of Glaoud-ar-Skanv recorded in the Legend de la Mort, Glaoud-ar-Skanv the drunkard who was carried off to hell by the devil, Old Polic, and delivered by his mother, who gave her only cow to Notre Dame of Loqu6tou to ransom him. And there is the history of the three tipsy young men of Duault, who barred the road with a dead tree, and were fetched from their beds by Ankou or Death, because his cart could not pass the barrier. This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 18:47:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 204 THE CELTIC REVIEW It was among stories such as these that the boy was born and bred. In civilised England, such legends seem absurd and incredible, but in central Brittany, sitting round the fire on a stormy night, with the wind howling in the chimney, their improbability is not so obvious. ' Is your house haunted ?' I asked a farmer the other day, as I sat over a glass of cider with him and his wife. 'No,' he answered. 'Except,' corrected his wife, 'by Monsieur Rouge.' ' Oh yes,' assented the man,' of course there's Monsieur Rouge.' And it appeared that Monsieur Rouge was a phantom who had a rather distracting habit of rolling cannon balls up and down the room overhead. .. Saint Servais is one of the pilgrimage shrines that all Bretons must visit at least once during life. If they fail to do so they will have to accomplish the journey after death. In that case you take your coffin on your shoulder, and only proceed each day as far as the length of that coffin. In the wall of the chapel, close to the door of the le Braz's home, was the hole in the wall down which the dead men, having at length finished their involuntary pilgrimages, passed to their graves. Seated there at night, we are told, one could hear the dead rustling and stirring in their coffins. In this home the boy grew up, surrounded by the strange, mystical peasant life which clung round the old shrine. His father was himself a storehouse of legend, and so were the pilgrims and beggars who came thither from all parts of the C6tes-du-Nord. Such early impressions are ineffaceable; and from that time to this the mind of Anatole le Braz has been steeped in the traditions of his race. When he was about ten years old, the boy lost his mother, and soon after his father sent him to school at Saint- Brieuc, from whence in a few years he proceeded to Paris, where he studied at the university. There was no money to pay for his college course, and he had to teach to provide for himself. Happily he found a useful pupil, a wealthy young This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 18:47:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A CELTIC POET 205 lad who needed amusing as well as coaching, and it was with him that Monsieur le Braz went to Algeria, and became ac- quainted with the life of the desert, of which he has spoken in La Terre du Passd. On his return to Paris he continued teaching, and was so successful, that after passing all examinations, he found he had saved a considerable sum of money. But, like Chateaubriand, Souvestre, Renan, and all other Bretons of whom I have ever heard, he was homesick for his native land. In the Chansons de la Bretagne, there are many songs that tell of his exile, and as soon as he was ready to do so, he returned to Brittany, settling at Quimper, where for many years he taught and lectured, still working at folk- lore in conjunction with the Celtic scholar Frangois Marie Luzel. At length, in the year 1900, on the death of Arthur le Moine de la Borderie, Anatole le Braz was appointed Professor of Celtic Literature at the University of Rennes, where he now lectures and carries on his literary work. But during the long summer months he still lives as far as possible the peasant life of his childhood, idealised, modi- fied, enriched, it is true, but as simple, as homely, as pastoral, as that of the little schoolhouse at Saint Servais. I usually pass a few weeks every summer at this cottage home of M. le Braz, and I think my readers will better appreciate the work of the great artist if they also know it. In one of the sections of Pdques d'Islande, the author has thus described his home:- 'We had been fishing in the offing, and were returning with the rising tide. It was a calm August evening, the dis- tance clothed in soft radiance, that hung in the air like gold dust.