Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/696



ONCE A WEEK. 686 about to go. I roused myself from at her with a half-smile :

and looking

my

reverie,

"You speak in church?" I said.

An instant change passed over her face.

Her

moment with

14, 1862.

by them

at the bottom of the sea when the lower than usual. In Ireland the town is Neagh, and our readers will remember the allusion to the sunken town in Moore's graceful

tide



[June

is

a shrewd appreciaShe drew herself up ; with a tion of my guess. gleam of pride and pleasure she nodded an assent, and wrapping her shawl around her, she turned away. I have never seen her since, but her truly prophetic words often recur to me now, when their

lines

fulfilment in part

Gwezno, a Welsh bard, whose date is referred to the fifth century, but whose poems are found in a manuscript ascribed to the ninth, has a poem on the subject (included in the Myvyrian Archaeology)

eyes twinkled a

is

already accomplishing

itself



when the Lord is shaking the nations when we know that, should England fail to restrain her

or should hand from aught that can hinder America fail to listen to the words of the Lord, and to let his oppressed people go free, surely He will shake and shake again. Here, in America, each day the cause of our trouble is brought to light with renewed clearness. Every hour our concern in the negro race becomes a more self-evident fact. Every bulletin impresses it upon our thoughts every soldier laid to rest upon the battle-field engraves it upon our hearts. We feel what our



poet Whittier has just expressed for us so finely in his poem, ** At Port Royal," when after the refrain of the negro boatman, he thus touchingly concludes

Rude seems the song, each swarthy Flame lighted, ruder still ;

We

face,

start to think that hapless race

Must shape our good

or

ill



That laws of changeless justice bind Oppressor with oppressed

And

and suffering joined to Fate abreast.

close as sin

We

march

Sing on, poor hearts, your chant shall be

Our sign of blight or bloom The Vala song of liberty, Or death rune of our doom.

—

S.

E. B.

THE DROWNING OF KAER-IS.

(LITERALLY translated from the BRETON.)

The anonymous chronicler of Ravenna mentions a town, which he calls Ker-is, as existing in Armorica in the fifth century. Here ruled a prince called Gradlonvawr, i.e. Gradlon the Great. Gradlon was the protector of Gwénolé, the founder of the first abbey established in Britanny. The following ballad (the original of which M. de Villeniarqué obtained from the recitation of Thomas Pen-venn, i. e. Whitehead a peasant of Trégunk) narrates the popular tradition of the destruction of the town by the king's daughter, Dahut, who opened a sluice, which kept out the sea, by a key stolen from her sleeping

t See Vol. iii,, page 188.

On Lough Neagh's banks when At the hour

He

the fisherman strays,

of eve's declining,

round towers of other days

sees the

Beneath the waters shining.

which begins with the awakening

of the

king

—



—

the land of warArise, oh, Seizenin, and look forth riors, the fields of Gwezno, are invaded by the sea !

A

chronicler, whose work is preserved in the Chartulary of Landven, attributes to Gradlon the introduction of wine into Britanny. Marie of France, who tells the story of the drowning of Is town in one of her Lais (Gradlon meur), speaks of Gradlon's horse as having saved his master's life for a long time by swimming, and as having become wild with grief when the king fell off at last, and was drowned. In another version it is the princess who is drowned. Her father is bearing her off, en croupe, when an awful voice thrice bids him fling off the demon who sits behind him. He does so, and the inundation is arrested. Before the Revolution, King Gradlon's statue, mounted on his faithful horse, used to stand between the towers of the cathedral of Quimper, and every year, on Saint Cecily's day, a minstrel used to mount the croup of the royal charger, with a napkin, a flagon of wine, and a golden hanap, all provided at the cost of the cathedral chapter. He used to put the napkin round the neck of the statue, pour the wine from the flagon into the hanap, put it to the statue's lips, and then, draining the liquor, fling the hanap among the crowd

gathered below, to do honour to the introducer of the grape. The poem, says M. de Villemarqu6, from whose learned notes T have taken the above information,

very antique and rhythmical in structure and in language. Its rude picturesqueness needs no pointing out, nor the dramatic skill and life with which the In this action of the story is sketched out. respect these Breton ballads seem to me unequalled by anything of their class. As in all my other is

translations

from the Breton,

I

have been scrupu-

lously literal.

father, after

her lover's bidding. This tradition is common to all the Celtic races. It is found in Wales and in Ireland. In the former country the King is Seizenin, the drowned town Gwaeleod, and its site in Cardigan Bay,f where the fishermen still talk of the ruins of ancient buildings seen orgie, at

into



ye the word the man of God Spake King Gradlon, blythe of mood, Where in fair Kaer-Is he abode.

Sir King, of dalliance be not fain, From evil loves thy heart refrain, For hard on pleasure followeth pain.

Who feeds his fill on fish of sea To feed the fishes doom'd is he ; The swallower swallow'd up shall be.