Abstract
Starting with mid-19th century, song collecting in Brittany has remained important especially as the status of the Breton language depreciated in favour of French. Today the traditional Breton ballads (gwerziou) are an important instrument of remembering and understanding of both the past of the Breton people, and of their culture, as well as treasure of folk Breton language. The present chapter aims at analysing the representations of women in the traditional Breton ballads, ranging from witches, such as in Janik Kokard's leprotic lover, sinners such as Mari Kelen or saints like Bertet, Virgin Mary's kind midwife, all with the end of understanding the engines that led to (un)customary representations in which the woman is portrayed as both by the gaze of male sovereignty and the restrictions and projections of Catholicism.
In the memory of Chris Grooms
TopIntroduction
In 1839, Théodore Hersart de la Villemarqué published a collection of Breton folk songs under the title Barzaz-Breiz that was to bring success and fame to the oral literature of Brittany. The book was embraced enthusiastically not only in France, but by many scholars across Europe. Published in the context and against the principles of Romanticism, and bringing novelty to the French literary scene, the collection triggered many positive reactions and reviews, and instigated initiatives for further research on folk songs across all regions of France (Constantine & Guillorel, 2017). However, in spite of the fact that many other folk collections such as the Finnish Kalevala or James Macpherson’s Ossian or Iolo Morganwg’s Welsh Medieval Literature collection were to break the limits of specialists and reach the larger public, in the case of the Breton ballads, this failed to occur. On the one hand, the status of the Breton language in French as minority language was very frail, especially since the French Revolution. Education in Breton was difficult to obtain, and Breton speakers and children in schools continued to be humiliated until at least the beginning of 1960s. Per Denez (2005) tells us that, “the literary movement is, therefore, confined to an intelligentsia of perhaps not much more than 10,000 people, many of whom live outside Brittany. The overwhelming mass of the remainder of Breton speakers are literate only in French […]”. For this reason, in spite of the series of translations that followed La Villemarqué, such as François-Marie Luzel’s Chants et chansons populaires de la Basse-Bretagne (1868–1890), also written in French, or Tom Taylor’s collection, published in 1865 in English, Breton ballads remained known exclusively to increasingly fewer Breton singers and speakers, and even less to researchers, unless they were specialists in Celtic studies or associated subjects.
Under the circumstances, beyond the novelty the ballads can trigger today via their still shadowed existence, they immediately gain our attention also because of the extraordinary topics, narratives and portraits they draw. Against a profound Catholic background, the narratives develop a type of reality based on historical facts and mingled with very uncustomary representations of reality in which brutality and violence overlap the fantastic and the miraculous. This is the reason why even today the content of the ballads signals as very modern.
One of the main functions of ballads is that of preserving the collective memory along a historical line. This did not favor either the preservation of the Breton language or the cultural heritage of the Breton society. As the Breton writer Jakez Riou states in the Preface to his book L’Herbe de la Vierge1, the ballads in La Villemarqué’s collection transmit a memory legendary, historical and romance pieces of folklore (1947, p. 14). This proclaims the survival of the Breton language and cultural heritage in full swing of the Romantic epoque. Notably, the ballads recalling acts of violence against women tend to be the most striking. Interestingly, this type of ballad full of violence represents a type of memory preserved and passed through the generations by women themselves, as one can read in Constantine and Guillorel’s Miracles and Murders:
Songs that play out dramas of violence against women or the loss of a son to the army directly reflect and articulate lived experiences. […] From what we know of the tradition, songs on such topics are virtually never sung by men. Under-represented in the written archive, acts of violence specifically related to women, such as rape and infanticide […] are much in evidence in the gwerziou; they offer insights into a female discourse which is rarely accessible through other sources. Elements of a ballad story may have a deeply hidden, indirect collection to the psychology of singers or listeners. Any information about the emotional importance of a particular song for an individual is precious (and largely missing), or the parts of a society that participated in the song culture, ‘used’ songs like these to deal with difficult, even taboo, subjects. (2017, p. 28)
One can thus appreciate the voice of female singers who otherwise would have remained silent, just as the female characters in the ballads did. Probably one of the most important elements in regard to the issue of violence to women is that the oral and musical character of the ballads gave women a voice in both a real and a metaphorical sense.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Kakous (pl. Kakouses): A Breton word designating a group believed to be the descendants of lepers and excluded from taking part in society long after the disease itself was eradicated.
Infanticide: Intentional killing of infants.
Witch: A woman thought to have magic powers, especially evil ones, and present in folk tales all over the world.
Maouès-noz: Breton word meaning washerwoman of the night and representing a female spirit, most of the times an evil one, who tricks housewives to accept her help to wash the laundry so that later on she can haunt them for accepting her help. It is present in many Breton legends across all Brittany.
Barzaz-Breiz: The first collection of Breton ballads published by Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué in 1839 in his translation in French.
Gwerz (pl. Gwerzioù): The Breton term for sung ballad, reflecting events of significance in the lives of the Breton peasantry (love, death, suffering and miracles). It differentiates from the sôn (pl. sonioù) , which are more lyrical and less brutal, including love songs, elegies, dance songs, games and songs for children.
Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James): A large network of ancient pilgrim routes stretching across Europe and coming together at the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) in Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain.
Pardon (pl. Pardons): Breton word for a typically Breton form of pilgrimage and one of the most traditional demonstrations of popular Catholicism in Brittany. It represents a penitential ceremony and occurs on the feast of the patron saint of a church or chapel, at which an indulgence is granted. Hence use of the word pardon . Pardons only occur in the traditionally Breton language speaking Western part of Brittany. They do not extend farther east than Guingamp.
Sôn (pl. Sonioù): The Breton term for sung ballad which is more lyrical and less brutal, including love songs, elegies, dance songs, games and songs for children. It differentiates from gwerz (pl. gwerzio ù), translated also as ballads but reflecting events of significance in the lives of the Breton peasantry (love, death, suffering and miracles).
Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué: The first collector and translator into French of a collection of Breton ballads, published in 1839, under the title Barzaz-Breiz .