Tom Taylor

“ One of these time-worn, but deeply-stamped pieces of old bardic coinage, now come down to exclusive circulation among hard peasant-hands, but still precious for the quality of its true poetic metal, and venerable for its ancient mint-mark, is the ballad of “The Plague of Elliant,” of which the following is as literal a version, I think, as can be made from the Breton into the English. I have preserved the metre of the original, so that my version may be sung to the Breton air of the “ Bosen Elliant.” The plague which the ballad commemorates ravaged Brittany in the sixth century. ”

“ But till it enter bide we still.”
Through Elliant’s streets who wills to go,
Everywhere will find grass to mow —
Everywhere, save in two wheel-ruts bare,
Where the wheels of the dead-cart wont to fare. ”

“ In this account special mention is made of the ravages of the plague in the parish of Elliant, though the country immediately round about it is said to have been preserved from the scourge by the prayers of a saintly hermit named Rasian. He is mentioned in the ballad, which, like all other ballads in M. de Villemarqué’s “Barsaz Breiz” (from which my translation was made) , was taken down from oral recitation of the Breton peasantry. ”