Project Gutenberg's Legends & Romances of Brittany, by Lewis Spence

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Title: Legends & Romances of Brittany

Author: Lewis Spence

Illustrator: W. Otway Cannell

Release Date: January 6, 2010 [EBook #30871]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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LEGENDS & ROMANCES OF BRITTANY

[Illustration: GRAELENT AND THE FAIRY-WOMAN _Fr._]

LEGENDS & ROMANCES
OF BRITTANY

_BY_
LEWIS SPENCE F.R.A.I.

AUTHOR OF "HERO TALES AND LEGENDS OF THE RHINE"
"A DICTIONARY OF MEDIEVAL ROMANCE AND ROMANCE WRITERS"
"THE MYTHS OF MEXICO AND PERU"
ETC. ETC.

_WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS BY_
W. OTWAY CANNELL A.R.C.A.(Lond.)

NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH
GREAT BRITAIN

PREFACE

Although the folk-tales and legends of Brittany have received
ample attention from native scholars and collectors, they have not as
yet been presented in a popular manner to English-speaking readers.
The probable reasons for what would appear to be an otherwise
incomprehensible omission on the part of those British writers who
make a popular use of legendary material are that many Breton
folk-tales strikingly resemble those of other countries, that from
a variety of considerations some of them are unsuitable for
presentation in an English dress, and that most of the folk-tales
proper certainly possess a strong family likeness to one another.

But it is not the folk-tale alone which goes to make up the
romantic literary output of a people; their ballads, the heroic
tales which they have woven around passages in their national
history, their legends (employing the term in its proper sense),
along with the more literary attempts of their romance-weavers,
their beliefs regarding the supernatural, the tales which cluster
around their ancient homes and castles--all of these, although
capable of separate classification, are akin to folk-lore, and I
have not, therefore, hesitated to use what