BRITTANY
This ballad is about the Breton expedition to Wales in 1405 to help the Welsh to free themselves from English rule; this was the time of the Owen Glendower revolt. The Bretons gave significant support to the Welsh and had the satisfaction of knowing that they had succeeded in invading English territory, which no French king had ever managed to do. The expeditionary force of 10,000 men was led by Marshal Jean de Rieux.
The morning after his betrothal, a young man received orders to join the standard of de Rieux to help the Bretons overseas. He went with heavy heart to say goodbye to his betrothed, Aloida. He told her that duty demanded that he sail to England. She begged him not to go, reminding him how changeable the wind and sea were. She asked him what she would do if he died; every day she would be impatient for news of him. “I shall wander by the seashore, from cottage to cottage, asking the sailors if they have heard anything of you.”
The young man asked her to stop weeping. He would send her a girdle from over the sea: a purple girdle set with mbies. They parted.
The man went to board his ship, and as he did so, he heard some magpies cackling, “If you think the sea is changeable, young women are much more so.”
When autumn came, the girl said, “I have looked far out to sea from the mountain heights. Out on the water I saw a ship in danger. I sense that the man I love was on it. He had a sword in his hand and he was fighting fiercely. He was wounded to the point of death. I am sure he must be dead.”
Not many weeks passed before she was betrothed to someone else.
Then the news came that the war was over. The cavalier went back home. As soon as he could, he went to find his beloved. As he got nearer to her house, he heard the sound of music and saw that every window of the house was lit as if for a celebration. He met some revelers outside and they told him it was a wedding.
It was the custom in Brittany to ask beggars in to weddings and because of this, the soldier was invited in, but he sat apart, silent and sad. The bride noticed this and went up to him to ask him why he wasn’t joining in the feasting. He said he was tired from traveling and his heart was heavy with sorrow. The bride asked him to dance and he agreed.
As they danced, he murmured in her ear, “What have you done with the golden ring that I gave you in this very room?”
The bride stared at him in dismay. She had thought she was a widow and now she realized she had two husbands.
“Then you think wrongly,” the “beggar” hissed, “for you have no husband at all this side of the grave.” He drew a dagger and stmck the faithless young woman through the heart.
The magpies had been right.
In the abbey of Daodas is a statue of the Virgin. She has a splendid girdle of purple with sparkling rubies and they came from across the sea. If anyone wants to know who gave it to her, they may ask the penitent monk who lies prostrate on the ground in front of the figure of the Mother of God.
It is curious that the faithless bride should have “seen” her lover perish in a naval skirmish oflf the Breton coast, as there was a real skirmish at just the right time. In 1405, the very year the ballad refers to, a Breton fleet encountered an English flotilla oflf Brest and there was a terrible battle. Perhaps this was the sea fight the lady saw.
World History
