Breton 'Barzaz Breiz' Folk Song Collection Published
Poet involved
What happened
Théodore Hersart de la Villemarqué publishes Barzaz Breiz (Breton Bards), collecting traditional Breton gwerz (ballads) and soniou (lyric songs) from oral performances in Armorica. The volume includes Arthurian legends, druidic myths, fairy folklore (korrigans), and pre-Christian nature worship, presented with facing Breton-French text. Though later partially exposed as containing fabricated material, the work sparked pan-Celtic revival.
Literary impact
Barzaz Breiz directly influenced French Romantic poets (Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo) who mined it for Celtic imagery and druidic motifs, and it inspired Welsh, Cornish, and Irish folk poetry revivals. The collection's bardic framing—treating peasant singers as 'Celtic bards'—shaped W. B. Yeats's early poetics. Despite authenticity controversies, Barzaz Breiz proves that even invented folklore can generate authentic poetic movements when constructed with ethnographic care.
Source: Wikipedia
