Welsh Journals

Tour through Brittany. 39 and confound the man, the nursery song, and nursery tale, may often prove more powerful in its operation than the lecture of the philosopher or the divine. But however this may be, I shall perhaps be pardoned for inserting here a Breton nursery song, which was given me by the gentleman who favored me with the one above, and which has also never been published. And although it cannot pretend to any other influence than that of hushing a Breton child to sleep; yet, in point of composition, it is by no means inferior to some which, among us, are honoured with dissipating the waking moments of those of a larger growth. The subject, though of the most primitive simplicity, yet is one of vast importance in a Breton nursery. The nurse tells her child that she was going to make a bake-stone cake; but, on looking for the fuel to bake it, she finds it is yet uncut in the wood, and the hatchet for cutting it is without a helve! and each succeeding verse brings with it some new disaster : the meal is yet unground at the mill; the butter is in the market; the tripod is at the smith's forge, unmade; and the bake-stone plate is yet unbought, in the shop at Perros! NENIE. Out Chanson d'une Bretonne pour endormir son Enfant. l^M^M^ii^N^ Eunn daou pe tri - i der-vez a 1 j J lUpp & ■ H-*£Hl e ma va zoaz kram-poez e go a-chan!