Barzaz Breiz

Barzaz Breiz, collection of folk songs and ballads purported to be survivals from ancient Breton folklore. The collection was made, supposedly from the oral literature of Breton peasants, by Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué and was published in 1839. In the 1870s it was demonstrated that Barzaz Breiz was not an anthology of Breton folk poetry but rather a mixture of old poems, chiefly love songs and ballads, that were rearranged by the editor or others; modern poems made to look medieval; and spurious poems about such romance figures as Merlin and Nominoë. Review of Villemarqué’s papers in the 1980s, however, showed that some of the poems were authentic.

Barzaz Breiz was extremely influential: the historical poems exalting the Bretons’ traditional struggle against oppression revived Breton pride in their language and heritage; it also led to the reawakening of Breton writers and stimulated further study of Breton folklore.