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NOMENOË

“Alas! chieftain, if your son has gone with the tribute it is in vain you wait for him, for the Franks found it not enough, and have weighed his head against it in the balance.”

The father gazes wildly at the speaker, sways, and falls heavily with a doleful cry.

“Karo, my son! My lost Karo!”

The scene changes to the fortress of Nomenoë, and we see its master returning from the chase, accompanied by his great hounds and laden with trophies. His bow is in his hand, and he carries the carcass of a boar upon his shoulder. The red blood drops from the dead beast’s mouth and stains his hand. The aged chief, well-nigh demented, awaits his coming, and Nomenoë greets him courteously.

“Hail, honest mountaineer!” he cries. “What is your news? What would you with Nomenoë?”

“I come for justice, Lord Nomenoë,” replies the aged man. “Is there a God in heaven and a chief in Brittany? There is a God above us, I know, and I believe there is a just Duke in the Breton land. Mighty ruler, make war upon the Frank, defend our country, and give us vengeance—vengeance for Karo my son, Karo, slain, decapitated by the Frankish barbarians, his beauteous head made into a balance-weight for their brutal sport.”

The old man weeps, and the tears flow down his grizzled beard.

Then Nomenoë rises in anger and swears a great oath. “By the head of this boar, and by the arrow which slew him,” cries he, “I will not wash this blood from off my hand until I free the country from mine enemies.”

Nomenoë has gone to the seashore and gathered 25 pebbles, for these are the tribute he intends to offer the bald King.[3] Arrived at the gates of Rennes, he asks that they shall be opened to him so that he may pay the tribute of silver. He is asked to descend, to enter the castle, and to leave his chariot in the courtyard. He is requested to wash his hands to the sound of a horn before eating (an ancient custom), but he replies that he prefers to deliver the tribute-money there and then. The sacks are weighed, and the third is found light by several pounds.

“Ha, what is this?” cries the Frankish castellan. “This sack is under weight, Sir Nomenoë.”

Out leaps Nomenoë’s sword from the scabbard, and the Frank’s head is smitten from his shoulders. Then, seizing it by its gory locks, the Breton chief with a laugh of triumph casts it into the balance. His warriors throng the courtyard, the town is taken; young Karo is avenged!

Alain Barbe-torte

The end of the ninth century and the beginning of the tenth were remarkable for the invasions of the Northmen. On several occasions they were driven back—by Salomon (d. 874), by Alain, Count of Vannes (d. 907)—but it was Alain Barbe-torte, ‘Alain of the Twisted Beard,’ or ‘Alain the Fox’ (d. 952), who gained the decisive victory over them, and concerning him an ancient ballad has much to say. It was taken down by Villemarqué from the lips of a peasant, an old soldier of the Chouan leader Georges Cadoudal.

In his youth Alain was a mighty hunter of the bear and the boar in the forests of his native Brittany, and 26 the courage gained in this manly sport stood him in good stead when he came to employ it against the enemies of his country, the hated Northmen. Rallying the Bretons who lurked in the forests or hid in the mountain fastnesses, he led them against the enemy, whom he surprised near Dol in the middle of the night, making a great carnage among them. After this battle the Scandinavian invaders were finally expelled from the Breton land and Alain was crowned King or Arch-chief in 937.

A free translation of this ballad might run as follows:

The Saxons of this lay are, of course, the Norsemen, who, speaking a Teutonic tongue, would seem to the Celtic-speaking Bretons to be allied to the Teuton Franks.

Bretons and Normans

During the latter half of the tenth and most of the eleventh century the Counts of Rennes gained an almost complete ascendancy in Brittany, which began to be broken up into counties and seigneuries in the French manner. In 992 Geoffrey, son of Conan, Count of Rennes, adopted the title of Duke of Brittany. He married a Norman lady of noble family, by whom he had two sons, Alain and Eudo, the younger of whom demanded a share of the duchy as his inheritance. His brother made over to him the counties of Penthièvre and Tréguier, part of the old kingdom of Domnonia in the north. It was a fatal transference, for he and his line became remorseless enemies of the ducal house, with whom they carried on a series of disastrous conflicts for centuries. Conan II, son of Alain, came under the regency of Eudo, his uncle, in infancy, but later turned his sword against him and his abettor, William of Normandy, the Conqueror.