"And now the sun sets,--the green leaves are black,--the moon
rises,--her cold light shoots across one-half that giant stem.
"How solemn and calm stands the great round tower of living wood, half
ebony, half silver, with its mighty cloud above of flake-jet leaves
tinged with frosty fire at one edge!"
This oak was in Brittany,--the very one, perhaps, before which,
"So hollow, huge, and old,
It looked a tower of ruined mason-work,
At Merlin's feet the wileful Vivien lay."
Indeed, Brittany seems a kind of fairy-land to many writers. Tennyson,
Spenser, Matthew Arnold, Reade, all locate some one of their choicest
scenes there. The reason is not, perhaps, very remote. We prate about
the Anglo-Saxon blood; yet, in reality, there is very little of it to
prate about, especially in the educated classes. When the British were
driven from their island, they took refuge in Wales and Brittany. When
William the Norman conquered that island again, his force was chiefly
composed of the descendants of those very Britons; for so feeble was the
genuine Norse element that it had been long since absorbed, and in the
language of the Norman--used until a late day upon certain records in
England--there is not one single word of Scandinavian origin.
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