Velleda's words were listened to with rapt attention by all the members of her family. Her father was the first to break the silence:
"My children, if indeed our family history is priceless, the reason lies in that that history is the history, not of a family merely, but, above all, of all the proletarians and all the bourgeois of Gallic extraction, of that Gallic race that was conquered and subjugated by the Franks, the dominant race, until 1789, the date of their final emancipation. The struggle of the _Children of Joel_ across the ages with the _Children of Neroweg_, of whom the Count of Plouernel is a descendant, is a summary of the centuries-old struggle between the vanquishers and the vanquished, the oppressors and the oppressed. By imparting to us a knowledge and the consciousness of what our forefathers have undergone in order to regain their freedom and their rights, this history must render us all the prouder and more jealous of the boon that we have conquered at the cost of so many tears, of such untold privations, and of such torrents of blood. It must inspire us with the desire to defend it unto death."
Changes made in the text (note of etext transcriber):
George's counteance=>George's countenance
[1] "If the Gallic tongue has been in some part preserved by the bards, and by bards in possession of the druidic traditions, that could only have taken place in Armorica, that province which for so many centuries formed an independent state, and which, in spite of its annexation to France, has remained Gallic in physiognomy, in costume, and in language, down to our own day."--Ampere, _History of Literature_.
[2] Villemarqué, in his excellent _Popular Songs of Brittany_, assigns this ballad, which is still heard among the strolling ballad-singers of that province, to the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Century.
[3] _Sounn ann dud Laour_ (The Song of the Poor), Villemarqué, _Popular Songs of Brittany_.
[4] _Popular Songs of Brittany_, Villemarqué.
[5] Villemarqué traces this chant, still very popular in Brittany, back to the Eleventh or Twelfth Century; hence for seven or eight hundred years it has been passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation.
[6] It is above all for our brothers of the people that we wrote this history. In a form which we strove to render as fascinating as possible. We hope they have followed the notes, for these are, so to speak, the key of the chronicle, and the proof that under the form of romance one can find the most scrupulous history.