Le Braz

That fighting son of Brittany, Premier Aristide Briand, mourned last week at the death of another great Breton, a man less famous but perhaps more beloved, M. Anatole le Braz, "the Bard of Brittany." Anatole le Braz was born 67 years ago in the very heart of the Breton peninsula and of parents so close to the soil that they did not even speak French--a language still regarded as unmelodious and effete by the simple Breton woodcutters and charcoal burners among whom M. le Braz grew up. At ten years of age he was sent to school at Saint-Brieuc, and progressed with commendable swiftness to a degree at the Sorbonne. After seven years of university work in Paris, he returned to Brittany, to an old manor house at Quimper, where he often welcomed the local peasantry and fishermen, warming their hearts by his love of the things they loved and listening by the hour to their tales. For 14 years he taught in the Lycee at Quimper and gradually he translated the old songs of Brittany into modern French. The day came when his Chansons de la Bretagne was crowned by the Academie Francaise. M. le Braz emerged from his retirement to find that he had earned and won a name. Twenty times the Government of France paid tribute to his tact and learning by sending him to foreign countries on cultural missions. He lectured at Harvard in 1906, at Columbia in 1915 and several times visited both) the U. S. and Canada during the intervening years. It was while lecturing at Columbia in 1915 that he married his first American wife, Miss Henrietta S. Porter of Annapolis, who died in 1919. In 1921 he married Miss Mabel Davison of Manhattan, sister to the late Henry P. Davison, famed banker. He died at Mentone, French Riviera, universally honored among scholars and beloved on two continents for his warm, compelling charm.