The Barzaz Breizh ("The Plaints of Brittany") is the collection of Breton folk tales, legends and music collected by Théodore Hersart de la Villemarqué and published in 1839. Hersart grew up in the manor of Plessix in Nizon, near Pont-Aven, half Breton himself. He made a collection of popular songs collected from oral tradition, but was criticised by a later generation of Breton cultural nationalists as having invented a great deal, for he was also half French aristocrat. His rediscovered notebooks have confirmed the authenticity of his finds.
Until his publication the "matter of Brittany" was known only from its translation into French romances of the 13th and 14th centuries, in which much of the culture was also transformed to suit Gallic hearers.
The collection achieved a wide distribution, as the Romantic generation that "discovered" the Basque language was beginning to be curious about all the submerged cultures of Europe and the pagan survivals just under the surface of folk Catholicism. The Barzaz Breizh brought Breton folk culture for the first time into European awareness. One of the oldest of the collected songs was the legend of Ys.
See also Folk music