The Bretons were very similar in manners and language to the inhabitants of Britain, many of them having had the same origin, and being, in fact, a colony from our island. The Cornouaille of Bretagne, however, must not be confounded with our province of that name by the well-wishers of the latter, because the romance writers do not speak in such terms of some of their knights as their friends might have desired. There is a Breton song, said to be as old as the fifth century, arranged as a dialogue between a Druid and a scholar, which is similar in idea and construction to the carol beginning, “In those twelve days,” and to that called ‘Man’s Duty,’ though the twelve subjects given are quite different from those in the carols, and refer to some druidical superstitions. It is called ‘Ar Rannou,’ or ‘Les Series,’ and is in the “dialecte de Cornouaille.” The early missionaries engrafted on this a poem or song of the same construction, where the twelve subjects were connected with the Christian religion, and agree much with those in the carols, which there is fair reason to suppose may have been taken from this early poem. These subjects are,—one God; two Testaments; three Patriarchs; four Evangelists; five books of Moses; six water-vessels at Cana of Galilee; seven Sacraments; eight Beatitudes; nine degrees of Angels; ten Commandments; eleven stars that appeared to Joseph; twelve Apostles. The hymn itself is in Latin, and at the end of each verse all the previous subjects are repeated in the style of the ‘House that Jack built,’ an example to which I refer simply from its being so well known, the style itself being of great antiquity, and taken originally from an old Hebrew hymn, of which some particulars, with a translation, may be found in Halliwell’s ‘Nursery Rhymes of England;’ but the butcher, the ox, the dog, and the cat, with the other characters mentioned there, have all a mystical meaning. The last verse of the old Latin hymn may be given as a specimen:— “....Die mihi quid duodecim? ....Duodecim Apostoli; Undeim stellæ A Josepho visæ: Decem mandate Dei, Novem angelorum chori, Octo beatitudines; Septem sacramenta; Sex hydriæ positæ In Cana Galileæ; Quinque libri Moysis, Quatuor Evangelistæ, Tres Patriarchæ, Duo testamenta; Unus est Deus, Qui regnat in Cœlis.”