It might be expected that in a country so much under the influence of the sea, and in which so large a proportion of the inhabitants are sailors, fishers on the stormy and dangerous coast or in the distant waters of Newfoundland and Iceland, there would be a large number of sea songs. The folk-lore of Brittany is particularly rich in stories and legends of the sea, composed by the fishermen to while away the long hours of the passage to Newfoundland or the nightwatches in the misty seas of Iceland; or embodying the mysterious and superstitious terrors of the fishermen of the coast in the face of storms and foaming reefs; and the impress of supernatural power in the ocean and the storm is very strong upon the imaginations of the Breton people. But the sailors themselves, like the laborers in the fields, do not seem to have the inspiration and poetical gift to put their thoughts into song. M. Luzel has been able to collect but a comparatively few of genuine sailor songs, and these are mostly tavern choruses or rude and commonplace chants, with but very little of the salt of the seas and the voice of the breeze in them. The women sometimes chant at the spinning-wheel songs of warning against the dangers and perils of becoming a sailor's wife, of which the following is an example:-- DO NOT MARRY A SAILOR. Maidens young, who wish to wed, Take advice from an old head. If you marry, as you say, Do not take a sailor gay. If you take a sailor gay, You will sorrow night and day. When the farmer's wife's in bed The sailor's wife the floor must tread. When the wind arises shrill, Her heart will beat, her eyes will fill. Her heart will beat, her eyes will fill, And in her veins the blood run chill. Every moment she seeks the door, --Mercy, how the torrents pour! If I had store of money red, I know the husband I would wed. I'd wed the heir of a good house, Who can reap the fields he ploughs. Who can reap the fields he ploughs, And in his stable has good cows. Both night and day whom I can see, And who will sleep by the side of me. While the poor sailor, day and night, Lives in peril and affright. Day and night must work and wake, And of a plank his cradle make. The Breton women, who spend hours at the spinning-wheel, as in all other countries, accompany the monotonous and musical drone with long chants, that hypnotize the sense of labor, which are often merely improvisations with as little sense and meaning as the lullabies for infants. But here is one into which the old spinner puts the thoughts of her willingness to make sacrifice of her all in order that her son might be educated as a priest, and her hopes of reward from his filial piety. The soothing and monotonous melody is necessarily lost in the translation. THE SONG OF THE OLD SPINNER. My wheel and my bonnet of straw