The Breton _kloer_ generally belong to the peasantry or to the trades-people of the country towns. The ancient episcopal sees of Tréguier and Léon, Quimper and Vannes, attract them in the largest numbers. They arrive there in bands from the depths of the country, in the national costume, with their long hair, and their rustic simplicity and language; most of them being from about eighteen to twenty years old. They live together in the faubourgs; the same garret serves for bed-room, kitchen, dining-room, and study. This is a far different existence from that which they led among the woods and fields, and it is not long before a complete change has come over them. With the lessening of muscular strength, their intellect and imagination develop themselves. The summer vacation takes them back to their village homes at the season in which, says a Breton poet, "young hearts expand with the flowers," and when temptations abound; thus it not unseldom happens that the _kloarek_ returns to his studies with the thorn of a first love in his heart. Then there arises a tempest in his soul--a struggle between the love of the creature and the Creator. Sometimes the former is the stronger; isolation, homesickness, leisure, contribute to develop a sentiment of which the germ only exists. A remembrance, a word, a melody, or the sound of some wild instrument which breaks on his ear and recalls his home, makes it suddenly burst forth. Then he throws his class-books into the fire, renounces the ecclesiastical state, and returns to his native village. But it is far oftener that the higher devotion wins the day. In either case, however, the scholar-poet must, according to his own expression, "comfort his heart" by making his confidences to the muse. By an instinct natural to all but truly popular poets, the _kloer_ never write their compositions. They are wise in this. "The memory of hearing," as it was called by the ancient bards, is much more tenacious than the "memory of letters." To write and print their songs would be to give up having them learnt by heart, and repeated by generation after generation. Once become priests, the _kloer_ burn that which they have worshipped; thus Gildas declaims against the bards, forgetting, in his monk's habit, that in his youth he had made one of their number. As _kloer_, these scholar-poets disdain the songs of the wandering minstrels; as priests, they equally disdain the lays of the _kloer_. And yet, as priests, they do not cease to sing; but that which lingered on the earth now finds its wings and takes a heavenward flight, and the sacred songs and canticles which express the warm devotion of their hearts imprint themselves on the memory of the people, and are, like prayers, transmitted from age to age. It is thus impossible to know the date of their compositions, except by knowing the exact period at which their authors lived.