Black thy horse, black thy cope,
Black thy head, black thyself,
Yes, black! art thou Yscolan?
I am Yscolan the scholar,
Slight is my clouded reason,
There is no drowning the woe of him who offends a sovereign.
For having burnt a church, and destroyed the cattle of a school,
And caused a book to be submerged,
My penance is a heavy affliction.
Creator of the creatures, of supports
The greatest, pardon me my iniquity!
He who betrayed Thee, deceived me.
A full year was given me
At Bangor on the pole of a weir;
Consider thou my suffering from sea-worms.
If I knew what I now know
As plain as the wind in the top branches of waving trees,
What I did I should never have done.
--"The First Song of Yscolan", from The Four Ancient Books of Wales, by W. F. Skene, 1868
"Gwerz Skolan" is a gwerz with a long tradition in Lower Brittany, especially Léon-Trégor and Cornouaille. Its story is found in Old Welsh texts also, and the oldest extant Welsh version is found in the 13th-century Black Book of Carmarthen. The poem is cited as evidence for the preservation in Brittany of cultural memories and traditions predating the entrance of Bretons into Brittany. The gwerz was performed in Brittany until the 19th century, with some late examples from the 20th century. Its content (though many versions differ in their details) describes a man who had died after living a life of rape and murder, and now comes back from hell to ask for forgiveness.