Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Pleubian, Brittany, France
About Erwan Berthou
- Erwan Berthou (September 4, 1861 – January 30, 1933) was a French and Breton language poet, writer and neo-Druidic bard.
- His name is also spelled Erwan Bertou and Yves Berthou.
- He also used the bardic pseudonyms Kaledvoulc'h, Alc'houeder Treger and Erwanig. He was born in Pleubian, Côtes-d'Armor.
- He studied at the small seminary of Tréguier, then at the college of Lannion.
- He worked as an engineer in Le Havre, later moving in 1892 to Rochefort.
- On 12 June 1892, he married Elisa Mézeray. He joined the Navy for five years.
- During his service he visited the Caribbean, Africa and China.
- Berthou returned to Le Havre in 1896.
- He then began contributing to the journals L'Hermine and Revue des provinces de l'Ouest.
- In 1897, he published a magazine La Trêve de Dieu (The Truce of God), but it folded after a year.
- He continued to work as an engineer, especially in construction of settlements in 1898 in Paris. In the following year was one of twenty-two Bretons who went to Cardiff to establish links with Welsh neo-Druidism, being received at the Gorsedd.
- He also joined the Union Régionaliste Bretonne, helping to create the Breton nationalist movement.
- He participated in all stages of the creation of the Gorsedd of Brittany, of which he was Archdruid from 1903 to 1933, using the bardic name Kaledvoulc'h.
- He occasionally participated in Emile Masson's journal Brug.
- Much of his writing is imbued with pantheist ideas. In 1906 Berthou and Jean Le Fustec published Eur to gir of rear Varzed, Triades des druides de Bretagne, a translation into Breton of the 46 theological Triads of the neo-Bards, according to a text first published by Iolo Morganwg with his own Lyric Poems, then in the Barddas of J.
- William ab Ithel (1862).
- The collection, in fact a forgery by Morganwg, was claimed to have been a translation of works by Llywelyn Siôn detailing the history of the Welsh bardic system from its ancient origins to the present day.
- Based on these ideas Berthou also published Sous le chêne des druides (Under the Druids' Oak), which described a mystical history of human spiritual and cultural evolution culminating in the achievement of "pure whiteness". In 1918, he returned to live in Pleubian, to take over his parents' farm.
- He found it difficult to keep it solvent, and was reduced to great poverty a result of the inflation after the war.
- His last years were severely impoverished, leading to his wife's mental breakdown.
- Members of the Breton national movement organised financial assistance for him.
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