Dans le temps des fetes (MS2011-3223-020)

Dans le temps des fetes (MS2011-3223-020)

French language song text from VFC2006-0002 Beaudoin Family Collection. MS2011-3223-020 Alice Lacourse Danis Songbook. Pp. 18-19.

“Dans le temps des fêtes” (“In the Holiday Season”) is a traditional comical song about Christmas season reveling set to the melody of an 18th century French carol “Dans cette étable” (= “In this Stable”). In 1919, the Journal of American Folklore published a version submitted in an article about French-Canadian folk songs by Montreal historian, archivist and journalist Édouard-Zotique Massicotte (1867–1947) under the title “Dans le temps des fêtes.” Massicotte reported having collected the song from L.-H. Cantin, who had learned it from a Mr. Picard in St-Romuald-de-Lévis in1895. French-Canadian folk song scholar Conrad Laforte catalogued the song under the same title and lists 19 versions collected in Ontario and Quebec.

In 1929, singer, storyteller, and actor Eugène Daignault (1895-1960) recorded this song under the title “Dans l’temps des fêtes” for the Compo/Starr label (issue # 15662; matrix # 3994), accompanied by Mary Travers Bolduc on jaw harp and harmonica and the “Trio de la rue St-Timothée” (= St. Timothy Street Trio). Daignault was born in St. Alban’s, Vermont, but moved to the Montreal suburb of Boucherville when his father, a pharmacist, died. As an adult, Daignault worked as a food inspector for the city of Montreal, but moonlighted as a star of Conrad Gauthier’s Veillée du bon Vieux temps troupe, which performed French-Canadian themed Grand Old Opry style shows of old-fashioned, “rustic” skits and music in Montreal in the 1920s. He signed a contract with Roméo Beaudry’s Montreal-based Starr label in 1926 and recorded 93 songs for that label. He was also a popular radio singer and radio, television, and film actor actor in Montreal. You can hear Daignault’s 1929 Compo/Starr recording on the Library and Archives Canada website, The Virtual Gramophone: https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/films-videos-sound-recordings/virtual-gramophone/Pages/Item.aspx?idNumber=1007637905

In the Christmas season everyone is gay and dressed in their best; you go to the neighbors and shake hands and wish them the best and when the glasses are filled, you toast; the fathers and mothers are awaiting their children, hearts a-flutter, the old man takes out his whiskey and the old woman her glasses and a drink is passed around; the table is spread.

VFC2006-0002 Beaudoin Family Collection. MS2011-3223 Alice Lacourse Danis Songbook. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.

Dans le temps des fetes

Dans le temps des fêtes

Dans le temps des fêtes VI, A-34

In the Holiday Season

Dans le temps des fêtes tout le monde

Dans le temps des fetes tout le monde
Est gai que la toilette est bien froide raffine
On va chez son voisin on se donne la main
Et puis on se la souhaite et quand les verres
Son plein on fait trinquette

Les peres et meres attentent leur enfants
Dans leur chaumiere le coeur tout palpitant
Le bohomme sort son whiskey le bon femme
Sors ses verres et puis on passe la haile
Et le flachon de Wisky c’est pas si bête
Dans la grande sale la table est bien garme
C’est dans le temo du jour de l’an
On s’donne la on s’embrasse
C’est l’bon temp d’en profites
Car sa vien qu’une fois par annee