Quand j’etais chez mon pere apprenti pastouriau (MS2011-3223-044)

Quand j’etais chez mon pere apprenti pastouriau (MS2011-3223-044)

Quand j’étais chez mon père, apprenti pastoureau

French language song text from VFC2006-0002 Beaudoin Family Collection. MS2011-3223-044 Alice Lacourse Danis Songbook. Pp. 37.

“Quand j’étais chez mon père, apprenti pastouriau”(“When I Lived at my Father’s as an Apprentice-Shepherd”). This traditional French song has been in circulation since at least the first half of the 1500s. It has been widely collected in France and in Quebec, as well as in Nova Scotia and Massachusetts. This particular text is virtually identical to that published under the title “Quand j’étais chez mon père, apprenti pastouriau” in abbé Charles-Émile Gadbois’s 1948 publication, Les 100 plus belles chansons (p. 61). Gadbois (1906-1981) was a Quebecois priest, musician, publisher, composer, and impresario who created a ten-booklet series of “edifying” songs, titled La Bonne chanson between 1938 and 1954; the booklets were widely popular in Franco-American New England during this period.

when I lived at my father’s as an apprentice shepherd, he put me in the fields to guard the herds; I only had three sheep and the wolf ate the best one; he was so voracious that he only left its tail to put on my hat, I made a bagpipe with the animal’s bones to play at the celebration of our hamlet, to make the villagers dance under the big el tree and the young folks and old ladies in their wooden shoes.

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

Quand j’etais chez mon pere apprendi pas tourrai

L'apprenti pastouriau I, J-12

L'apprenti pastoureau 04602

When I Lived at my Father’s as an Apprentice-Shepherd

Quand j’etais chez mon pere appenti pas tourrau

Quand j’etais chez mon pere appenti pas tourrau
Il m’a mis dans la lande. Pour garder les troupiaux
Troupiaux troupiaux j’e n’en avait guere
Troupiaux troupiaux je n’en avait d’raux
2
Mais je n’ent avait guereje n’avais qu’trois agneaux
Et le loup de la plaine m’a mange le plus beau
Refrain

3
Il etait si vorace n’a laisse que la peau n’a laisse que quelque la
Pour mettre a mon chapeau

4
Mais des os de la bête me fis un chalurniau pour jouer a la fete
A la fete du hamiau
Refrain

5
Pour faire danser l’village dessous le grand ormiau
Et les jeunes et les vielles les pieds dans les sabrots