{"id":919,"date":"2012-03-08T20:44:36","date_gmt":"2012-03-09T02:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/?p=919"},"modified":"2012-03-08T20:46:11","modified_gmt":"2012-03-09T02:46:11","slug":"rediscovering-a-dark-childrens-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/rediscovering-a-dark-childrens-song\/","title":{"rendered":"Rediscovering a Dark Children’s Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Our 14-year-old daughter was watching another police procedural show the other night. The Abster is hooked on \u201cNCIS\u201d and similar programs that invariably show a corpse cut open on a slab in an autopsy lab. At the moment, she plans to be a forensic psychologist so that she can solve the types of mysteries she watches on television. We are fine with whatever career she chooses, but I likely won\u2019t be visiting her at work. I have no interest in seeing a dead person slit open from stem to sternum.<\/p>\n

During the show, a whacky Target commercial came on with folks running around in brightly colored clothing. In the background a song played in French. Though I haven\u2019t thought of this tune in many decades, I immediately began singing along.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Alouette, gentillle alouette<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Alouette, je te plumerai<\/em><\/p>\n

OK, I had to look this up to spell it correctly, but I was singing along spot-on with the commercial. Both Abster and my Beautiful Mystery Companion were staring at me as if I had inexplicably started speaking in tongues. I explained that I grew up in New Hampshire singing that nursery rhyme at the knees of my French-Canadian grandmother. Hearing that song again evoked sweet memories of my long-dead grandparents, of wintry days spent in front of the fire in their small house out in the country in Hopkinton, with its flowing brook in the backyard and the covered bridge my grandfather built across those waters.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Je te plumerai le bec<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Je te plumerai le bec<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Et let bec, et le bec<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alouette, Alouette!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ah! Ah! Ah!<\/em><\/p>\n

I watched the commercial with bemusement, singing along as men and women behaved outrageously. One character uses a leaf blower to knock the clothes off a family. \u00a0Voila!<\/em>, they\u2019re wearing swimwear and shades.<\/p>\n

I heard plenty of French growing up, between my grandparents and other French-Canadian kinfolks and neighbors. Allenstown, the hamlet in which I spent my childhood, was filled with folks whose surnames were Courtemanche, Boudreau, LeBlanc, Rousseau. My mother\u2019s maiden name was Bourque. My grandmother in particular lapsed into French quite often. My great-grandmother, who we visited a few times in Sherbrooke, Canada, in the Quebec province, refused to speak anything except French when we visited. Rumor was she could speak English just fine but refused to do so.\u00a0 This was problematic since the only French I had retained, besides \u201cAlouette<\/em>,\u201d were a smattering of curse words my cousins taught me. I still recall a couple but will keep them to myself.<\/p>\n

My BMC asked what the song was about. I confessed that I had no idea, even though I could sing the song in only slightly mangled French. It was time to go to Google.<\/p>\n

There I made a startling discovery. This sweet nursery rhyme, which warms the cockles of my middle-aged soul, is about dismembering little birds, body part by body part. Thus the first pair of verses quoted above in English mean:<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Lark, gentle lark<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lark, I will pull your feathers off<\/em><\/p>\n

The second set of lines in English are:<\/p>\n

I will pluck your bill.<\/p>\n

I will pluck your bill.<\/p>\n

And your bill, and your bill<\/p>\n

Lark, lark<\/p>\n

Ah! Ah! Ah!<\/p>\n

Suddenly, this little ditty now featured nationwide in a Target commercial and sung by French-Canadian children for generations takes on a sinister tint. Alouette<\/em> refers to a type of skylark. The song proceeds to describe pulling feathers off the poor bird\u2019s tail, back, wings, neck and head, with each body part taking up an entire verse. I\u2019m surprised PETA or another animal-rights group hasn\u2019t started picketing Target for featuring a song about animal cruelty in a television commercial.<\/p>\n

I realize some English-language nursery rhymes are also violent. Humpty Dumpty cracks up. The farmer\u2019s wife amputates three rodents\u2019 tails. Then there\u2019s Jack breaking his crown, which likely necessitated a visit to the dentist\u2019s office. But all this feather plucking is making me queasy, since singing \u201cAlouette\u201d <\/em>implies I\u2019m<\/em> going to be doing the plucking. The day I have to start plucking birds for the next meal is when I go full-time vegetarian. I want my meat shrink-wrapped and not looking like some warm, fuzzy animal. Call me hypocritical. I\u2019m OK with that.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really take umbrage at the song\u2019s contents but do find it interesting that no adult actually told me what the song was about. As a child, I would have likely sung with even greater gusto: Je to plumerai le bec!<\/em> That is how young boys are: the grosser the better.<\/p>\n

Now, if I could just get that blasted song out of my head. It is like a broken record, streaming through my consciousness again and again:<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Je te plumerai la tete.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Je te plumerai la tete.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Et les yeux. Et les yeux.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Et le bec. Et le bec.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alouette, Alouette!<\/em><\/p>\n

You can Google (unless you already know French) to translate the last passage. I can\u2019t bear to talk about it anymore.<\/p>\n

Print this entry<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Print this entryOur 14-year-old daughter was watching another police procedural show the other night. The Abster is hooked on \u201cNCIS\u201d and similar programs that invariably show a corpse cut open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[45,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-45","category-columns"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":921,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions\/921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}