[u-ood] footnotes to CANADIAN FOLKSONGS 99 



VI. 



Humour. 



There is another influence beside those already mentioned which 

 greatly atfects the characteristic tone of Canadian folksongs and which, 

 if misunderstood, makes many of them the veriest ' caviare.' This is that 

 blending of a witty humour with a natural turn for satire, so peculiarly 

 French that we must give up trying to tind an English name for it and 

 call it simply gauloiserie. Not that we are wholly without descriptions 

 of some such kind of humour. In a delightful little preface to Mr. Locker's 

 volume of society verse, Mr. Austin Dobson gives u.s a very good idea of 

 the British variant of this peculiar natural trait — but, variants are 

 variants, and are apt to have elusively subtle distinctions a,bout them : 



Apollo made, one April day. 

 A new thing in the rhyming way ; 

 Its turn was neat, its wit was clear, 

 It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear ; 

 Then Momus gav^e a touch satiric, 

 And it became a "London Lyric." 



And then, if we take this refrain of de Eougemont's we may get still 

 nearer to an insight into the true "raison d'être" oi gauloiserie — 



Dans cette vie 



Où tout varie, 

 Où chaque pas mène au tombeau, 

 Portons gaîment notre fardeau ; "^ 



but let US stop here ; if we go on trying to get an insight into what 

 gauloiserie really is, by taking it to pieces and examining its component 

 parts, we shall defeat our own object ; for its essence does not depend 

 upon the nature of its parts, but upon the way in which they are blent 

 together into a living whole. Just as a joke that has to be exj^lained is 

 no joke at all, so gauloiserie is no real intluence except to those whose sense 

 of humour enables them to see and feel it in their studies from the life. 



And in making a study from the life we have to remember another 

 characteristic French trait — the social quality, which is so strongly 

 developed in the whole nation and which, with its great power of assimi- 

 lation, has gained for France, through her men of letters, the title of the 

 Interpreter of Europe. All the world acknowledges the social virtues of 

 French song — even perfidious Albion takes pleasure in "the gay French 

 refrain," as she generally calls it. 



And there is yet another point to note here — that Ave must speak of 

 gauloiserie only with reference to the French language, for wherever a 

 different tongue has survived within the borders of France, there the sad 

 tone may still be heard above all others. The Breton fisherman can feel 

 a passion akin to that of the wild, mysterious Flamenco songs of 



