[wood] footnotes to CANADIAN FOLKSONGS 109 



Parnii les voyageurs^'* and Salut à 'mon pays^^'' are songs of return. 

 Sometimes the '• blondes " forget their voyageurs — 



A présent m'y voilà 



En arrière des autres ; ''"'' 



and sometimes, Avhen they do so, they get paid back in their OAvn coin — 



A présent j'en ai-t-une autre 

 Qui y est ben plus à mon gré.i" 



Among voyageurs, as among soldiers and sailors all the world over, there 

 are always some careless adventurers, Avho, wandering about for years in 

 parts unknown, find, on their return home, that their lamilies have given 

 them up for lost and their wives have married again. Such a dramatic 

 situation is never thrown away upon folksingers, who every Avhere have 

 innumerable variants on this single theme ; the Canadian one being 

 Voilà les foyageurs qu'arrivent,^'^ which ends without telling us what 

 becomes of the two husbands : 



J'ai donc reçu de fausses lettres 

 Que vous étiez mort, enterré, 

 Aussi, je me suis mariée. 



It is a great pity to find this disa])pointing baldness here, as the same 

 theme has often been so effectively treated in folksong ; sometimes with 

 almost the artistic finish of Tennyson's " Enoch Arden," and sometimes 

 with the insight and fine reserve of (luy de Maupassant's short slory 

 '' Le Eetour."' 



XL 



Variants.^"''' 



Variants begin at home ; and, tliuugh the local ones are often 

 apparently of the most trifling importance, they are never to be neglected 

 on that account. In a variant of En rou/ant^^" the word •■mitan"' 

 occurs : 



Derriér' chez nous ya-tun étang. 

 Et la rivièr' passe au mitan. '-^ 



This in itself is a small thing ; Init the use of the word acquires a good 

 deal of importance when we find that it is frequent in the Côte de 

 Beaupré, the Isle of Orleans and the Côte du Sud in Canada,^*- that it 

 occurs in the songs of Picardy '"" and that we know from Avhat provinces 

 many of the "colons" of the seventeenth century originally came.'^^ As 

 a matter of fact, the word "mitan" is used instead of the standard 

 •'milieu" in other provinces besides Picardy, and the habitants of the 

 parts of Canada just mentioned are by no means all descended from 

 Picards ; but, all the same, this serves to show that no local variant should 

 be overlooked, even when it is only a ]>liilological one. Some local 



