[wood] footnotes to CANADIAN FOLKSONGS . lis 



his is itself one of î^ature'n voices. I shall never forget one occasion, 

 during a cruise up the Saguenay. when I heard the folksong in absolute 

 ])erfection. It was a calm, warm night in the beginning of July ; a 

 cloudless full moon silvered the vast, still waters of the river and lit up 

 the innermost recess of Eternity Bay, where the yacht lay swingino- 

 gently at her anchor — at rest, like all else around her, in that scene of 

 beauty hushed in awe. I had been below for some time, trying to get to 

 sleep, when I thought I heard someone calling. Going up on deck 

 quietly, I found that my man had paddled ashore and was there singing 

 to himself, hidden away somewhere in the darkness : he had left his 

 heart behind him, and here was his solace. As his far-off chanted strains 

 on the eternal theme of love, coming from out an imj^enetrable shadow, 

 rose and fell upon my ear, they seemed, in their complete unconscious- 

 ness, to be as much a part of surrounding Nature as the cr}' of the lonely 

 night-bird, the deep pulsation of the tide or the silent, everlasting hills 

 themselves. 



Entering the limits of our texts in search of j)oetry, we find that we 

 may justify our affirmative answer in at least three different classes of 

 songs ; the popular 7ioël, the complainte and, of course, the love-song. 

 D'où viens-tu, bergère? is perfect as a children's picture-poem. The form 

 of question and answer at once arouses the childish interest, and the simple 

 descriptive touches, all borrowed from the childs own little world, are 

 strikingly dramatic to his wondering imagination : 



Qu'as-tu vu, bergère ? 



Un petit enfant 

 Sur la paille fraîche 

 Mis bien tendrement. 



Ya le bœuf et l'âne 

 Qui sont par devant, 

 Avec leur haleine 

 Réchauffent l'enfant. 

 Rien de plus, bergère, 

 Rien de plus ? 

 — Ya trois petits anges, 

 Descendus du ciel, 

 Chantant les louanges 

 Du Père éternel. 



" La belle complainte de Marianson " is the finest piece of poetry in 

 Canadian folksong. It does not begin with an attempt at preparing its 

 hearers to see things from the proper point of view, nor does it ever turn 

 aside to explain its purport by the way, for the folksong always takes its 

 hearers' intelligent sympathy for granted ; but, with true dramatic in- 

 sight, it sings the burden of its song as shortly and directly as it may. 



