Page:Songs of Old Canada.djvu/90



This charming love story, with its attractive air, rightly heads our Canadian songs. It apparently enjoyed as great a popularity in France as here, for Dr. Larue cites no less than five variations of the words. Its origin is unknown, but it is sung in Normandy, Brittany and Franche-Comté.

"A few years ago," Dr. Larue says, "our Claire Fontaine, with its own Canadian air, was rendered in one of the principal theatres of Paris and obtained an immense success."

In "Malbrouck" we have the song as it was sung in the time of Le Grand Monarque, with the English general and his army fighting brilliantly and swearing terribly in Flanders, while the people in Paris lilted his funeral elegy to the gay refrain of Mironton, mirontaine.

Dr. Larue traces it back to a similar burlesque elegy on the Duke of Guise, while Father Prout, in his Reliques, gives the popular tradition that it was composed by Mme.