Auprès de ma blonde
Il est dans la Hollande, Les Hollandais l'ont pris
The text was inspired by Louis XIV’s campaign against Holland (1672-78), during which French soldiers were taken prisoner. It is attributed to an André Joubert du Collet, who was a prisoner of the Dutch for two years, during which he supposedly wrote the song in honor of his wife. After his (tardy) liberation, he (again supposedly) offered it in thanks to Louis XIV. See the French Wikipédia article. It became a popular marching-song.
Here is a version (early 20th-century), done in proper march-like fashion.
And here you have it in the folk-song stylings of Olivia Chaney.
You will observe, if only through the information that I give you, that the speaker in the verses (a woman) is not the same as the speaker in the refrain (a man).
Indefinite Article, Partitive Article, the Adverbial Pronoun En
Observe what happens to the indefinite article (elles ont un mari = “they have a husband”) or plural partitive article (elles ont des maris = “they have husbands”) after a negative adverb:
- Elles n’ont pas de mari (They don’t have a husband).
Observe also how the adverbial pronoun en replaces the noun in the following:
- J’ai un joli mari > J’en ai un joli. (I have a pretty husband > I have a pretty one.)
See these French Language Files: Reduction of the Negative Particle; Negative Particles
French Lyrics (English Translation Follows)
1 Dans les jardins de mon père
Les lauriers1 sont fleuris. (bis)
Tous les oiseaux du monde
Y viennent fair’ leur nid.
Auprès de ma blonde,
Qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon,
Auprès de ma blonde,
Qu’il fait bon dormir.
2 La caill’, la tourterelle
Et la jolie perdrix (bis)
Et ma jolie colombe
Qui chante jour et nuit.
Auprès de ma blonde,
Qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon,
Auprès de ma blonde,
Qu’il fait bon dormir.
3 Ell’ chante pour les filles
Qui n’ont pas de mari. (bis)
Pour moi ne chante guère,2
Car j’en ai un joli.
Auprès de ma blonde,
Qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon,
Auprès de ma blonde,
Qu’il fait bon dormir.
4 Il est dans la Hollande,
les Hollandais l’ont pris. (bis)
« Que donn’riez-vous, la belle,
Pour le voir revenir? »
Auprès de ma blonde,
Qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon,
Auprès de ma blonde,
Qu’il fait bon dormir.
5 Je donnerais Versailles,
Paris et Saint Denis, (bis)
Les tours de Babylone,3
La cloch’ de mon pays!4
Auprès de ma blonde,
Qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon,
Auprès de ma blonde,
Qu’il fait bon dormir.
French Lyrics With English Translation
| 1 Dans les jardins de mon père Les lauriers sont fleuris. (bis) Tous les oiseaux du monde Y viennent fair’ leur nid. | 1 In the gardens of my father The laurel is in bloom. (twice) All the birds in the world Come there to make their nests. |
| Auprès de ma blonde, Qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon, Auprès de ma blonde, Qu’il fait bon dormir. | Next to my darling, How good it is, it is, it is, Next to my darling,5 How good it is to sleep. |
| 2 La caill’, la tourterelle Et la jolie perdrix (bis) Et ma jolie colombe Qui chante jour et nuit. | 2 The quail, the turtle-dove, And the pretty partridge (twice), And my pretty dove Who sings day and night. |
| Auprès de ma blonde, etc. | Next to my darling, etc. |
| 3 Ell’ chante pour les filles Qui n’ont pas de mari. (bis) Pour moi ne chante guère, Car j’en ai un joli. | 3 She is singing for the girls Who don’t have a husband. (twice) For me she is scarcely singing, For I have a pretty one. |
| Auprès de ma blonde, etc. | Next to my darling, etc. |
| 4 Il est dans la Hollande, les Hollandais l’ont pris. (bis) « Que donn’riez-vous, la belle, Pour le voir revenir? » | 4 He is in Holland, The Hollanders have taken him (prisoner). “What would you give, lovely one, To see him return?” |
| Auprès de ma blonde, etc. | Next to my darling, etc. |
| 5 Je donnerais Versailles, Paris et Saint Denis, (bis) Les tours de Babylone, La cloch’ de mon pays! | 5 I would give Versailles, Paris and St-Denis (twice), The towers of Babylon, The bell of my parish church! |
| Auprès de ma blonde, etc. | Next to my darling, etc. |
- Variant: lilas.[↩]
- Pour moi ne chante guère – 1) The verbe “chante” is lacking a subject (which must be elle), but what of that? Passi graviora. 2) Please observe the negative particle guère. (Having observed it, then act accordingly.) [↩]
- Alternative: Les tours de Notre-Dame.[↩]
- Note the crescendo here: she would give first Versailles (the royal residence), Paris (the capital), St-Denis (burial place of kings, symbol of the mutual support of Church and State), Babylon (the exotic capital of the ancient Near East), and, to top everything else off: the church-bell of her locality.[↩]
- Literally, “my fair-haired (woman),” but popularly ma blonde can mean “my girl-friend” of whatever color of hair. (Thanks to Jessica-Jean who brings up this point in the comments below.) [↩]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
This is going to be a strange one: I was born in Egypt to a Maltese father and an Armenian mother, who chose to speak French because it was the only language they both partly knew and did not want to speak Arabic. So bad French was my first language but it later greatly improved when we were kicked out of Egypt and had to go to England. I started to travel to France every year for my school holidays and started working at holiday camps for children. During my training, I was taught many French folk songs and really loved them all. I’m a macho male and even as a child I very rarely cried, but I’ve no idea why a few minutes ago when using your lyrics I started to sing Aupres de ma blonde, I was strongly moved emotionally and my voice began to crack like I was on the verge of crying. I don’t know why I was affected in this way but thought you might be interested in hearing the strong emotional potential these songs hold even for foreigners. I teach English to migrants in Australia and find that similar English nursery rhymes and folk songs are a very good effective way to teach language in a way that is far less likely to be forgotten but have never before today been moved emotionally over a song in any language. I’m a qualified teacher and would be delighted to help you in any way open to me to offer your services to schools in Perth (Western Australia), or in any other way you can think of.
Thanks for your wonderful comment. I am retired now, but throughout my French-teaching career used nursery rhymes, essentially the ones that I currently have up on this site, and thought they were wonderful for the purpose; I hope some of my students, at least, thought so as well. A number of them can be quite haunting… It was particular poems, though, e.g. Baudelaire’s Le Cygne, I had to be careful with when teaching them, because they were apt to make me tear up. —I would be very grateful for anything you might do to spread the use of MadBeppo.com.
The subject of the verb ‘chante’ is “elle”, which refers to “ma jolie colombe/Qui chante jour et nuit”.
Thanks for posting this, I found it while searching for the lyrics.
Merci!
So I heard this song being sung by Jean Luc Picard and his brother, Robert in an episode of Star Trek Next Generation. I did a Google search and landed on this site.
It is a fitting enough song for the Captain’s imagined French agricultural origins!
Lovely song, with very interesting comments. Thanks to all. Until reading this, I had always assumed that the verb in “ne chante guère” was the second person singular imperative and was addressed to the colombe who sings for the girls who don’t have a husband. “Don’t cry for me because I have a fine one!” I can see, however, that your rendering makes more sense. Fans of Dorothy Sayers May recall that Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane sing this to each other in Busman’s Honeymoon.
Thanks, and thanks for the Dorothy Sayers reference. —The second “chante” in the third stanza, could, as you surmised, be a 2nd-person singular imperative, but the text flows better (IMO) if we treat it as a pronoun-subject-less present indicative. (The modern rule that an independent verb needs to be accompanied by a subject of some kind was not yet in place in older versions of French.)
MB, a pronunciation question for you re “perdrix.” I don’t think I have ever actually heard the word used in conversation. Olivia Chaney leaves the “x” silent, as in, for example, prix. I am quite content to accept that with respect to standard French of Paris she is correct in so doing. But much of my experience with French is from Languedoc and I will visit there again soon. Final consonants are often pronounced in the south, as for example in Aix en Provence. Another example would be the winery Mas de Daumas Gassac where all the final consonants are pronounced. In the admittedly unlikely case that I need to use the word, how would I pronounce “perdrix?” An more importantly, is there a guideline, however rough, about when to pronounce the final consonant in le Sud? Or does one simply listen and learn the words one by one? (As is the general case with English, of course.). Thanks!
SF, I find the following in the “Prononc. et Orth.” section at the end of the TLFi article not for “perdrix,” but for “crucifix”: “x ne se prononce pas dans crucifix, perdrix, prix, ni dans flux, reflux, influx. Pour Littré on fait la liaison de x avec une voyelle initiale : un crucifix en ivoire [-kʀysifizɑ̃nivwɑ:ʀ]. Mais cette prononc. est considérée aujourd’hui comme très affectée.” But this much you already knew. As for how “perdrix” is pronounced in the south, I don’t have an immediate answer. You may indeed simply have to wait till you get there and ask (or wait for someone to use it spontaneously). As for your question about a guideline, again I have no immediate answer for you; if I come across some useful information, I will get back to you. However, I doubt if you will (in all cases) need to “learn the words one by one”: very often a pronunciation will apply to a whole group of words.
Sud is pronounced “sude”.
And the only useful guideline for pronunciation would be to check the etymology of words and where it comes from. French have a lot of Latin and Greek roots, and the words we herited from didn’t arrive with the same rules :)
Indeed. As far as I know, the final “d” in “sud” is pronounced everywhere in France: see the very end of the TLFi entry (http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/sud). —Knowing the origins of French words, and the regular sound changes that would have applied to them, can be helpful in figuring out their current pronunciation, but sometimes even that knowledge is insufficient. For instance, “fils” (“son”), from Latin “filius,” should on the basis of general sound changes in French now be pronounced “fi”—and yet it isn’t. Check out the “Pron. et Orth.” section at the very end of the TLFi article (http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/fils). Usage rules!
As it happens, perdrix was on the menu in the first restaurant we dined in on our recent arrival in France. But the restaurant was in Bourgogne, not le Sud, and in any case I was enjoying the meal so much that I forgot to ask. Maybe next time!
Thanks for all the helpful comments.
Interesting to see the comment about Dorothy Sayers’ book ‘Busman’s Honeymoon’ because I am reading that right now for the umpteenth time. (Lord Peter also sings odd snatches of it in other books.) I finally did what I had promised myself so many times and looked up a translation on the internet. When I read that it was a French marching song, I understood that it had been taken up by some of the British troops, including ‘Lord Peter Wimsey’, one of my favourite literary characters. Thanks for the translation; my French doesn’t stretch that far these days.
Perdrix is pronounced “perdri” no x. Never heard it pronounced in this case ever, North or South of France.
I also came to this page from those of Dorothy Sayers. Rereading her books with the internet can be kind of fun.
However, the questions of how to pronounce perdrix reminded me of the story that “partridge in a pear tree” was a recasting of “partridge et un perdrix”. Apparently the Christmas carol was sung first in English and then in French for each verse. The last verse fit in one line of music for the two languages. When sung solely in English the last verse needed to be extended and “in a pear tree” sounded similar to “et un perdrix.”
The way I heard it, it was originally simply “a partridge, une perdrix”, i. e. a translation. This makes more sense to me than “et” in this context.
Here’s one for you: I bought a new LG dryer and when it finishes drying a load it plays the verse of this song. I can’t figure out why but I may have to turn it off because it keeps me singing it in my head all the time. lol
It is a chipper, rousing little melody, which may explain why the Lucky-Goldstar Corporation chose it to indicate that the drying was done. To be sure, if one is going to “dormir auprès de sa blonde,” the sheets need to be done…
Trop drôle! Un nouveau verset peut-être? “Pour dormir auprès de ma blonde les draps doivent d’abord être secs!”
The reason I came to this page is because of that damn dryer! It’s not quite the same tune, but close enough that I sing Apres de ma bonde every time the dryer ends.
My mother, who was brought up speaking French Canadian, used to sing this tune.
It is amazing how music from childhood stays with us!
Too funny! I found my way to Mad Beppo by Googling the meaning of Aupres de Ma Blonde — I wanted to be sure I knew what our LG washer was singing about!
George Ciantar — I spent my toddlerhood (up to age 5) in Egypt during the reign of Farouk, and when I came across these lyrics in the Sayers book so many others have mentioned, I, too, was overcome with some sort of nostalgic emotion I think my father used to sing this, or perhaps my memory comes from the French convent school I attended —whatever, I was stirred in some old tender place in my heart just reading the lyrics.
Can you please translate the french song Partons la mer est Belle in english for me.
Thank you
Antonio Cormie
I have made the translation you requested. It is here: https://www.madbeppo.com/french-songs/partons-la-mer-est-belle/
In Québec, ‘ma blonde’ hasn’t anything to do with hair colour. It’s simply ‘my girlfriend’, no matter the colour of her hair. Maybe it’s different in France?
This term wasn’t ever mentioned in my college French classes in NYC; instead, we read things like Le Cid – not much colloquial language therein!
Indeed, the TLFi entry for “blond” (https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/blonde), gives, at B1a: “− Pop., fam.
a) La blonde. La maîtresse (même à propos d’une femme brune). Chanter « Auprès de ma blonde… »”. The usage seems current in modern French (see https://context.reverso.net/traduction/francais-anglais/ma+blonde), but perhaps it is heard more often in Québec than in mainland France. I will change my translation accordingly.
I’m so glad I stumbled on this page. I learnt this song a lifetime ago at school in Dublin. We were taught it by an ancient priest who thought the word dormir was wayyy too racy for our innocence ears and changed it to sourire which kinda still scans, but it’s tricky to unlearn something that has been planted incorrectly in your head some forty plus years earlier!
Really lovely song. Learnt this since my grade 7 and it still rings in my head. Now I’m teaching French and wish to teach my students this too. Really helpful sight. So touching too.
I recognized the song right away the first time our new LG washing machine played it, but I wasn’t sure about the lyrics. Couldn’t find it mentioned anywhere online until now. If I could only find a mention of the end cycle song played by our older model LG dishwasher!
When I was at junior school we did English country dancing, and this tune was used for a dance called “You’re the one for me”. I didn’t realise it was a French song adapted to use in country dancing. (“I want to be near you, you’re the one the one for me. I want to be near you, you’re the one for me.”
What a wonderful website!
My parents immigrated from Ukraine to Montreal, met there and raised my brother and me. After WW2, many Ukrainians came from displaced person camps in England to Canada and so naturally gravitated to English-speaking, rather than French-speaking Quebec. To my regret, I didn’t learn French enough to be anywhere near fluent.
We spoke Ukrainian at home – I tell everyone that it was “either speak Ukrainian, or don’t eat”.
I didn’t really learn much Ukrainian, though, until my brother and I spent a few years learning lines with a Ukrainian-speaking theater troupe.
I just watched a Ted Talk by polyglot Lydia Machova who said that to learn a language, you must find a way to enjoy speaking it. (I suspect that’s the way all learning works.)
Because I loved the melody of Aupres De Ma Blonde, I decided to learn the lyrics too – unconsciously trying to replicate my Ukrainian-learning experience.
Let’s tie this all together: because this all happened before the internet took over our lives, I learned “perdrix” phonetically and more or less arbitrarily, so in my head and on occasion when I sing it, “perdrix” sounds more like “Asterix” and less like “prix”.
Though it may be jarring to your ear and even tres affectee (sorry – I don’t know how to do accents on Android) and I do love Olivia Cheney’s version above, to me the hard “ks” at the end of “perdrix” just sounds right somehow and, I think, kinda cool.
I myself liked music and singing, and so I cheerfully imposed both on my French students throughout my career (nearly 40 years). Some of them may not have cared for it, and not many may have liked the exercise of singing French songs as much as I did, but I hope at least some of them benefitted from the practice.
It’s always unpleasant to learn you’ve been pronouncing a French word ending you shouldn’t, or not pronouncing one you should. I say, follow your own heart in the matter. Historically, however, it is unlikely an “x” sound [ks] was pronounced at the end of this word for a very, very long time. the letter x does appear in the classical Latin nominative singular form of the word, but in the Middle Ages the word appears with a final -s or -z, which would have had the value (if pronounced at all) of [s] or, possibly, in the case of -z, [ts].
The title makes an appearance in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, short story by James Thurber and made into a movie twice
And what a performance!
Interesting where this pops up. This song is talked about and used in the Arthur Conan Doyle route of the Japanese otome game Ikémen Vampire, the central story takes place in 19th century France. Since I was not familiar with the song, I wanted to hear it. Odd, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.
Today is Anzac Day in Australia, commemorating all those that fought and died in all wars. ‘Aupres de ma Blonde’, just the refrain, was brought back by my grandfather from the French & Belgian battlefields of WW1, so I always remember him today through this song. Coincidentally I am spending this Anzac Day in France.
Thank you for pointing out that the verses and the refrain are by two people. I have heard the song many times but never really paid any attention to the lyrics and when I finally did; complete confusion hit.
How could the singer be asking about ‘un mari” when singing about “ta blonde”?
BTW, I second Jessica-Jean. In Canada “Ma blonde” is my girlfriend. If the song was written in the 17C, we likely kept the original meaning here.
Alternatively “Mon chum” is my boyfriend.
Great post.
This song has haunted me since it was sung over and over again by a “simple” girl in an epizode of Have Gun Willl Travel, believe it or not. So glad to have found this!
I’ve just heard this song on BBC radio 3. I recognised the melody, but not the words, so I googled and found this lovely site. Thank you so much Mad Beppo and to other contributors; so touching and interesting to read.
When I learned ‘Auprès de ma blonde’ (in a summer session at Lycée Maurice Ravel in St Jean de Luz), the last line of the fourth verse was taught as ‘pour avoir votr’ ami’. The fifth verse opted for the Notre Dame alternative you cite, and I don’t remember what she would offer ‘de Mon pays’, but ‘cloch’ doesn’t sound like what I learned. Of course, ‘folk process’ and all that — just sharing textual variants.
I was singing this this morning as part of an impromptu, perhaps unwelcome, recital of all my French song memories for my dear wife (who loves me despite my singing to her in French and Basque).
Your variants are very welcome. Regarding “Pour le voir revenir” vs. “Pour avoir votre ami,” the second would seem preferable in that it provides a more perfect rhyme (though only a “pauvre” one, involving only one identical element: “pris/ami” [pri/ami] as opposed to “pris/-nir” [pri/nir]). On the other hand, a memory stirs telling me that for a while the final R of the infinitive -ir ending fell out of pronunciation (like the final R of the infinitive ending -er has done), though subsequently it began being pronounced again, giving the pronunciation [pri/ni], so that the issue of the rhyme is not decisive. —Regarding the word “cloch'” in the 5th stanza: can you (or anyone else) come up with another appropriate one-syllabled word to go here?
Having reflected on this since my original comment, I think that what threw me was not a difference in wording, but simply that the last line began with parataxis — more like ‘Et la cloche d’ mon pays!’
But those memories have gotten very dusty now, which is why I googled for the complete lyrics in the first place. Thank you for providing them, and for the lively discussion thereafter.
This song was broadcast on Radio 3 today (15 Jan 2024) sung by Olivia Chaney, and it took me back (70 years) to my childhood; my father sang this so often, while shaving (a proper undertaking, with lather and wet razor…). He only sang it when he was jolly, and it was definitely used to tease my mother! who affected disapproval, especially when he would teach it to us children. But it always ended in laughter and hugs. His other favourite was “Now my days of philandering are over, no more flitting from flower to flower”, which was his version of “Non piu andrai”, the song Figaro sings to Cherubino when the latter is to be sent off to join the army.
Could anyone please provide a transcript of exactly what Oliva Chaney is singing? It could just be the audio or my ears, but some verses don’t seem to match the lyrics provided.
Your academic thoroughness assessing this tune is a marvellous and a refreshing find amongst the plethora of copy-paste advertisement and error riddled sites out there! An earlier commenter mentioned the variations a la québécoises, a dialect that – along with those of other early French colonies – I have always thought to be a more faithful representation of French as it sounded during the Ancien Régime, at least in comparison to modern Parisian French as it is taught to English speakers today. Certainly many of the spelling peculiarities have persisted abroad! Many thanks for the effort and knowledge you invested into this site, I am astonished I haven’t encountered it previously and can say with certainty it will be a irresisable distraction pulling me away from more mundane tasks!
I heard the song many times as a small child, as my mother had learned it in French lessons at an all-girls secondary school in the 1930s. Interesting that Miss Twitterton in “Busman’s Honeymoon” knew it from a book owned by her schoolmistress mother and reflected that, “though, of course, it was not a thing one could teach the school-children”. Had I understood the lyrics when I was small, it wouldn’t have occurred to me that there was anything dubious about one adult sleeping next to another, but no doubt it did to Paul Keogan’s priest.
I’m a 71year old yorkshire man and i think i have had this song in my head the whole of my life and i have no idea why ? I heard it when i was very young and its sort of stuck i would love to hear it live if i ever get the chance regards martin
In his book “The Path to Rome” Hilaire Belloc recollects singing this as a marching song during his period of military service in the French Army.
Landed at this site after hearing Paul Muni sing this song while celebrating his return to French Canada with 300,000 pelts from northern Canada ( historically this scene would have been in the 1660s) in the 1941 film “Hudson’s Bay”. Although slightly earlier than the reported 1704 origin of song, the song is well presented with Muni (playing Pierre Esprit Radisson) singing the 1st verse solo then joined by the celebrating crowd for the chorus.
Thanks for this reference! Currently the film can be streamed at YouTube, if not elsewhere. The opening credits are accompanied by a choir singing “O Canada” (English version.) Inspiring!
After recently listening to perhaps fifty different versions of this song, in almost as many styles, this early version, reportedly recorded in 1913 appeared. Performed by Aristide Bruant (1851 – 1925), a French cabaret singer, comedian and night club owner, this version might be one of the earliest recorded versions of the song. It seems to have performed in a caberet style and includes back and forth dialogue between two members of the group:
https://youtu.be/bSqXJzKMryI?feature=shared
Reference: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristide_Bruant
I first heard and learned this song in my high school French class in the early 60s. It pops into my head occasionally. I couldn’t remember all the words so I looked online and found this website. It is a nice melody that makes one feel happy and never forget it. Thank you for this website.
I too came here for the lyrics while reading Busman’s Honeymoon!
I’m sure Ms Sayers would, however, have been shocked by the comments – It was never “Dorothy Sayers” but always “Dorothy L Sayers” – she was very proud of the (family) name of Leigh.