Il était une bergère
Ma fille, pour pénitence, / Nous nous embrasserons
A song going back, they say, to the 18th century.
The slaying of the cat in sixth stanza comes as a shock: surely a milder punishment would have sufficed? A second incoherency: would a shepherdess as casually violent as this one have bothered to confess her crime, as she does in stanzas 7-8? I will not repeat here the (quite plausible) explanation for these puzzles given on some other sites. (See also the discussion in the Comments below.)
The behavior of the priest in stanzas 9 and 10 may also shock. One can look on the anticlericalism it evinces as either a natural enough phenomenon in a Catholic country, or as a sign of the free-thinking already growing apace in 18th-century France. Or as both.
This YouTube version will do, though it gets no farther than the fifth stanza.
Simple Hypothesis
Stanza 3 has a fine example of the first kind of conditional sentence.
- Si tu y mets la patte, tu auras du baton. (If you stick your paw in it, you’ll get some caning.)
Simple Past
The action verbs of the narrative are in the passé simple.
- fit (faire), mit (mettre), tua (tuer), fut (être)
See Simple Past.
French Lyrics (English Translation Follows)
1 Il était1 une bergèr-e,
Et ron, ron, ron,2 petit patapon3
Il était une bergèr-e
Qui gardait ses moutons, ron, ron
Qui gardait ses moutons.
2 Ell-e fit un fromag-e,
Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon
Ell-e fit un fromag-e
Du lait de ses moutons, ron, ron
Du lait de ses moutons.
3 Le chat qui4 la regard-e,
Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon
Le chat qui la regard-e
D’un petit air fripon, ron ron
D’un petit air fripon.
4 Si tu y mets la patt-e,
Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon
Si tu y mets la patt-e,
Tu auras du bâton,5 ron-ron
Tu auras du bâton.
5 Il n’y mit la patt-e,
Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon
Il n’y mit la patt-e,
Il y mit le menton,6 ron-ron
Il y mit le menton.
6 La bergère en colèr-e,
Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon
La bergère en colèr-e
Tua son p’tit chaton, ron-ron
Tua son p’tit chaton.
7 Ell-e fut7 à confesse,
Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon
Ell-e fut à confesse,
Pour demander pardon, ron-ron
Pour demander pardon.
8 Mon pèr-e, je m’accus-e,
Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon
Mon pèr-e, je m’accus-e
D’avoir tué chaton, ron-ron
D’avoir tué chaton.
9 Ma fille, pour pénitenc-e,
Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon
Ma fille pour pénitenc-e,
Nous nous embrasserons, ron, ron
Nous nous embrasserons.8
10 La pénitence est douc-e,
Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon
La pénitence et douc-e,
Nous recommencerons, ron, ron
Nous recommencerons.
French Lyrics With English Translation
| 1 Il était une bergèr-e, Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon Il était une bergèr-e Qui gardait ses moutons, ron, ron Qui gardait ses moutons. | 1 There was (once) a shepherdess Et ron ron ron petit patapon There was (once) a shepherdess Who was keeping (kept) her sheep, Who was keeping her sheep. |
| 2 Ell-e fit un fromag-e Du lait de ses moutons. | 2 She made a (round of) cheese From the milk of her sheep. |
| 3 Le chat qui la regard-e, D’un petit air fripon. | 3 And there’s the cat looking at her With a sly little air. |
| 4 Si tu y mets la patt-e, Tu auras du bâton. | 4 If you stick your paw in it, You’ll get some caning. |
| 5 Il n’y mit la patt-e, Il y mit le menton. | 5 He didn’t stick his paw in it, He stuck his chin (his whole head) in it. |
| 6 La bergère en colèr-e, Tua son p’tit chaton. | 6 The shepherdess in anger Killed her little kitten. |
| 7 Ell-e fut à confesse, Pour demander pardon. | 7 She went to confession To ask forgiveness. |
| 8 Mon pèr-e, je m’accus-e, D’avoir tué chaton. | 8 Father, I accuse myself Of having killed kitty. |
| 9 Ma fille, pour pénitenc-e, Nous nous embrasserons. | 9 My daughter, for penance We will kiss. |
| 10 La pénitence est douc-e, Nous recommencerons. | 10 The penance is sweet; We’ll start over. |
- Il était = Il y avait (une fois).[↩]
- The repeated “ron” can be explained as a nonsense syllable chosen for the rhyme; however, it is also true that “ronronner” is French for “to purr.”[↩]
- Similarly, one might think “patapon” is a nonsense word; however, from the TLFi we learn that “à petit patapon” means “doucement” (softly, quietly), and may refer to the soundless way a cat tracks its prey (cf. “la patte,” paw).[↩]
- The syntax of this stanza may seem incomplete, since we never return from the relative clause to find out more about “Le chat.” However, the force of the construction is something like “Voilà le chat qui la regarde,” or even “Le chat, il la regarde” = “Le chat la regarde.”[↩]
- A telling instance of what the French partitive can do: “You will have some stick=some caning.”[↩]
- “menton” (chin) may be taken as synecdoche for the whole head of the cat; or as metonymy for the cat’s mouth. Chosen for the rhyme, of course.[↩]
- fut = a été “has been (to)” = est allée = alla.[↩]
- This suspicion of what priests actually did in the confessional was probably often heard at one time on the lips of anticlerical pères de famille. See, for example, the grumblings of Mouchette’s father in Bernanos’s Sous le soleil de Satan. (Alas, reports beginning in the later 20th century have shown that those pères de famille were not always wrong.) [↩]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
There is a hidden meaning in these lines, that even some french people are not aware today. ^_^_
In these times “mettre la patte au fromage” (stick your paw in cheese ) was… Well… you know… and the “cat” is in fact the sheperdess lover.
So she warn him, and he tried to make his way, anyway…
She killed him, and went to confess her crime. Because she was only defending herlself, she was given forgiveness.
This is a feminist song in fact ! ; )
(excuse my poor english)
Thanks for your explanation of the phrase mettre la patte au fromage. Now, I wonder if anything else in the song has an unsuspected sexual meaning…
Cette chansonnette n’a rien à voir avec les esprits tordus d’aujourd’hui LOL!
The whole song is about sex. The shepherdess have her virginity to someone (mettre la patte au fromage means to have sex and she killed the cat means that she was a virgin before). Then she goes to confess and the father takes the opportunity to have sex again with her.
It’s funny how all the old French children songs are all about sex, war or death… And we’re all still singing them to our kids!
And I am using it in a French immersion class. The parents will kill me if they knew!! And I didn’t until now – that’s amusing.
You will be wise not to let your pupils in on all the innuendoes (which I am sure you are not doing). I taught at a Catholic school, and I included all the verses, which I justified on the principle that my students needed to be informed about good old French anti-clericalism. (Of course, the whole issue is spookier nowadays, when we are better informed about clerical sexual abuse.)
My grandmother, married in Paris in 1913, Irish but welsh-born, to an Italian…… used to sing this to me when quite small.
I was taught this song in catholic primary school in the 70s
I have heard this song before, but for some reason I always heard it as “La bergère en colère battit (hit) le petit chaton”…. Probably a watering down of the song. The lyrics I heard also did not involve a priest or kissing.
I’m 71 years old first time I hear about the priest… You’re right, they probably add it, propaganda against the Catholic church.
Oy. Madame Goddard, Oceanside (NY) French teacher in 1960 had us 7th and 8th-graders sing songs every day. We stood up and we executed a gesture for every stanza.
For this one we never got to the part about confession—now I know why—but we did perfect a couple of gruesome hand movements.
On a positive note :
I have never stopped immersing myself in French. I taught languages for a little while, but most of my work was in language educational publishing—producing textbooks and all the other media used to teach languages to non-native speakers.
From early on, francophones have repeatedly told me my accent is not at all foreign-sounding. Many have assumed that I am a native speaker.
Along with many linguists, neuroscientists, and educators , I believe today that I owe this gift in large part to :
1. Hearing, speaking, and writing French for almost two years before puberty.
2. Singing and engaging in French «meta-linguistic behaviors » (purring, shielding my eyes from the sun with my hand as I looked out over my sheep, and, yes, strangling a helpless creature.
Comme c’est bizarre.
Hurray for meta-linguistic pedagogy! —I am intrigued that Mme Goddard decided the cat was killed by strangling. I would have imagined the shepherdess using a cooking tool of some sort…
There exist some German “nursery rhymes” with similar themes, where children get brutally hurt or killed JUST because they misbehaved. The rhymes are in a book called “Der Struwwelpeter”. In France, it’s known as either “Pierre l’Ebouriffé” or “Crasse-Tignasse”.
Oh, “The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb” was long one of my favorites, even before I learned German. And it’s not just Der Struwwelpeter, most of Grimm’s fairy tales were just that… grim. Disney conveniently forgot to mention that the queen’s punishment in Snow White was to dance in a pair of red-hot shoes until she dropped dead… for example.
I learned this as a girl from a younger cousin going to a French language school in New York iin the 1950’s. However, I never saw it written, and learned it as “ron, ron, ron, petit chat attend”. The version I learned did not go as far as the death of the cat, and I now wonder if I misheard or was taught a bowdlerized version.