Friday, April 22, 2016

Proud-pied April: Pomme qu'y n'échelle

We last saw poems from Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames a couple of years ago, so we’re due for more.

If you’ll recall, these are definitely meant to be read aloud, by a Francophone, but not one who’s a language Nazi. What I love about them is that you have to completely disengage your preconceptions about order and sense, and concentrate on the sounds.

Then you read the footnotes and just crack up. I do love footnotes.

As with our previous outing, I have included a more usual translation of the rhymes at the bottom of the post, in invisible writing. If you need to ch, uh, look, run your mouse over the area to highlight.

Pis-terre, pis-terre
Pomme qui n'y terre1
Ah! de ouilles2 fenil3 coup ne qu'y perd4
Il peut terrine et pomme qu'y n'échelle5
Iéna équipe soeur verrou elle.6

1.  Woe to the earth left to lie fallow. It is not quite clear whether a lack of apples or potatoes is meant.
2.  Ouiller (verb). The practice of filling a half empty wine barrel with wine of the same vintage up to capacity. Air tends to sour wine.
3.  Fenil. A hay press or baler.
4.  Nothing must be wasted?
5.  Terrine refers, of course, to the earthenware cooking pots of French farm kitchens, and apples that need no ladders are, we suppose, windfalls. These must be gathered and made into conserves.
6.  Iéna, town in Thuringia, Germany, pop., 70,000. Famous for its manufacture of optical and precision instruments. Also Napoleon I's victory against the Prussians in 1806. In the balance of the line, "to equip a sister with a bolt (or latch)," the poet refers to the use of chastity belts, in this case of German silver. In bold, broad strokes we have here a magnificent portrait of the thrifty, cautious French farmer.

Reine, reine,
gueux éveille.
Gomme à gaine,
en horreur, taie.1

1.  "Queen, Queen, arouse the rabble
Who use their girdles, horrors, as pillow slips."

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her.
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well.


Rain, rain, go away.
Come again some other day.





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