ALOUETTE

Alouette, gentille alouette, Alouette, je t'y plumerai. [bis]
Je t'y plumerai la tete, je t'y plumerai la tete.
Et la tete, et la tete [rep. as necessary]
Alouette, alouette, Oh—
[Sorry I can't manage accents on this thing] Succeeding verses substitute for "tete" various other parts of the bird: le bec, le nez, les yeux, le cou, leas ailes, le dos, les pattes, la queue; and in the repeat bar all of these are enumerated in reverse order, the music being repeated ad libitum. [The "e"s at the ends of words are mostly omitted when sung.] The song belongs to the class of "Enumeartive Songs", a British example being "The Tree Down in the Valley O" (or "Rattling Bog" etc.). It appears in print quite late: in Canada, in 1879, and in France, 14 years later, published by Julien Tersot (Revue des traditions populaires VIII, p. 586). A rather similar song is "La Randonne du Merle" (begins "Mon mere a perdu son bec"), which is in several collections (cf. William Parker Greenough, Canadian Folk-Life and Folk-Lore, N.Y., 1897, p. 144, and two versions, including another tune, collected by E.-Ez. Massicotte, in Marius Barbeau's article "Chants populaires du Canada" in Journal of American Folklore XXXII, 1919, pp. 71-2). Here the blackbird loses its head, beak, eyes, neck, etc., exactly like the lark, but the reason is not stated. This song is found (to the tune of "Bonhomme, bonhomme!") as "Le merle n'a perdut le bec" in Achille Montel and Louis Lambert, Chants populaires du Languedoc (Paris, 1880), p. 458, along with several variants (cock, ass, etc.), in a complete section of enumerative songs. another of which is a version (without tune, unfortunately) of our "Alouette", called "L'Alauseto plumado":

1) Ai plumat lou cap de l'alauseto.
— La ploumaren, l'alauseto;
La ploumaren, l'alauseto, tout de long.
2) Ai ploumat lou cap, las alos, de l'alauseto.
— La ploumaren, etc.
A French translation shows the high degree of similarity: "J'ai plume la tete de l'alouette. - Nous la plumerons, l'alouette; nous la plumerons, l'alouette, tout au long. 2) J'ai plume la tete, les ailes" - etc. At each repetition, another part is added: lou fafat, la cresto, las cambos, etc. The Tiersot version noted above is actually much closer to the Provence one quoted than the Canadian, and may represent a midway type. The 1879 printing mentioned is in "A Pocket Song Book for the Use of the Students and Graduates of McGill College" (in Montreal); and in 1885 in "The McGill College Song Book", called "an old French-Canadian song".

Hope this works.