The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #55977   Message #901880
Posted By: Jim Dixon
02-Mar-03 - 03:58 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Kyrie - Up in the Abbot's Chambers
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Kyrie - Up in the Abbot's Chambers
Joe: I think the English translation in the previous post may be singable, but it misses some of the humor in the original. Let me explain...

In French, it takes two words to make a negative. One part, "ne" goes before the verb and the other part goes after.

Il mange = he eats; he is eating
Il ne mange pas = he eats not; he doesn't eat; or he isn't eating

However, there are other kinds of negatives:

Il ne mange rien = he eats nothing
Il ne mange jamais = he never eats
Il ne mange que (du pain, par example) = he eats only (bread, for example)

So when you hear "ne", you know a negative is coming up, but you don't know what kind of negative until you hear what comes after the verb. This song artificially prolongs the suspense by repeating the first part of the sentence, up to the verb, and then finishes the sentence in a different way than you might expect, rather like this:

"In our abbots' chambers,
No one eats, no one eats
Anything but the best chicken..."

As for your rugby version, it gets raunchy, especially in the last verse, and even uses words that I don't know and that Babelfish won't translate. Maybe it's just as well...