The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #62269   Message #1005629
Posted By: GUEST,Q
20-Aug-03 - 11:41 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Où vas-tu, mon petit garçon? (Acadian)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Où vas-tu, mon petit garçon? (Acadian)
English translation

Lyr. Add: WHERE ARE YOU GOING MY LITTLE BOY?

"Where are you going, my little boy?"
I'm going, you're going, we're passing.
"I'm going to school
To learn the word of God."
Thus said the child seven years old.

"What is higher than the trees?"
I'm going, you're going, we're passing.
"The sky is higher than the tree,
The sun in the firmament."
Thus said the child seven years old.

"What is deeper than the sea?"
"Hell is a hundred times deeper,
Hell with its eternal fires."

"What grows on our lands?
"Oats and golden wheat,
Chestnuts and pears.

"What will you do when you grow up?"
"I will till the fields
To feed my wife and child."

Seems to be close to the versions in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, in Child #3. Barbeau collected the song from Father P. Arsenault, curé of Mont-Carmel.
English translation and French in Edith Fowke, Folklore of Canada, 1976, pp. 72-73, with music.