I just found this web discussion site today… two years after the last message, and I would like to add some comments in case the first writers are still interested in the subject :

The Blanche Biche tune from the notation of Henri Davenson is probably the best known tune for the Blanche Biche all over the world, although it is not the tune chosen by Malicorne, who sing this song on another melody borrowed from a Quebec version. But Tri Yann, Guy Béart, Marc Ogeret, Jean-François Dutertre, Emmanuelle Parrenin, the Groupe Chaconne, and numerous other singers or groups sing the Blanche Biche on the tune of the wedding song «Sur le pont d'Avignon j'ai ouï chanter la belle»… you will find it all over the web, translated in many different languages. This very interesting old wedding song is called La Chanson des Oreillers.

The words that appear and are translated on this web site, published by Davenson in 1946, are copied from a posthumous book published in 1904 by Georges Doncieux, who had died the year before, so the chapter of this book concerning the melodies was written by Julien Tiersot, a great musicologist of that period. He is the one who first mentioned the Chanson des Oreillers as a tune for the Blanche Biche. This Blanche Biche sung on this tune had been collected in the Vendée Department in France around 1896 by Sylvain Trebucq, who published it.

The Blanche Biche published by Georges Doncieux and Davenson after him is what is called a «version critique», which means that the author has reconstructed a new version with different lines which he liked best taken from the then known versions : this operation results in a new version which has never been collected in the field.


Doncieux chose to discard the different lines of endings of the field versions, and finished the song somewhat abruptly. A very beautiful ending he could have added might have been this one :

«Renaud sortit dehors comme un homme bien triste
Faut n'avoir qu'une soeur et l'avoir détruite

J'en suis au désespoir, j'en ferai pénitence
Serai pendant sept ans sans mettre chemise blanche
Et coucherai sept ans sous une épine blanche»

Translation :
«Renaud went out of the house like a very sad man
—I had but one sister, and I have destroyed her…
I am in great despair and I will do penance
Seven years I will be without wearing a white shirt
And seven years I will lie under the white thorn»



There are many other beautiful versions of the Blanche Biche, but very few people know them. Some have been recorded, fore example by Roland Brou, Solange Panis, le Groupe Après-Demain in France ; Michel Faubert, Danièle Martineau, Raoul Roy, Edith Butler in Quebec.