Isabeau S'y Promène: A Song History

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"Isabeau s'y promène" is a French folk song that survives both as a song and as a dance, and Hélène Plouffe, writing in The Canadian Encyclopedia, suggests it probably began in Normandy.[1] Its story comes in two main forms: in one, a young woman's ring is lost in the water and the sailor who dives after it drowns, and in the other she weeps over her own fickle heart and the sailor comforts her.[1]

Lithograph of a woman on the shore pointing toward a ship on the sea

Célestin Nanteuil, Woman by the Sea with the Madonna, Pointing to a Ship, lithograph, about 1848–62. A woman at the shore pointing to a ship, shown for the sailor in the song; it has no connection to the song.

Sources differ on the date of its earliest printing: The Canadian Encyclopedia credits Ernest Gagnon's Chansons populaires du Canada (Quebec, 1865) with the best-known sung form, while the Traditional Ballad Index gives 1880 as its earliest date, citing the same collection.[1][2][3] Gagnon noted that in Champagne it was sung to a different tune with a similar rhythm, and Marius Barbeau collected the dance form in Charlevoix County, Quebec, in 1916 and published it in Alouette in 1946.[1] The Ballad Index lists a New Brunswick version from a collection that reports the song in France, Quebec and Louisiana, along with a text in Edith Fowke and Richard Johnston's Folk Songs of Quebec (1957).[2] Michael Doucet included it as "Isabeau se promène" on his 1989 Arhoolie album Beau Solo; according to the album's notes, a young Lula Landry overheard it at a country wedding and remembered every word after that single hearing.[4]

Early discs include a New York Columbia recording by the baritone Joseph Saucier, made sometime between 1904 and 1908, and a 1906 Victor side by the tenor Édouard Le Bel with piano, in an arrangement by Achille Fortier.[5][6] Healey Willan arranged the melody for violin and piano in 1929, and Violet Archer, Hector Gratton and Keith Bissell each wrote variations on it.[1] Janene Millen and Shawn McCurdy arrange it in DAD tuning in From Ditties To Dirges, a mountain dulcimer book of ballads, lullabies, sea shanties, laments and courting songs, most from the British Isles, with tab, standard notation, chord names, song sheets and historical notes.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Isabeau S'y Promène"

Sources

  1. The Canadian Encyclopedia: "Isabeau s'y promène".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Isabeau S'y Promene (Isabel)".
  3. Canadiana: Ernest Gagnon, "Chansons populaires du Canada" (1865).
  4. Smithsonian Folkways: "Beau Solo" liner notes (Arhoolie CD-321).
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix 1949. Isabeau s'y promène / Joseph Saucier".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix B-3992. Isabeau s'y promène / Edouard Le Bel".
  7. Janene Millen And Shawn McCurdy: "From Ditties To Dirges".
  8. Image: Célestin Nanteuil, Woman by the Sea with the Madonna, Pointing to a Ship, lithograph, about 1848–62. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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