Pat-A Pan: A Song History
"Pat-a-Pan" began as a French Christmas carol by Bernard de La Monnoye, a poet and scholar born in Dijon in 1641 who won election to the Académie française in 1713 and died in 1728.[1] Its original title is "Guillô, pran ton tamborin," and it is the best known of the 29 carols La Monnoye wrote in the Burgundian dialect and put out under the invented name Gui Barôzai.[2] According to the Académie française, these Burgundian noëls, issued with a glossary of dialect words, were a great success as soon as they appeared.[1] A Dijon printing of the collection dated 1720, now in the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, gives the carol with its music.[2]
Charles Melchior Descourtis, Le Tambourin, color aquatint, etching and engraving, 1788–94. A French pipe-and-tabor player, shown for the carol's drum and fife; it has no connection to the carol.
In the twentieth century the carol found a place in English-language choral books: Hymnary.org indexes it as "Patapan" in The Oxford Book of Carols (1928), under the title "Willie, Take Your Drum" in a 1939 collection for male voices, and again in Carols for Choirs 2 (1970).[3] Steve Eulberg sets it in DAC tuning in Dulcimer-Friendly Worship, Vol. 3: Christmas In A Mellow Mode, a 76-page Fingers Of Steel gathering of 32 minor-mode Christmas tunes that pairs standard notation and mountain dulcimer tablature with chord shapes for portable hammered dulcimer.[4]
Sources
- Académie française: "Bernard de La Monnoye".
- Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto: "Christmas Carols".
- Hymnary.org: "Willie, take your little drum".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Steve Eulberg, Dulcimer-Friendly Worship, Vol. 3: Christmas In A Mellow Mode".
- Image: Charles Melchior Descourtis, Le Tambourin, color aquatint, etching and engraving, 1788–94. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.