Music Of The Waters - online book

Share page



	Music of the Waters. ■ 141

	like many other nations, is to be congratulated on the superiority of its masters. My province, however, lies neither with the character of the men nor of their masters ; but simply with their songs, and lively and song-like as France and the French appear to be, there is but little to chronicle with regard to their sailors' or fishermen's repertoire. Monsieur Paul Sebillot tells me that out of five hundred songs he has collected from the peasants and people generally of Bretagne, he has rarely come across any at all pertaining to the sea. Indeed only some five or six may lay claim to the title. Bretagne is naturally the coast par excellence of France for seamen, and I naturally turned there first for specimens of the sea-songs of the country. I give those I have been able to obtain. In Provence I have fared a little better, though nothing like to the extent I had hoped to do. The first is a specimen of the old Corsaire-song of the last century :—