Share page | Visit Us On FB |
CANADIAN BOAT SONGS. |
||
|
||
Almost as celebrated as the sailors' songs of England, and the gondoliers' of Venice, are the boat-songs of the old Canadian voyageurs. The hymns to their patron saint, Saint Anne, that are so popular with the Breton fishermen of to-day, all owe their origin to the French-Canadian pilgrims of the olden time. The very word " Chanty" I have so often made use of in this book, is the name originally applied to these boat-songs of Canada, derived, of course, from the verb "chanter" (to sing). |
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
This quaint old tune is one of the oldest known boat-songs in Canada.
Moore's " Boat Glee " in " M.P., or The Blue-Stocking," is, I believe, supposed to be a translation of one of the Canadian voyageurs' songs :—
" The song that lightens the languid way When brows are glowing, And faint with rowing, Is like the spell of Hope's airy lay, To whose sound through life we stray. |
||
|
||