The French Canadians have a natural love for poetry and music. Indeed it is a French Canadian by birth and early education--Madame Albani--who { 451} not long ago won a high distinction on the operatic stage. No writer of this nationality, however, has yet produced an opera or a drama which has won fame for its author. The priesthood, indeed, has been a persistent enemy of the theatre, which consequently has never attained a successful foothold in French Canada. Sacred music, so essential a feature of a Roman Catholic service, has been always cultivated with success.
The _chansons populaires_, which have been so long in vogue among the people of all classes in the province of Quebec are the same in spirit, and very frequently in words, as those which their ancestors brought over with them from Brittany, Normandy, Saintonge, and Franche-Comté. Some have been adapted to Canadian scenery and associations, but most of them are essentially European in allusion and spirit. The Canadian lumberer among the pines of the Ottawa and its tributaries, the _Métis_ or half-breeds of what was once the great Lone Land, still sing snatches of the songs which the _coureurs de bois_, who followed Duluth and other French explorers, were wont to sing as they paddled over the rivers of the West or camped beneath the pines and the maples of the great forests. It is impossible to set the words of all of them to the music of the drawing-room, where they seem tame and meaningless; but when they mingle with "the solemn sough of the forest," or with the roar of rushing waters, the air seems imbued with the spirit of the surroundings. It has been well observed by M. Gagnon, a French Canadian, that "many of them have no beauty { 452} except on the lips of the peasantry." There is "something sad and soft in the voices that imparts a peculiar charm to these monotonous airs, in which their whole existence seems to be reflected."
I give below the most popular and poetical of all the Canadian ballads, and at the same time a translation by a Canadian writer:[2]
À la claire fontaine Down to the crystal streamlet M'en allant promener, I strayed at close of day; J'ai trouvé l'eau si belle Into its limpid waters Que je m'y suis baigne. I plunged without delay. Lui ya longtemps que je t'aime, I 've loved thee long and dearly, Jamais je ne t'oublierai. I 'll love thee, sweet, for aye.