Over a period of years, my grandfather, an anglophone teacher and school principal in Quebec, assembled a library of French Canadian books. This post presents an extract from one of them. This book reprint was printed cheaply on rough paper in the 1950s.
As you'll read, the melody from a simple old folk tune received new lyrics which had salience because they presented a poignant imaginary story about the human impact of recent political events. Both the traditional and 1842 versions of the lyrics are provided.
The article describes how far the 'new' composition was reported to have travelled.
