And you thought Oh Canada was gory
It’s Bastille Day in France. Have a great one!
And so to commemorate… a hastily done (and therefore very shabby; a thousand and one pardons) translation of the national anthem, La Marseillaise.
The original version was composed on April 24-25, 1792 by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, and first played on a clavichord at 10 o’clock on the morning of the 25th, in the home of the Baron de Dietrich (who was guillotined on December 28th of the following year. We’ll pass on the facile irony there.)
By August the whole country was singing it.
First entitled ‘Military hymn dedicated to the Maréchal de Luckner,’ the Parisians rebaptised it La Marseillaise as a troop of 500 volunteers from guess where bellowed it proudly as they entered the City of Lights to come help battle the Germans.
The original order of the verses has now been switched around, and a number of them no longer sung.
So, allons enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé… Please feel free to hum along and, of course, to lop off the heads of any well-dressed Barbie dolls you may have lying around if it will help put you in the spirit of things.
La Marseillaise
Arise children of the motherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us the bloody standard
Of tyranny has now been raised.
Can you hear out there in the country
How the feral soldiers howl?
Drawing near and into our arms
Slit the throats of our sons and companions.
(Everybody!)
Take arms citizens
And form your battalions
Let us march, march
And impure blood
Flow in our furrows.
Oh sacred love of the motherland
Ahead, to support our avenging arms
Liberty, cherished liberty
Fight alongside your defenders
Under our flags, let victory
Enter to your manly cries
So that your dying enemies
See your triumph and our glory!
We shall go into the trenches
Where our elders no longer fight
And there we shall find their ashes
The remains of their virtue.
Not in the hope of survival
Not afraid to lay in their tombs
We will have the glorious honour
To avenge or follow them down.
(among the now rarely sung…)
Would you have these foreign cohorts
Laying down the laws in our homes?
Would you have these mercenary hands
Cut down our proud warrior sons?
Good Lord! And we with shackled hands
Our brows yielding under the yoke
As vile despots then become
The masters of our destiny.
Fear us tyrants! And all you traitors
Casting shame on noble men.
Fear! For your parricidal plots
Will receive their just reward.
We are soldiers all, against you
And should our young heroes fall
Mother France will us bear new ones
Ready to take up arms to oppose.
Frenchmen, be magnanimous warriors
Choose to aim or withhold your blows
Spare these pathetic victims
That they regret having sought to fight
But not these bloody despots
These accomplices of Bouillé
All these tigers who without pity
Tear at their mother’s bosom.
Can’t you just taste it?
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