À Saint-Malo, Beau Port de Mer (At Saint Malo Beside the Sea)

DESCRIPTION: French: Three ships are at anchor at St. Malo. Three women come to buy grain. They ask the merchant what his prices are. He asks for more than they can pay. They say so; he says he will give the grain away if he can't sell it that day. The women approve
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1946
KEYWORDS: bargaining commerce foreignlanguage
FOUND IN: Canada(Que)
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Fowke/Johnston-FolkSongsOfCanada, pp. 16-17, "À Saint-Malo, Beau Port de Mer (At Saint Malo Beside the Sea)" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fowke/Mills/Blume-CanadasStoryInSong, pp. 14-15 "À St. Malo, beau port de mer" (1 text, 1 tune)
JournalOfAmericanFolklore, Loraine Wyman, "Songs from Percé," Volume 33, Number 130 (Oct.-Dec., 1920), p. 33, "Saint-Malo" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Edith Fowke and Richard Johnston, _Folk Songs of Quebec (Chansons de Quebec)_, Waterloo Music Company, 1957, pp. 70-71, "À Saint-Malo, Beau Port de Mer (At St. Malo Beside the Sea)" (1 French text plus English translation, 1 tune)
Augustin Jal, _Scènes de la vie maritime_, volume 3, Charles Gosselin, 1832, p. 203, "(no title)" (1 partial text, a version that mentions La Rochelle, not Saint-Malo, and has an altogether different refrain, but similar verses. Incomplete lyrics only, with a hint (as I interpret it) that the omitted ending is bawdy - JD)
(No author listed), _Recueil de chansons canadiennes et françaises_, John Lovell, 2859, p. 72 "A Saint Malo" (1 text, the familiar clean version of the Saint Malo lyrics)
Champfleury, _Chansons populaires des provinces de France_, John Lovell, 1859, page 72, "A Nant’s, A Nant’s Est Arrivé" (1 text, 1 tune; in this version, the port is Nantes)
Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Ferland et al, eds, _Le Foyer canadien: recueil litteraire et historique_, volume 3, Bureaux du "Foyer canadien," 1863, p. 338, "À Saint-Malo, Beau Port de Mer" (3 excerpts, from 3 different texts, each of 2 verses followed by a summary of the remainder. The first 2 are implied to be from France, not Canada, and the port is Nantes, not Saint-Malo, but there are clear parallels to the Saint-Malo version. At the end, the editor explicitly states that the French versions are bawdy, but doesn't explain further. The third version, which he labels as Canadian, seems to be the familiar clean Saint-Malo version.
(No author listed), _Nouvelle lyre canadienne: recueil de chansons canadiennes et françaises_, C. O. Beauchemin & Fils, 1896, page 90, "A Saint-Malo" (1 text)
George Doncieux, _Le romancéro populaire de la France: choix de chansons populaires françaises_, Emile Bouillon, 1904, "(Text Critique)" (1 text, with many variations in the notes; the town in the main text is Bordeaux, but many others are mentioned in the notes)
NOTES [62 words]: Fowke report that St. Malo was the home port of Jacques Cartier, the French explorer who in 1534 named the St. Lawrence river. For this reason, the very name of the port evokes Quebec's history and patriotism.
The town itself is in Brittany, on the coast not far from the border with Normandy, and was often used as a privateering base for raids on Britain and the like. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.0
File: FJ016

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