XVII. LA CHANSON DE LA POTENCE
La maigre amoureuse au long cou Sera la dernière maîtresse De ce traîne-jambe en détresse, De ce songe-d’or sans le sou.
Cette pensée est comme un clou Qu’en sa tête enfonce l’ivresse : La maigre amoureuse au long cou Sera sa dernière maîtresse.
Elle est svelte comme un bambou ; Sur sa gorge danse une tresse, Et, d’une étranglant caresse, Le fera jouir comme un fou, La maigre amoureuse au long cou.
XVII. GALLOWS SONG
The skinny long-necked lover shall be the last mistress of this drag-leg in distress, of this penniless dream-of-gold.
This thought is like a nail drunkenness pounds into his head: the skinny long-necked lover shall be his last mistress.
She is svelte as a bamboo cane; on her neck dances a braid, and, with a strangling caress, she will make him come like mad, the skinny long-necked lover.
1 This is the fifth rondel in RM1883, where its title is simply POTENCE.
potence : A gallows, specifically one having two vertical posts and one horizontal, often wide enough for several simultaneous hangings.
2 amoureuse : At least according to the Académie, it was not until sometime between 1798 and 1835 that [amante]
3 In RM1833 this line and the next two read « Sera leur dernière maîtresse, / A ces traine-jambe en détresse, / A ces songe-d’or sans le sou. »
4 traîne-jambe : Literally, ‘drag-leg’; figuratively, presumably a metonym for a person crippled by having one leg paralyzed or otherwise useless, a “drag-leg” as used by Zorah Neale Hurston in Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934, her first novel. Her phrase appears never to have been used anywhere else, by her or others, earlier or later, within the Google/Hathi Trust corpora of published English text (searched February 5, 2020). Those corpora do contain several instances of the French expression: all but two are either in various printings of Giraud’s rondel or quotations from it. The first exception appeared in 1910 in the Belgian literary magazine Le Thyrse, in prose poetry with the joint title Pages Agrestes (viz., Rude Pages)—by D.-J. Debouck (a Walloon), reprinted in his collection Vies agrestes (contes et nouvelles). The second exception appeared in 1911 in Bulletin du dictionnaire géné- ral de la langue wallone in an article by the linguist Jean Haulst (also a Walloon): after remarking on the worthlessness of a certain folk-etymology (reported from Belgian Luxembourg) for the Walloon phrase hatch-la-pate, Haulst glosses that phrase as « traîne-jambe ». I infer that (1) traîne-jambe was rude—maybe very rude —slang among (at least) French-speaking Walloons of the generation of Debouck, Haulst, and Giraud; (2) “drag-leg” was likewise among the speakers of African- American Vernacular English in Hurston’s novel; and, further, (3) the absence of other instances in the corpora reflects (self-)censorship by other writers from those speech communities.
5 songe-d’or : Literally, either ‘dream of gold’ or ‘dream(s)-some-gold’, according as one chooses to parse songe as a singular noun or a finite verb; figuratively, if it is meant to refer to a person (which would have to be the case in the rondel), presum- ably a metonym for someone who (day-)dreams of wealth. I am unable to confirm any other instance of songe-d’or in the Google/Hathi Trust/BNF Gallica corpora with this latter meaning. (In fact, using the search tools that are publicly available I can find no other instances with the hyphen—but among several hundred instances without the hyphen, I found none that I think can reasonably be read to have the latter meaning. Changing or to argent makes no difference.) Since my presumed interpretation of the phrase hardly seems rude, I can only suggest that was not an idiom for Giraud, but rather that he actually coined it. I would welcome being proved wrong. As to why he might have been moved to do so, I have formed one hypothesis subsequent to some browsing in P. Larousse’s Dictionnaire Universel du XIXe Siècle [etc.] (Paris, 1872). In a brief history of the Théâtre des Funambules and its great star Jean-Gaspard Deburau, perhaps the most influential Pierrot of all time, Larousse noted that summarizing the [TO BE COMPLETED]
sans le sou : Having no money at all; penniless.
9 sa : Although the rondel form demands that this line duplicate the third, Giraud has changed la (the) to sa (his), though leur (their) would be consistent.
10 un bambou : A walking stick made of bamboo. Such a stick (called a ‘whangee’ in 19th century English) is more flexible than a wooden one of the same size.
13 jouir : Ejaculate (semen), in accord with the folk belief that a hanged man will ejaculate as his spinal cord breaks.
comme un fou : Literally, like a madman. Figuratively, copiously, in (unreasonable) excess.
14 In RM1833 this line ends in an exclamation point.
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