Cadet Rousselle

 

Cadet Rousselle a trois maisons, 
Qui n'ont ni poutres, ni chevrons,
C'est pour loger les hirondelles

Reading a French text book a couple of days ago, I came across a word "hirondelle", "swallow". It sounded somewhat familiar and after a while it hit me that "hirondelle" was mentioned in a song that my friend used to sing at school. She was having French lessons, and I was doing English, so her singing was just a jumble of sounds for me. And now, 40 (!) years later, the words unjumbled themselves suddenly, and I was able to find the song. It is a nursery rhyme "Cadet Rousselle" and the text is rather strange, but then, nursery rhymes tend to have strange texts. Isn't it weird how memory works, though?

Here is the beginning of the song: 

Cadet Rousselle a trois maisons,

Cadet Rousselle a trois maisons,

Qui n'ont ni poutres, ni chevrons,

Qui n'ont ni poutres, ni chevrons,

C'est pour loger les hirondelles...

Cadet Rousselle has three houses,

Cadet Rousselle has three houses,

Which have neither beams nor rafters,

Which have neither beams nor rafters,

It's to house the swallows...

etc.

I figure that is a house has neither beams nor rafters, it probably means that it has no roof, either. And the figure of the Cadet comes from a rather strange statue of him they have in Auxerre.