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M élusine, la plus gracieuse de toutes les fées de France , traversa pour la première fois les mers sur les caravelles de Jacques Cartier. Depuis son débarquement sur nos bords , elle n’a rien perdu de son éternelle jeunesse. Elle inspirait jadis les fables et les chansons de nos ancêtres; elle continue toujours de semer sur ses pas les fleurs enchantées dont Varome tient de la verveine et de la rose blanche.

Voici qu’un de nos littérateurs a cueilli trois de ces fleurs qui forment déjà un joli bouquet — le bouquet de Mélusine.

Marius Barbeau

F O REW O RD

Over three hundred years ago, the first reference to music in Canada appears in the account of Port Royal ivritten by Marc Lescarbot , a Paris advocate, whose entertaining description of New France in those days pictures the life of an early seventeenth century garrison on the ratloer inhospitable shores of Nova Scotia. While his reference to singing parties is brief, we know the kind of song that might hâve been sung — songs popular at the court of Henry of Navarre, sea-chanteys, folksongs, particularly those of the western provinces of France which were native to most of the Port Royal garrison.

The Order of Good Cheer takes us back to the y car 1606. A century later, the year 1705 provides another landmark in the history of the "chanson populaire” in Canada, for in that year Madame de Repentigny, a social leader in New France, re-organized the hoviespun industry so as to meet the emergency causcd by British interférence with the ships carrying cargocs which included f rocks and clothing matériels from Paris. With the revival of spinning and weaving, folksongs regained new vigour, for folksong and handicraft hâve ever been closely allie d.

Y et another century and we find the "chanson populaire” referred to in almost every narrative of

those who travelled by canoë through the inter ior of Canada. T he rhythmic song of the "voyageur” carrying in haunting mélodies the lilting verse of Old France along the water ways and through the vast for ests of the New World, gave a touch of romance to the life of these hardy fellows which deeply impressed the traveller.

T hese three stages in the history of song in Canada hâve been incarnated by Louvigny de Montigny in the three ballad-operas of this little book. They were written originally to help fill the programme of the Canadian Folksong and Handicraft Festival at Quebec, but they convey so much of the atmosphère of each period, reflecting with such brilliance the life of the people that they well deserve a more permanent form. The language of each is the language of its century — which was mere child’s play for the author of "La langue française au Canada.” The dramatic character of each cornes naturally from lois peu. The ballads and songs of each type and period hâve been linked together by one steeped in the traditions of his race.

J. Murray Gibbon.

Ce sont prétextes à chansons.