The original tune to ‘La Faute à Voltaire’? (Kind of…) and the Bahorel connection
The internet seems to point me towards two songs as sources for Gavroche’s ‘La faute à Voltaire’. One of them (this article says that it was the earlier of the two) is by someone called Jean-François Chaponnière, and you can find the lyrics here. It does indeed have the ‘C’est la faute de Voltaire / C’est la faute de Rousseau’ refrain, but the structure of the stanzas doesn’t seem to fit very well with Hugo’s version.
The other source version is rather closer in terms of structure. It’s by Pierre-Jean de Béranger (who seems to turn up an awful lot in these posts). It has a few variants kicking about, but this appears to be the full version. (This version leaves out the verse accusing the clergy of sodomy, presumably on the grounds that it was a little too racy…)
The general background to both songs is complicated and political and so I am really not the right person to try to explain it, so the potted version, as far as I can make it out, is as follows. It is very Bahorelian. Both songs were written in 1817 in response to a ‘mandement de carême’ – the same kind of notice that Bahorel tears down in 4.2.4, L’enfant s’étonne du vieillard. (Hapgood translates it as a ‘Lenten admonition’, so given my incredible ignorance about matters ecclesiastical I’ll go with that.) The 1817 admonition, as far as I can work out, was basically a declaration that Voltaire and Rousseau were dangerously seditious authors who were pretty much single-handedly responsible for causing the Revolution. There were apparently a few book-burnings, but for the most part it seems that people reacted by writing satirical songs in which they mockingly blamed Voltaire and Rousseau for pretty much everything going, up to and including the temptation of Eve. They also brought out new editions of the authors’ works. (See here for an account in English of all this, which also includes a partial verse translation of the Béranger song.)
There is more than that, though, to link the song to Bahorel – to the extent that I would be very surprised if it were a coincidence. The last verse of the Béranger version runs as follows:
À ces causes, nos chers fils,
Dieu permet qu’on vous permette
De manger des salsifis
Et des œufs à la mouillette.
Si vous mangez bœuf ou veau,
C’est la faute de Rousseau ;
Buvez-vous de l’eau claire ?
C’est la faute de Voltaire.
For these reasons, our dear sons,
God permits that you are permitted
It is the fault of Rousseau ;
Do you drink clear water ?
It is the fault of Voltaire.
I’m not even going to try to get all the Lenten fast references out of that (salsify, seriously ?) but my point here is : permission to eat eggs. Gavroche is singing a song that is based on a song that is pretty much all about Bahorel, and this just makes their relationship even more painful better. (I should say here that many thanks are due to pilferingapples for first winning me over to the friendship between these two.)
Anyway, I promised tunes. I haven’t had any luck tracking down the tune to the Chaponnière song ; the lyrics I linked to above just says the tune is a new one by ‘M.E.’, which is not very easy to track down. The Béranger version, though, says that it should be sung to the tune of ‘Allez voir à Saint-Cloud’, and after a bit of work I managed to track down (in the ever-helpful Clé du caveau) a tune called ‘Allons la voir à Saint-Cloud’. The furthest I have been able to trace it back is to a vaudeville called ‘La girouette de Saint-Cloud’, which was first performed in Brumaire, year 8 (which I think works out to November 1799 in the Gregorian calendar). Anyway, the tune seems to fit the Béranger song, and (because it has the same metre) it works for Gavroche’s version too. Because Gavroche’s verses are shorter you only need use the second half of the tune (after the repeat) but for the sake of completeness I transcribed the whole thing.
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