Creole Sketches/A Creole Song
A CREOLE SONG[1]
The following has been brought to us by a charming lady, herself a Creole, who tells us that it was a popular song in Louisiana at the beginning of this century:
Moin pas conné qui quichose
Qui appé tourmente moin là;
Moin pas conné qui la cause,
Cœur a moin brulé comme çà.
Ah Die! Qui tourment, qui peine,
Dipis longtemps quimbé moi;
C'est tourment la passé chaine,
Plutôt moin mouri yonné fois.
Toi conné qui belle rigole
Qui coulé dans bananiers.
Où toi té sé fé la folle
La foi qui toi té baigné.
D'leau la pas coulé encore—
Des fois il 'rète tout court—
Li semble regrette encore
Li pas baigné toi toujours.
Here is a free translation:
I do not know what it is which torments me thus.
I cannot tell what it is that makes my heart beat so.
O God! what torture! what pains I have suffered so long!
It is worse than the pain of fetters; I had rather die at once.
Do you remember the pretty little brook that ran through the banana-trees—
Where you used to have such fun, when you used to bathe?
That water has ceased to run;—
Since the time it stopped all at once—
It seems to me it died of regret
That its wavelets could not embrace you forever.
This translation, as we have already observed, is very free, but contains the spirit of the little song. We shall be very grateful to any of our readers who will bring us some more of these curiosities.
- ↑ Item, July 26, 1880.