Alouette is NOT a Mean Song… REALLY!
Most people think the French Canadian song, “Alouette” is very mean, once they learn what it means in English. It sounds like it’s about someone taunting a bird… “Lark, nice lark… I’ll pluck out your feathers… I’ll pluck your eyes.. I’ll pluck your wings…” It sounds really cruel.
I asked Monique Palomares in France about it. She wrote back, “‘Alouette, gentille alouette’ is not a song about mean people who want to cruelly pluck a lark alive. Larks were and are considered as game, so people would FIRST kill them, then pluck them, then cook them and at last eat them.”
We don’t eat larks in the US, so most Americans at least, think the song is mean. Now we see it’s really not! It’s as if we bought a chicken or a turkey from a farm and had to pluck the feathers out ourselves. While doing the chore we might have sung a song like “Alouette”… at least in the olden days we may have.
Here are the lyrics to the song in French with an English translation. Consider them with that in mind…
Refrain
Alouette, gentille alouette,
Alouette, je te plumerai.Je te plumerai le bec,
Je te plumerai le bec,
Et le bec, et le bec,
Alouette, Alouette !
Ah ! ah ! ah ! ah !(refrain)
Je te plumerai les yeux,
Je te plumerai les yeux,
Et les yeux, et les yeux,
Et le bec, et le bec,
Alouette, Alouette !
Ah ! ah ! ah ! ah !(refrain)
Je te plumerai la tête,
Je te plumerai la tête
Et la tête, et la tête
Et les yeux, et les yeux,
Et le bec, et le bec,
Alouette, Alouette !
Ah ! ah ! ah ! ah !Je te plumerai le cou…
Je te plumerai le dos…
…les ailes… le ventre…
…les pattes… la queue…
Translation
Chorus
Lark, nice lark
Lark, I’ll pluck you.I’ll pluck your bill
I’ll pluck your bill
And your bill, and your bill
Lark, lark. Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!(Chorus)
I’ll pluck your eyes
I’ll pluck your eyes
And your eyes, and your eyes
And your bill, and your bill
Lark, lark. Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!(Chorus)
I’ll pluck your head
I’ll pluck your head
And your head, and your head,
And your eyes, and your eyes
And your bill, and your bill
Lark, lark. Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!(Chorus)
I’ll pluck your neck…
I’ll pluck your back…
I’ll pluck your wings… your belly…
… your legs… your tail…
You can hear Alouette, gentile alouette on Mama Lisa’s World Canada page.
Monique wrote, “This reference to larks being cooked and eaten can also be found in the circle game song ‘Bonjour Guillaume’. It’s a circle game song that goes…”
Bonjour Guillaume, as-tu bien déjeuné?
Oh oui madame, j’ai mange du pâté,
Du pâté d’alouette
Guillaume et Guillaumette,
Chacun s’embrassera,
Guillaume restera.Which translates literally as:
Good morning, William, did you have a good breakfast?
Oh, yes, madam, I had some pâté,
Lark pâté, William and Wilma
Everyone hugs one another
William will stay.
You can hear Bonjour Guillaume on Mama Lisa’s World France page. There you’ll also find the instructions for this circle game.
I found reference to eating lark in an old American cook book! Yet we have no memory of cooking or eating larks! So it must have been a long time ago.
Thanks to Monique for explaining about the meaning of the song “Alouette”.
Mama Lisa
NOTE from October 2010: I’ve been reading Gulliver’s Travels by the Irish writer Jonathan Swift (published in 1726). There’s mention in the book of eating larks. Larks seem to have been eaten in the United Kingdom and Ireland in the past too.
This article was posted on Tuesday, October 12th, 2010 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Alouette, Canada, Canadian Children's Songs, Children's Songs, Countries & Cultures, English, France, French, French Kids Songs, Languages, Mama Lisa, United Kingdom, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
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March 16th, 2012 at 4:07 am
I think this is a horrible song…There’s nothing benign about chanting that one is going to “pluck” a bird’s eyes, his head, his wings, his bill, his neck…It’s a cruel,
violent song, and shocking that one would want to teach this to a child. Okay, one may kill a bird out of necessity to eat; but it’s barbaric to gloat about “plucking” each bodily part. And it certainly doesn’t promote the idea of kindness to animals. I would NEVER have taught my child this song. I think it’s shocking and inhumane.
March 17th, 2012 at 7:56 pm
I think you have to consider the song in context, which means considering how it must have been when people killed, plucked and prepared lark to eat.
Unless one’s diet consists of plants only, thinking about killing a bird, goat, cow or any other animal that will be then butchered, cooked and eaten doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
March 18th, 2012 at 10:55 am
I agree with Victoria… in those days it may have been a way to make the chore of cleaning the bird less unpleasant. They didn’t buy their birds perfectly plucked and packaged at the supermarket.
March 20th, 2012 at 11:08 pm
Lipstick on a pig time. It doesn’t matter how you dress it up, it’s still a grisly jingle. The attempt to rationalize it is just silly.
March 21st, 2012 at 8:22 am
From the point of view of someone in the olden days, it’s how they prepared their food. It would be like cleaning and stuffing a turkey. The person singing the song isn’t performing those actions out of meanness.
March 29th, 2012 at 8:31 am
OMG, what an awful song regardless of what it’s for or what time it’s from
March 29th, 2012 at 8:38 am
There is a ton of nasty cr*p these folks had to do like pooping in a thunder pot but they didn’t sing about it …… There is nothing happy about taking the life of something and mutilating it !
March 30th, 2012 at 1:19 am
I heard the song on the target commercial and I search it because I liked how it sounds, now I know what it means… horrible song. Now I will hate the commercial. Even thou we eat chicken I dont think we should make a proud song on how we kill it and pluck every single part of the poor thing. I hate this song.
March 31st, 2012 at 1:15 am
This is actually a great song to teach to children. It’s important that they know where real food comes from. Plucking a lark or any other bird isnt mutilating it, that’s a ludicrous statement. Preparing food is a great, ages old tradition. Nothing could be more wholesome.
April 1st, 2012 at 9:56 pm
It’s a childrens song, but to teach french, by naming all the different parts of the body in french. Plucking birds & chickens in the old days was a child’s work.
April 17th, 2012 at 10:32 pm
I agree with rasta and ben, everyone else needs to grow up
April 18th, 2012 at 1:31 pm
Yeah Rasta, finally someone with some sense. I can’t believe some are worried about the cruelty of this song. How about all the violent video games…same outrage?
When we sang this as a child in the 60’s, we only knew it in French as a cheery fun melody to sing and I do remember learning the french words for the body parts, but do not recall knowing this song as a mean, ugly, vicious or cruel song.
This song was taught as whimsical not so literal and we really didn’t think of killing a bird, just pulling out a feather.
June 11th, 2012 at 8:42 pm
I agree with Rasta. What is cruel about cleaning poultry? I am a cook, and I am insulted by Kate. I clean so many different animals, whether I am cutting off feet, heads, fat, or removing offal it is all the same. How does cleaning game promote cruelty towards animals? I have been singing this song -I am from Quebec, Canada- since my early youth, and to this day I have never, or have ever heard of anyone else, plucking out a lark’s eyes! Who eats lark anyways? You vegetarians don’t even know what meat omnivores consume. Take a history course, and you will see we evolved into Cro Magnon because of an increase in protein intake!
September 5th, 2012 at 10:32 am
Just to add another perspective – check out this podcast & article from NPR about feathers and plucking birds for scientific purposes.
November 9th, 2012 at 4:59 am
This song makes me hungry for foul! I have indeed gone bird hunting and dressed my own for cooking. Can’t wait to teach my kids this song.
April 7th, 2013 at 1:20 pm
Unless you’re vegetarian, you can’t really complain about this song. The way birds are de-feathered in factory farms is absolutely horrific. Chicken is only as cheap as it is because the birds are run through assembly lines like “products”. There is no real regulation protecting birds from mistakes. There’s certainly no time for singing songs that acknowledge the fact that the object being butchered is a gentile animal.
June 11th, 2013 at 8:14 pm
Learning about the true meaning about this song and all of your opinions it got me thinking ‘Its just a song..’ I have never plucked any of my food so Im on the inexperience side and when I first learned the english version of the song I absolutely was appalled by it I thought it didn’t need to describe plucking the body parts…But then reading other blogs about the true meaning of ‘Alouette’ I took consideration because Think about the chickens or Cows most kids don’t understand that we pluck the chickens or Kill the Cows and skin them and not just wrapped in plastic ready to fry and eat
September 24th, 2013 at 12:20 pm
Very true Key!
October 14th, 2013 at 12:59 am
Looking at the era and circumstance that created this song makes its understanding simple, its a fallacious approach to look at a work of time and literature with an ethical eye. It doesn’t matter if you believe in animal rights or if you feel it describes cruelty, what really matters is what it truly postulates; How larks were prepared from scratch into a dish very much like the metaphor of “the song of sixpence”. Since technology and the industrial revolution has pampered most people up to this generation, only few know what its like to take even a Turkey, kill it, pluck its feathers, separate its edibles and cook a dish the “old-fashioned” way. Only those who see from this point or who at least have been through this can appreciate or understand this literary work of time.
August 1st, 2014 at 7:39 am
My lovely old french teacher taught this tour class. We all enjoyed learning some body part names in french. None of us found it grusome. It was just fun.
August 15th, 2014 at 6:20 pm
I suspect the origins of this song began during the French Revolution as the nobility were being guillotined (executed). Alouette rhymes with (Mary) Antoinette. The song could easily be about plucking human heads off. The initial part of the song was probably sung as a taunt by the public who were reducing the condemned from humans to objects/animals in their minds, to ease the execution process. I doubt that the song was sung in a feminine or child-like way. More likely it was sung in a masculine way.
August 15th, 2014 at 10:14 pm
The two most popular songs from the Revolution (“Ah, ça ira” and “La carmagnole”) that were widely popular are still known nowadays. If “Alouette, gentille alouette” had been among them, it wouldn’t have been forgotten as being a Revolutionary song. French people think of it as being Canadian. The song as we know it now was first published in “A Pocket Song Book for the Use of Students and Graduates of McGill College” (Montreal, 1879). However, there is an old song by Frenchman Nicolas Millot that was published in 1578 (211 years before the French Revolution) and no doubt “Alouette, gentille alouette” originates in that song. You can read it with an English translation in this document by Frank Dobbins (professor at Montreal University).
Even if alouette rhymes with Marie-Antoinette, the people of Paris didn’t call her “Marie-Antoinette”, they called her “l’Autrichienne” because she was Austrian (and much hated) or “Madame Déficit” because she was considered a spendthrift while the State had no money or “Madame Véto” because the king could veto any decision voted by the Legislative Assembly.
From the document by Frank Dobbins of Montreal University mentioned above:
“Here is the whole poem by Nicolas Millot as displayed in ‘Le Roy and Ballard’ collection in 1578:”
J’ay l’alouette
J’ay l’alouette qui volette, Je la plumeray.
Nous luy plumerons le pied. Haut le pied!
J’ay l’alouette qui volette, Je la plumeray.
Nous luy plumerons la jambe. Haut la jambe! Haut le pied!
J’ay l’alouette qui volette, Je la plumeray.
Nous luy plumerons le dos. Haut le dos! Haut la jambe! Haut le pied!
J’ay l’alouette qui volette, Je la plumeray.
Nous luy plumerons les ailles. Haut les ailles Haut le pied!
Nous luy plumerons la teste. Haut la teste! Haut le dos! Haut la jambe! Haut le pied!
J’ay l’alouette qui volette, Je la plumeray.
Metrical English translation by Frank Dobbins:
I have the lark that is fluttering, I’ll pluck her feathers.
We will [then] pluck off her foot. Out her foot!
I have the lark that is fluttering, I’ll pluck her feathers.
We will [then] pluck off her leg. Out her leg! Out her foot!
I have the lark that is fluttering, I’ll pluck her feathers.
We will then pluck off her back. Out her back! Out her leg! Out her foot!
I have the lark that is fluttering, I’ll pluck her feathers.
We will then pluck off her wings. Out her wings! Out her foot!
We will then pluck off her head. Out her head! Out her back! Out her leg! Out her foot!
I have the lark that is fluttering, I’ll pluck her feathers.
November 18th, 2014 at 4:48 pm
This song is actually sung by the French Canadian trappers to keep rhythm with each other while they were rowing their canoes on the water.
September 27th, 2015 at 11:09 pm
why would ya wanna eat a puny little bird like a lark don’t they have kfc in french land
November 6th, 2015 at 6:37 pm
My mother used to sing this to me. I sang it to my kids, who all grew up to be fine people in spite of it. Did you see the movie Gigi? In it she learns to eat Ortolans, a type of bunting. Other cultures eat pigeons, especially squab, the young of pigeons. My dad raised them for a while. They were delicious! And I am sure there are many more birds which are eaten around the world. So to all of you who can’t bear to look at where our food comes from, and who find this song offensive, maybe you should just become vegetarians. And don’t sing the song if it upsets you. See? It’s so simple!
November 22nd, 2015 at 7:28 pm
My gosh, After I read the song I was laughing so hard! Really!? “I’ll pluck your neck”?! HILARIOUS!
Its cruel and all yeah yeah but I had a good laugh and I could NOT stop! LOL!
February 13th, 2016 at 1:51 pm
This is a song made up to teach children to speak and learn body parts. like any other children’s song it’s intentions are to teach and entertain children. This is just a process after you hunt your pray. Chickens, pork, beef and seafood are not bade they are born raised and slaughtered for everyone’s consumption. We have been so removed from the process of this that any reference to it has become evil.
PS. For all you vegetarians it has been proved that plants feel when we cut them down so you are no better than anyone else. We just can’t hear the broccoli screaming.
Everyone grow up and stop whining about everyone else and make sure you are acting appropriate before we condemn someone else.
March 12th, 2016 at 5:02 pm
Big deal. Why are people offended by this song? I guess singing London bridge is falling down is also terrible (promotes terrorism or whatever) Seriously people its a SONG. I’ve been singing it since I was a child and it did not turn me into some maniac lark killing machine.
Get a grip and go after those nut cases who actually harm animals for pleasure – not some children song!
May 4th, 2016 at 8:37 pm
London bridges is about the plague and has nothing to do with terrorism.
June 1st, 2016 at 4:21 pm
This may have become a “childrens” song, but it did not start out that way.
Although the great folklorist Marius Barbeau suspected the song may have had origins in France,
there is absolutely no record of its existence before it was published in a McGill College songbook in 1879. It became very popular in Canada soon after, even being sung at baseball games. It was picked up by “doughboys” in WWI and disseminated widely, being sung as a light-hearted song to ease the misery of war.
I sing this song with my group Les Fils du Voyageur, which specializes in folk music of French Canada, and I have done extensive research on our repertoire.
http://www.heartistry.com/download_canot_decorce.html
For all of those who think it is grisly and disgusting – you are so far removed from the reality of daily existence in the 19th century and before! Larks and most other birds were food, and one doesn’t eat birds without removing the feathers. They are, of course, killed first, not plucked alive. Go visit an organic farm and help them process chickens sometime. This is reality.
June 30th, 2016 at 1:54 am
When you eat ortolans (which is actually forbidden, even in France) you cover your face with your napkin to hide from God. Furthermore, you don’t pluck them – they’re far too small.
July 6th, 2016 at 2:56 pm
You do pluck them! What you don’t do is gut them.
July 24th, 2016 at 4:45 am
This song has been in my mother’s family for generations. It was created to teach the steps of killing, plucking, and preparing game birds for meal time. The song is sung in the exact steps one goes through to prepare dinner. I know I have always learned everything by song much faster and easier than by wrote. It was because of “horrible” songs like these that you are all here to complaine about them in the first place! Get off your high and mighty horse, use the brain you were born with and consider history. There was no cookbook handy, most people neither read nor wrote, no internet to search on, the nearest neighbor was probably five or more miles away, and a lone cook has to have some method to remember how to cook and clean game in the proper order. The song provides the steps. Think about the way to remember algebra, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. What are we excusing her for, what did she do wrong? No one has now, nor ever has had any modicum of an iota, and no one cares. This is how this song should be considered. Who cares?! No one! It was just a way to remember something important.
October 8th, 2016 at 12:11 am
London bridges falling down is not about the plauge, you are thinking of ring around the rosie.
March 29th, 2017 at 2:21 pm
Definitely going to be finding another song to teach the students body parts!~ While it has a catchy jingle, the meaning and singing as we pluck a birds head, eyes, feathers is Cruel.
April 9th, 2017 at 2:04 am
Y’all trippin, this song bangs!!
May 30th, 2017 at 9:00 am
I remember learning this song in Primary along with a few others. Now my 5yr old’s Primary teacher (who is a qualified French teacher) is teaching him French in class. So I taught him this song at the weekend so he caught tell his teacher. Whether this song is cruel or not doesn’t bother me as I explained to my son’s (teaching my 8yr old too) that this is what happened years ago. Personally I think its excellent as ur learning body parts.
June 13th, 2017 at 6:28 pm
I think it’s a lame song that has served its purpose and should be put to sleep. But it will continue to be endearing to all those who wish it to live on. And that’s your choice! So do your own thing, and stop worrying about what other people think. Why is there so much arguing on here? I mean, I like some controversial songs too, and I don’t go around making people have to listen to my choice of music. Pow!
July 28th, 2017 at 6:44 pm
I am a Vegetarian, but have no problem with people killing animals to provide food on the table. When I was a child growing up in the Mid-60’s I vividly remember my Grandmother, my mom, and my aunts killing live chickens, then plucking the feathers, cleaning them and preparing them for cooking. This still goes on in most of the world as not everyone buys their poultry or meat already prepared. My family sang songs while doing this. While at first the translation seemed gruesome, considering the context, it makes perfect sense. No problem with this vegetarian here. I still help my family grill their hamburger meat during picnics! :D
September 19th, 2017 at 3:09 am
Keep in mind that there’s a lullaby that says “down will come baby, cradle and all” to describe a baby falling out of a tree. Also, I was taught “I’m being swallowed by a boa constrictor” to learn body parts from the toes up.
January 28th, 2018 at 12:24 am
Oh my goodness! I learned this song in first grade music class in 1959. I was born and raised on a farm so I know all about plucking feathers ( if you wanted to eat ) but it’s just a damn song! The people complaining about it are ridiculous. I can’t believe that anyone would misconstrue this song. Those people have been way to sheltered and if they have such strong feelings for this song then they’re going to have a problem with life experiences. Not everything comes wrapped up in a nice neat package. Thank goodness if my kids were left to their own devices out in the wild they would have life skills that would sustain them. I have to laugh at how foolish most of these posts are. I like the one about Rockabye Baby ..yep that cradle is going to crash to the floor probably kill that baby yet no one is saying anything about that..why..because it’s taking everything to damn literal. That’s what’s wrong in the world today..you can’t joke around anymore about anything because people have been so brainwashed that they don’t know how to laugh, joke around or have fun. So lighten up buttercup life is like a breeze….
February 27th, 2018 at 8:45 pm
People who grew up in the country are more likely to understand this song. Although they don’t sing about the process of killing and preparing and eating their food, they quite often complete the process! They hunt game and fish to supplement their income or maybe just avoid eating the meat of animals that have been raised in sometimes cruel conditions of captivity and pumped full of growth hormones and other nasty supplements. Those who are shocked by this never give a thought to the fact that the meat they eat did not sprout out already grown, slaughtered, prepared and neatly packaged in nice, even rows in the supermarket coolers. More to the point, this song is a French folk song, hundreds of years old, sung by hard-working people to make the work-day a littler easier. I can live with that!
April 27th, 2018 at 3:02 am
Oh my goodness! I learned this song in first grade music class in 1959. I was born and raised on a farm so I know all about plucking feathers ( if you wanted to eat ) but it’s just a damn song! The people complaining about it are ridiculous. I can’t believe that anyone would misconstrue this song. Those people have been way to sheltered and if they have such strong feelings for this song then they’re going to have a problem with life experiences. Not everything comes wrapped up in a nice neat package. Thank goodness if my kids were left to their own devices out in the wild they would have life skills that would sustain them. I have to laugh at how foolish most of these posts are. I like the one about Rockabye Baby ..yep that cradle is going to crash to the floor probably kill that baby yet no one is saying anything about that..why..because it’s taking everything to damn literal. That’s what’s wrong in the world today..you can’t joke around anymore about anything because people have been so brainwashed that they don’t know how to laugh, joke around or have fun. So lighten up buttercup life is like a breeze….
April 27th, 2018 at 1:11 pm
Many lullabies around the world are extremely scary. It seems the idea is to scare the child to sleep… if you don’t go to sleep, this will happen…
May 18th, 2018 at 4:50 pm
Oh, for G*D sakes…. Millennial Snowflakes. Get over yourselves.
Meat does not come from square plastic trays at the supermarket.
And, I realize… to most *youngsters*, it /seems/ too….
nope.
October 6th, 2018 at 12:46 am
Saludos amigos!
Well, I have ZERO need to “justify” this song. Like Richard said, please folks. If this freaks you out then you must be living in a cave, but then you couldn’t be living in a cave could you? If you were, you would must needs find something to eat in the wilderness which would include skinning it, or plucking it, pulling its eyeballs out and while you’re at it its brains, its guts, its anus, its nails…
Do you see the picture? Back in the day they didn’t have the grocery stores. Back in the day they had to do this at home. It probably usually fell to a younger but strong enough kid. Give them a break for making a song that the kids could sing to help to do their chore. And by the way the kids were not freaked out. This was part of normal everyday life.
I know I’m 6 years late on this from the first comments, but it’s annoying to see how small people are. Read some literature that has nothing to do with 2018 or 2012. You will definitely learn a lot. Life is radically different these days. We live an antiseptic life. It’s semi false. It’s quite plastic. There are good things for sure, but seriously, read something old. You’ll learn about a lot more than just the storyline.
Last thing, there are parts of the world right this minute where people have to do this daily if not weekly or bi-weekly so they can get some protein. They can’t drive down to the local market to get their pre-packaged, pre skinned, pre… well I’ve already said it… Hah 🌞
In good cheer
🌴rachel
October 10th, 2018 at 12:08 am
Rachel of Oct 6 2018 made perfect sense. Others made sense as well and still others find the need to clutter the internet with the stench of their virtue signalling.
I’m glad to have stumbled across Mama Lisa’ explanation of this song I first heard over 60 years ago but never knew the English meaning of.
Thank you Lisa.
October 28th, 2018 at 5:53 pm
Thank you for this explanation. This article is really helpful. I sang this song over and over as a kid and it’s one of those cherished rhymes. It doesn’t offend me at all because we had hens, in the yard that we killed, cut their head, plucked, gutted them etc before cooking. So, yeah, this song is a great one for my family. We’ll keep teaching it to our kids…
January 2nd, 2019 at 4:20 am
I always thought it was a way to teach children the parts of the bird. (Didn’t realize they were talking about plucking a bird.)
BTW, not all of our nursery rhymes are innocent. “Ring around the rosie” was a poem referred to the plague with the line “all fall down” meant dying of it.
January 23rd, 2019 at 4:24 am
I was in the 425th Squadron Alouettes in the Canadian Air Force. On my Blazer Badge it has written the following: ESCADRON JEE TE PLUMERAI!. I would very much like to sign up for all your email’s in both French/English if possible? P.S. My Mother’s Father was French/French so I’m just a quarter of it now! Mama Lisa what type of French Lark was the actual Bird in France that they would use for Game? And don’t forget to ask me what my Middle Name really is? Never too young to learn more French!, But French/French! Merci Mama Lisa (Any Questions, feel free to ask me?)