Folklore Obscène

A song popped into my head while I was doing the dishes Saturday night, so I started singing it:

Au clair de la lune,
j’ai pété dans l’eau.
Ça faisait des bulles;
c’était rigolo.
Ma…

I paused to remember the lyrics. This version is a twist to the French folk song Au Clair de la Lune (“Under the Moonlight”) that most children know–at least when I was a little girl. The lyrics never came back, so I went online to do a quick search and voilà:

Au clair de la lune,
j’ai pété dans l’eau.
Ça faisait des bulles;
c’était rigolo.
Ma grand-mère arrive
avec des ciseaux;
Elle me coupe les fesses
en trois mille morceaux!

This translates to:

Under the moonlight,
I farted in the water.
It made bubbles;
it was funny.
My grandmother came in
with scissors;
She cut my butt
into three thousand pieces.

It occurred to me then that I had never heard/heard of any obscene or vulgar English-language folk/children’s songs. Here is another French one:

Frère Jacques, Jacques Chirac,
où es-tu, trou du cul?
Je vais à la messe,
niquer les gonzesses.
Ding, ding, dong.
Ding, ding, dong.

And here’s the lovely translation:

Brother Jacques, Jacques Chirac,
Where are you, asshole?
I’m going to mass,
to fuck the chicks.
Ding, ding, dong.
Ding, ding, dong.

Yet another version has, instead of “niquer les gonzesses,” “pour montrer mes fesses“–meaning “to show my butt.”

Read more about this subject here.

I miss being a kid.