Pierre Falcon was, however, the bard or poet of his people. This characteristic of Falcon is quite remarkable, considered in connection with the time and circumstances. That a man who was unable to read or write should have been able to describe the striking events of his time in verse is certainly a notable thing. He never tires singing in different times and metres the valour of the Bois Brûlés at Seven Oaks.
"Voulez-vous écouter chanter
"Une chanson de vérité?
Le dix-neuf Juin, la bande des Bois Brûlés
Sont arrivés comme des braves guerriers."
Then with French gaiety and verve he gives an account of the attack on the Orkneymen, as he calls them, and recites the Governor's action and his death. Falcon finishes up the chanson with a wild hurrah of triumph—
"Les Bois Brûlés jetaient des cris de joie."
The lively spirit of the rhymester broke out in song upon all the principal events which agitated the people of the settlement. Joseph Tassé, to whom we are chiefly indebted in this sketch, says of him, "all his compositions are not of the same interest, but they are sung by our voyageurs to the measured stroke of the oar, on the most distant rivers and lakes of the North-West. The echoes of the Assiniboine, the Mackenzie, and Hudson Bay will long repeat them."
The excitable spirit of the rhymer never left him. At the time of the Riel rebellion (1869-70) Falcon was still alive, and though between seventy and eighty years of age, he wished to march off with his gun to the fray, declaring that "while the enemy would be occupied in killing him his friends would be able to give hard and well-directed blows to them."
For about half a century he lived on the White Horse Plains, twenty miles or more up the Assiniboine from Winnipeg, and became an influential man in the neighbourhood. His mercurial disposition seems to have become more settled than in his fiery youth, for though unlettered, he was made a justice of the peace.