“I’s sont partis de Saint-Malo,
I’s sont partis de Saint-Malo,
Tous ben portants, vaillants et biaux.
In’ troun’ dérin tra lonlaire!
In’ troun’ dérin’ tra lonla!”
sings Yann Nibor in his “Sea Songs and Stories.”
The city’s older reputation as the city of the corsairs gave quite a different interpretation, however:
“LA CITÉ DES CORSAIRES
“Si dans son aire, aujourd’hui tombe,
Elle ouit de rudes chansons!
Dont le souvenir donne au monde
Des frissons.
“La gothique flêche de pierre
De son clocher audacieux
S’élance comme un rapière
Vers les cieux.”
—Dabouchet.
Duguay-Trouin is an almost mythical character, but many of his legendary exploits sound plausible. He took an English ship mounting forty guns when he owned to but sixteen years, and in a following campaign—practically on his own account it would seem—he captured two vessels of war and twelve merchant-ships from under the guns of a British squadron. This, at least, is the French version, and since all of us, in our agile days, love a daring hero,—even if he be a bloodthirsty one,—it seems a pity to probe the assertion too deeply.
Such a man as Duguay-Trouin was, of course, popular, and his sailors sang his praises in the street in lines which came to be taken up by the “stay-at-homes” and incorporated into a kind of folk-lore. Indeed, gentle mothers sang their infants to sleep with them, much as did old Mother Goose of the nursery rhymes:
“Monsieur Duguay t’envoyé
Un tambour de l’Achille
Pour demander à ces braves guerriers
S’ils veulent capituler.
“Les dames du château
S’sont mis à la fenêtre,
Monsieur Duguay apaisez vos canons,
Avec vous je composerez.”