THE ERMATINGER COLLECTION OF
VOYAGEUR SONGS (CA. 1830)
By MARIUS BARBEAU
So in the increasingly dense fog of discovery (a phrase chosen for a reason) that has settled upon my beaver life, I was learning yesterday about the role of music with the early trappers. Apparently the French Canadians were famed for singing as they paddled their canoe to keep time and motivate the troops. One such trapper had the presence of mind to put 11 of these songs on paper. Edward Ermatinger was the son of a swiss father, born on an island off Tuscany, educated in England and went to work as a clerk for the Hudson Bay Company. About his unique skills, a family member later wrote;
He took up [in England] the study of Latin, French and Italian, besides acquiring those habits of neatness and precision, both in calligraphy and expression, which his journals disclose. He, at this time, also took up the study of music and acquired some proficiency with both flute and violin. Accomplishments which afforded him much enjoyment in after life, especially during his service with the Hudson’s Bay Company …
Sounds kind of refined for a beaver-killer doesn’t it? I suppose trapping was the ‘space race’ of its time. Exploration. Adventure. Fortune. Memoirs. Escape from the rules and constrictions of society. Escape from wives or potential wives. (And how much do you wanna bet the slang-meaning of these rodents has something to do with this their feelings for the women they left behind?) They quickly learned from the natives that the birchbark canoe was their best means of getting around, easy to build, cheap to repair and ready for action. Two men could portage easily over short distances, four men could do it over long. The music kept their strokes in time, encouraged the hungry or frightened, and focused the inattentive. Alouette is a trapping song we still sing today. Trois beaux Canards was one of the most popular at the time. Words could be changed or added to fit the particular brigade or quarry.
The Ermatinger Collection presented here offers the best answer so far discovered. Its eleven songs, recorded about 125 years ago by a fur trader, are typical paddling songs for canoemen. Their tunes are rhythmical, and the solos, as in most work songs, alternate with a chorus (“refrain”) which prolongs the action. Yet these songs belong also to the common stock of traditional folk songs brought over by the colonists from France at the beginning-mostly from I640 to I680. Even their deviations from the original pattern resulted from their vitality. Alive and variable, they constantly yielded a trifle to the mannerisms of individual singers and the utilities they served either in the settlements or in their peregrinations. Canoe men, more than others, were apt to fashion refrains that reflected new surroundings and features, like canoe and paddle.
So after a few hearty rounds of the french equivalent of “row row row your boat” the men would haul out at an inviting looking-lodge, plant some poles to keep the beaver from getting out, and then rip open the top of the home to kill them. Maybe they’d throw the carcasses into the boat to skin later and paddle away singing some more until they got to their next lodge. Wash. Rinse and repeat. And so on, farther and farther west until there weren’t many beaver to find, no matter how hard you sang. You can see why you’d need a vast lexicon of music to intersperse with all that killing.
It chills me deeply to think of the disconnect between a ‘group hum’ and a near species genocide, but the strangest thing is this: I have been an avid canoer for 30 years, and when i am in ‘thick water’ paddling against the wind, I have always, always, instinctively, sung as a way of keeping my spirits up. I guess its destiny.
May I suggest some new lyrics to ‘alouette?’ It’s not a lovely song to begin with, so these fit right in.
