Category: Songs

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Songs for Grammar: Embrasse-les tous

Césaire de Heisterbach

I’ve often heard the advice that it’s a mistake to learn vocabulary words in isolation, either as memorized english translations of French word or as memorized French synonyms of a French word. Better, says the recommendation, to remember a sentence that uses the target word so that you learn it in context. I’ve found this advice hard to implement, as I have difficulty remembering whole sentences, especially for the full range of words I’m trying to learn.

But this technique may be more viable for grammar rules. This morning I was doing an exercice on the words tout, toute, tous, and toutes. One of the examples shown was an excerpt from Césaire de Heisterbach, who chronicled the siege of Béziers (between Narbonne and Montpellier) in 1209. It contains this well known (if often re-attributed) passage:

«Comment distinguer les hérétiques des catholique», se demandait-on lors de la prise de la ville de Béziers où vivaient de nombreux cathares, en 1209.

«Tuez-les tous, Dieu reconnaîtra les siens», répondit Arnaud Amaury, légat du pape Innocent III.»

“How shall we distinguish the heathens from the catholics?”, they wondered upon capturing the city of Beziers which, in 1209, still housed many Cathars.

“Kill them all, God will know his own,” replied Arnaud Amaury, the representative of Pope Innocent III.

Ah yes, a classic in the annals of tactics. Bloodshed aside, the point of this passage was illustrate that the word tous, when used as a pronoun meaning “everyone, all of them”, comes after an imperative verb, and also after any direct object there may be. Thus «Tuez-les tous» and not «Tous les tuez», «Tuez-tous-les», etc. Moreover, because «tous» is a pronoun here you pronounce the final “s” rather than leaving it silent as you would in «Tous les deux» or «tous les gens» where it is an adjective. That makes this Béziers passage less than ideal as a canonical example. Even if I overcame my qualms about memorizing a passage about killing heathens, there’s no hint to help me remember to pronounce that final “s”.

Fortunately for me, there preamble to the exercise gives a second example that is right up my alley: a Georges Brassens song excerpt!

De Pierre à Paul en passant par Félicien
Embrasse-les tous, Embrasse-les tous
Dieu reconnaîtra le sien
Passe-les tous par tes armes
Passe-les tous par tes charmes
Jusqu’à ce que l’un deux les bras en croix
Tourne de l’oeil dans tes bras

From Peter to Paul, by way of Félicien
Kiss them all, kiss them all
God will know his own
Dazzle them all with your wiles
Favor them all with your smiles
Til one of them faints in your arms
Swept of his feet by your charms

I love the reference that Brassens makes in this song, and I am thankful to the authors of this grammar text for drawing my attention to it. I vaguely knew the “Kill them all and let god sort it out” line, but didn’t know the particular french structure of it, nor did I think of it when I first herd the Brassens song. I thought he was just doing his usual anarchy-and-free-love thing. But it’s a great bit of literary jiu-jitsu to add in his anti-clericalism and turn the Church-inspired slaughter into an endorsement of promiscuity. That said, if you look past the sentimental and nostalgic music, there’s still a bit of misogyny to these American-in-2020 ears

Anyway, from a pedagogical view point I like this example is a better fit for me. It has the advantage that it is a song with music, which makes it easier for me to remember, and also that I can listen to the recording of Brassens singing it and pronouncing the final “s”.

It so happens that I know another Brassens song, even more ribald, which shows the contrasting pronunciation of «tous» when used as an adjective «Tous les gars».

Quand Margot dégrafait son corsage
Pour donner la gougoutte à son chat
Tous les gars, tous les gars du village
Étaient là, lalala la la la
Étaient là, lalala la la la

When Margot would unclip her blouse
To let her cat nurse from her breasts
All the men, all the men of the village
Would come hooting and howling
Lalala la la la!

If you listen to the whole song, Margot is presented as a simple (but wise?) shepherdess, innocently thinking that the men are there to see a cute kitty-cat that she had adopted when its mother was lost. The men are happy to let her think whatever she like so long as they get their daily peep show. The women of the village are none too happy about it, though, and end up organizing themselves and beating the cat to death. Margot is distraught by this turn of events, takes herself a husband, and from then only shows her charms to him only. Echos of Il était une bergère if you think about it (translation).

And just in case you thought it was only men who sang ribald Brassens songs, here’s a recording of Patachou singing the same song. Recall that Patachou (née Henriette Ragon) is the cabaret nightclub singer who discovered Brassens in 1952, first singing his songs on stage and later getting him up on stage to perform them himself. According to her account, she convinced him to sing because some of his songs were told in the first person by an obviously male character, and presenting audiences with a woman singing them was too much of a stretch.

Finally, I can’t resist including this all-instrumental version of Brave Margot, posted just a few months ago by a classical guitarist

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Odds and Ends

Random French bits I picked up in the past week that don’t merit a post in and of themselves.

  • I watched the first one and a half episodes of the Netflix series Marseille. It’s more or less the French equivalent of House of Cards, but with Gérard Depardieu taking the role of Kevin Spacey. It’s unclear to me how explicitly Netflix meant it to be a direct adaptation of the concept, but others have noticed the obvious parallels as well. One can only hope that Netflix didn’t mean to have their leading actor plagued by sexual assault scandals, but Depardieu seems to have that in common with Spacey as well. So far I’m willing to separate the art from the man and haven’t given up on watching Depardieu films. I’ll see if this TV series is worth watching more of.

  • In this week’s French conversation lesson I found myself explaining how I met a French-teacher friend, and then I found myself explaining my mathematics graduate school career and why I left, and then I found myself explaining my advisor’s research, and next thing you know I’m explaining the five families of modern cryptography schemes and the corresponding hard math problem each one is based on. I was able to get across most of the ideas (and kudos to my teacher for sticking with me on this), but I lacked some of the technical terms in French for various mathematical objects. It’s times like these I wish I had reviewed Cryptographie sur les courbes elliptiques in advance of my lesson.
https://youtu.be/8WTesYp5H8o
  • Google News and YouTube keep feeding me various Georges Brassens materials, which are all the rage as we draw near the 100th anniversary of his birth in October 2021. This one is a particular gem. It’s an hour-long TV program from 1972 (Bienvenue à George Brassens) that has Brassens in a cozy setting surrounded by maybe 100 members of a television audience. The show interleaves performances with interviews, and many of Brassens collaborators are present and participate in the discussions. A large part of the charm of this particular video is the anonymous audience members in all their 1970’s glory. Look at the hair styles, what they are wearing, how and what they smoke, and their reactions to his sometimes ribald songs. I have some sense of what Americans in the 1970’s were like, as I lived through 90% of the seventies and watched plenty of movies and films from that time. But French styles in the 1970s were different, so this is a nifty look back through both time and space.

    Brassens is also charming and disarming with his total lack of pretentiousness.
Rubens, 1 of N
  • I finally got around to watching the final two episodes of the Netflix series Lupin. They were OK, but the plot holes were large enough to drive une fourgonne through. It’s better if you just enjoy the scenes and the acting and don’t worry too much about how it all fits together. I’ve read one Lupin short story long ago, but ordered from my local bookstore one of the re-issues that the success of the Netflix series has spawned. It’s taking a while to arrive, but I’ll read it someday …
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Summer Lessons Day 9: La Peine de Mort, Hiro

Happy Monday! On this first day of of the third week of my French Staycation I worked with a new teacher, Sofia, as part of my package of lessons from ILA in Montpellier. We covered an awful lot of ground in four hours, and I’m looking forward to working with Sofia again twice more this week.

After basic introductions we took as our jumping off point the mechanics of making verbal tenses agree between clauses. This sounds like a fairly dry grammatical point, but Sofia did a great job of weaving it into many different activities:

  • Converting direct discourse to indirect discourse: Converting “‘If don’t all get vaccinated, the pandemic will last longer’, said French President Macron.” to “French President Macron said that if we didn’t all get vaccinated the pandemic would last longer.” We reviewed the rules and did some online exercises.
  • We watched a video of woman-on-the-street interviews about what eating will be like in the future, then it was up to me to relate what each person said using this indirect discourse technique. One of people interviewed brought up science-fiction writer René Barjavel, whom I had not heard of. He wrote La nuit de temps, which apparently involves people eating only gel capsules. I’ll have to add it (and also his L’Enchanteur) to my reading list.

Next we turned to vocabulary and mechanics for expressing ones opinion about something. We started with a heavy subject (capital punishment) and then moved on to the efficacy of a French ad campaign and finally a news story about an unusual gathering in Spain.

  • First we read together a famous speech against the death penalty by Victor Hugo in the National Assembly in 1848. The official transcript records at times reactions and heckling, and from which side of the aisle it arose: “«Nous l’abolirons!» (Agitation.)” or “«…renversez l’echafaud.» (Vif assentiment sur plusieurs bancs.)” Pretty funny. Sofia noted a neat rhetorical trick that Hugo uses, invoking “the will of the people”, when (then as now) it was in fact the elite who reliably opposed capital punishment while the majority of the public often supported it.
  • After that, we watched a modern, teen-produced video about the eventual end of the death penalty in France in 1981. Sofia introduced it by noting that the speaker was an amateur who mashed his words a bit, and that this was a deliberate challenge for oral comprehension. I actually had little difficulty understanding him aside from not catching the name of Mitterand’s first Justice Minister (Robert Badinter). It helps that I had studied much of this history in French lessons over the last five years (don’t remember which ones). One of the earliest George Brassens songs (Le Gorille) is about the brutality of the death penalty, though it’s not apparent until the final verse: 
La suite serait délectable
Malheureusement, je ne peux
Pas la dire, et c'est regrettable
Ça nous aurait fait rire un peu
Car le juge, au moment suprême
Criait "maman!", pleurait beaucoup
Comme l'homme auquel, le jour même
Il avait fait trancher le cou
Gare au gorille!
  • Next, Sofia asked me to write on the spot 250 words about the death penalty in the US, and about my opinion. She gave me 25 minutes to do it. I didn’t do a great job of managing my time, and spent way too much of it researching the facts of the subject instead of writing the response. Here’s the very rushed 293 words I produced. It turns out it’s a lot harder to write at speed, and without frequent recourse to resources like Linguée or Larousse. Here’s my first draft produced under time pressure, and the version with Sofia’s corrections applied.

Version originale

Aux États-Unis, la peine de mort reste légale au niveau féderale et aussi en 27 sur 50 des États individuelles (mais en trois parmi eux le gouvernor a imposé une pause légale d’une durée indefini). Il y a chaque année une trentaine d’executions judiciare, dont les plupart sont ordonnées par un gouvernement d’un État. De 1970 à 2020, il n’y avait aucune execution au niveaux fédérale, mais ça a changé pendant la campagne de reélection de Donald Trump en 2020. Il a ordonnés 13 executions dans les dernières douze mois de son mandat. Le dernier incuplé exécuté par l’État a été le 16 janvier 2021.

Dans les années 1990, le president actuel, Joseph Biden, a championé les projets (devenues lois) qui punissaient quelques crime avec cette peine, mais pendant la campaigne de 2020 il a adouci sa position. Malgré un absence d’execution après son instauration, il a évité à faire une prononcement claire sur sa position. Dans l’état ou j’habite, le Massachusetts, la dernière execution a été achevé en 1947, mais la peine de mort n’était pas aboli jusqu’à 1984. 

Selon moi, la question de l’abolir ou garder la peine de mort est trop exagéré dans notre societé. Quant à moi, je suis contre la peine de mort, mais s’il reste disponible dans les cas les plus grave, ça peut exister sans trop de mal pour nos société. Il y a beaucoup plus d’injustice dans le comportement quotidienne de la Police, dans les abuses dans le système pénale, et dans les inégalité econimique. Pris ensemble tous ces injustice cause beaucoup plus de mort que les execution gouvernementale. Je préférais que les opposant de la peine de mort concentraient sur le sort de ce qui reste vivant que de lutter pour les plus culpable.

Version corrigée

Aux États-Unis, la peine de mort reste légale au niveau féderal et aussi en 27 sur 50 des États (mais en trois parmi eux le gouverneur a imposé une pause légale d’une durée indéfinie). Il y a chaque année une trentaine d’exécutions judiciaires, dont la plupart sont ordonnées par un gouvernement d’un État. De 1970 à 2020, il n’y a eu aucune exécution au niveau fédéral, mais ça a changé pendant la campagne de réélection de Donald Trump en 2020. Il a ordonné 13 exécutions dans les douze dernièrs mois de son mandat. Le dernier inculpé a été exécuté par l’État le 16 janvier 2021.

Dans les années 1990, le président actuel, Joseph Biden, a soutenu les projets (devenus lois) qui punissaient certains crimes avec cette peine, mais pendant la campagne de 2020 il a adouci sa position. Malgré un absence d’exécution après son instauration, il a évité de se prononcer clairement sur sa position. Dans l’état ou j’habite, le Massachusetts, la dernière execution a eu lieu en 1947, mais la peine de mort n’a été aboli qu’en 1984. 

Selon moi, la question d’abolir ou de garder la peine de mort est trop exagérée dans notre societé. Quant à moi, je suis contre la peine de mort, mais si elle reste possible dans les cas les plus graves, ça peut exister sans trop de mal pour nos société. Il y a beaucoup plus d’injustice dans le comportement quotidien de la Police, dans les abus dans le système pénal, et dans les inégalités économiques. Prises ensemble, toutes ces injustices causent beaucoup plus de morts que les exécutions gouvernementales. Je préférerais que les opposants de la peine de mort se concentrent sur le sort de ceux qui restent vivant plutôt que de lutter pour les plus coulpables.

Time for something lighter! Three closing pieces.

  • We watched and discussed a video about the creation of an advertising campaign for Decathlon sports: «Le sport rend le monde meilleur». Again, the theme was oral comprehension followed by expressing my opinion on a subject.
  • We read an article from the International Courier about a recent gathering of Rainbow Family (translated into French from the original in El Mundo), happening this year in La Rioja, a region of northern Spain. Think Burning Man, but with multiple chapters, more sex, less drugs, and topping out at 30,000 people. The one in La Rioja has only 100 or so. I’ll leave to my readers’ imagination my opinion on this subject.
  • Last item of the day, we watched a music video of a song entitled “Hiro” by singer Soprano. In it a 30 year old French man enumerates all the things he would do if he could travel back in time like Hiro Nakamura. This was a nice way of going full circle with the original grammar exercise – the whole song is phrased with hypothetical subordinate clauses: «Si j’avais eu le pouvoir de Hiro Nakamura, … J’aurais été voir mon grand-père une dernière fois, … J’aurais été accueillir Mahomet à Médine … J’aurais créé un gigantesque bouchon sous le pont de l’Alma.»

Whew! What a packed morning of lessons. Tomorrow I get to start anew with other teacher of the week, Léonard. I’m sure I’ll learn lots more.

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Auprès de Brassens

My morning news feed included a pointer to a radio documentary from France Culture about George Brassens and his musical origins. I was having trouble dragging myself out of bed for my morning walk, but the prospect of listening to his songs instead of my usual fare of France Inter 6/9 succeeded in pushing me over the edge. The documentary, Auprès de Brassens, runs four hours in total, but so far I’ve listed to the first 45 minutes only.

I like it a lot. Probably more interesting as the 21st hour listening to and about Brassens than it would be as the 1st hour, but if you already know this giant of 20th century french music, it’s worth a listen.

Here’s the blurb from https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/les-series-musicales/aupres-de-brassens:

«Derrière la pipe et la moustache d’une icône de la chanson se cache un homme paradoxal qui dit bien des choses de la France d’hier et d’aujourd’hui. À l’occasion du centenaire de la naissance de Georges Brassens, cette série musicale vient célébrer le génie, la poésie et la pensée libre en chanson.»

«Par Victor Macé de Lépinay, producteur du Rayon BD sur France Culture, il est aussi un passionné de chansons et de Brassens en particulier, avec lequel il chemine depuis une vingtaine d’années.»

I definitely plan to listen to the whole series this week.

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Marre de la Confine: Sick of Confinement

On March 17, 2020, France issued a general order for residents to stay at home as part of a national effort to combat the Covid-19 epidemic. The order remained in place for 55 days before being lifted on May 11th, and was generally seen as a public health success.

I was recently pointed to a series of short YouTube music videos created during confinement by a small crew of artists looking to distract themselves: «Au 1er jour de la confine». Each one features a song and animated watercolor illustrations. The song is of the form “On the first day of the confinement …. On the second day of confinement …. On the third day of confinement … etc. etc.” There are 11 videos in all, running two to five minutes each, packaged as “Season 1”, “Season 2”, etc. Together they cover all 55 days.

The videos start off fairly routine, with what sounds like a traditional Breton folk song played on accordion, one or two voices singing, a pleasantly repetitive verse / chorus structure, and the camera panning slowly over the illustrations. The authors’ description clarifies that the song is original, but runs the risk of becoming a folk song of the future: «un échantillon de Musique Traditionnelle de Demain.» The musical arrangement becomes more complex throughout the first video with polyphony, syncopation, and rich instrumentation. Really well done musically and visually.

After the first few weeks, though, the videos become progressively post-modern and bizarre, fitting the increasing toll of confinement. By the end there are drug-hazed psychedelic segments, pastiches of Ravel’s Bolero, and – I kid you not – Soviet agitprop. A rather striking departure, but quite impressive.

The creators are:

I can’t quite figure out how the author’s’ attitude towards the confinement changes over time. The first verse sounds like an explicit indictment of the policy as a trick, but some of the later videos have messaging that makes me think the authors supported the confinement. If any readers can clarify for me if the attitude is clear in the subtext (or the text), please leave a comment.

Here’s a sampling of the lyrics (rough English translations are mine):

  • Y en a bien marre de la confine.
  • Y en a bien marre du confinement.
Au 1er jour de la confine
On s'est tous enfermé dedans (x2)
Sans médicaments sans aspirine
Ça durera pas 107 ans
On s'est fait rouler dans la farine
Par le ministère et le gouvernement

Refrain:
Y en a bien marre de la confine
Y en a bien marre du confinement
On the first day of confinement
We all holed up inside
Without medicines or aspirin
This won't last 107 years
They've duped us, the government and the ministry

Chorus:
I am so sick of being confined
I've had it up to here with confinement
Au 2ème jour de la confine
On s'est attaqué au grand rangement (x2)
Le salon, le couloir et la cuisine
Ça durera pas 106 ans
Même si tout laver à la térébenthine
Au savon noir c'est émouvant

Refrain
On the second day of confinement
We did a vast spring cleaning
The living-room, the hallway, the kitchen
This won't last 106 years
What if we use turpentine and black soap?
It's bracing!

Chorus
  • I am so sick of being confined.
  • I’ve had it up to here with confinement.
Au 3ème jour de la confine
On met sa masques et ses beaux gants blancs (x2)
On se lave les mains, on se bouche les narines
Ça durera pas 105 ans
Se laver les mains, les papattes et les babines
Au début c'est rigolo à la fin c'est barbarant.
On the third day of confinement
We wear masks and white gloves
We wash our hands and cover our noses
This won't last 105 years.
Washing your hands, paws, and whiskers
At first it's a joke, by the end it's oppressive
Au 4ème jour de la confine
Ma femme est allée chez son amant (x2)
Sans me prévenir en passant par la cuisine
Ça durera pas 104 ans
Elle est partie pour de la farine
Reviendra peut-être à la fin du printemps
On the fourth day of confinement
My wife went to see her lover
She left by the back door without telling me
This won't last 104 years
Said she was going to get some flour
Maybe she'll be back by the time Spring ends
  • Y en a bien marre de la confine.
  • Y en a bien marre du confinement.
Au 7ème jour de la confine
Plus de vin rouge ni de chocolat blanc (x2)
Je fouille les armoires de la cuisine
Ça durera pas 101 ans
Me restera-t-il assez de bibine
Pour assurer le ravitaillement
On the 7th day of confinement
We ran out of red wine and white chocolate
I rummage through the kitchen cabinets
This won't last 101 years
Will my supply of booze
Hold out until I can restock?
Au 11ème jour de la confine
Je me bourre de médicaments (x2)
Sans prescription de la médecine
Ça durera jamais 97 ans
Et hop! Encore une aspirine
J'alterne avec l'efferalgan
On the 11th day of confinement
I'm popping pills like crazy
Just the over the counter stuff
This will never last 97 years
Pop! There goes another aspirin
I alternate them with Tylenol
  • I am so sick of being confined.
  • I’ve had it up to here with confinement.
Au 15ème jour de la confine
Y avait plein de morts mais plus de sacrements (x2)
On ne pouvait plus tirer sa trombine
Devant le cercueil et ses ornements
Enterrer des vieux, faut dire que ça nous bassine
Et c'est contagieux surtout pour nos enfants
On the 15th day of confinement
There were plenty of dead, but no more funerals
No more showing your ugly mug
In front of an ornate coffin
Burying our old ones makes us tearful, I confess
Our kids catch on and weep as well
25ème jour de confine
Il pleut des divorces. C'est alarmant! (x2)
On quitte son mari, son amant, sa concubine
Du jour au lendemain, c'est vraiment navrant
Les tribunaux sont fermés. On divorce en ligne
On se confine au couvent
25th day of confinement
It's raining divorces. Yikes!
Folks leaving their husbands, their lovers, mistresses
Day after day, it's really upsetting
With the courts closed down you get divorced online
Then go to the nunnery and isolate there

That’s a good sampling for now. I may have more in a later post.

Y en a bien marre de la confine. Y en a bien marre du confinement.
Y en a bien marre de la confine. Y en a bien marre du confinement…

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Le Mineur, Stéphane Golmann, and Theodore Bikel

Originally, I was going to write this post about a song named “Le Mineur“. I first heard this song sung by Theodore Bikel, on his album “An Actor’s Holiday”, which was in my parents’ record collection (I was born in 1970, they had vinyl records). I listened to it a lot as a kid, but only got around to transcribing the words a couple years ago. The album has liner notes with lyrics, but I was too lazy to get my folks to lay their hands on them and send me a photo. Plus, it was good practice to transcribe the lyrics by listening.

So I was going to post the transcription and a few notes about it here and be done with it. I still will post them (see below), but along the way I discovered something else I wanted to share. I decided today to check on a few words that I was unsure of, so looked for the words online. As far as I can tell, there is a unique page on the Web that publishes the lyrics to “Le Mineur” (the one sung by Bikel. There are more recent and more popular songs with the same name). That site, fr.lyrics-copy.com, asserts the author was Stéphan Golmann, with whom I was unfamiliar.

On a whim, I clicked on his name and got to his page on fr.lyrics-copy.com. Lo and behold, there was a second song that Bikel covered for his album: “Ma guitare et moi“. I knew it well. This Golmann was a man (mann?) worth learning about.

The Stéphane Golmann wikipedia page shows that “Le Mineur” was originally recorded on Golmann’s album Chanson no. 2 in 1954 (and lists yet a third song Bikel covered for his album Actor’s Holiday). Wikipedia also details Golmann’s career as a guitarist and cabaret performer in Paris during the post-War ’40s and the ’50s. He was a contemporary of George Brassens, Jacques Brel, and Edith Piaf. I don’t know how I missed his existence. You can readily find online audio and video recordings of Stéphane Golmann singing.

Golmann’s father was a Russian mining engineer, so it makes sense that Golmann (fils) would sing the song Le Mineur, which explicitly sets itself in Courrières, France, the site of Europe’s worst mine disaster of all time. It turns out Golmann didn’t write the words, though, they came from the pen of Albert Vidalie. The song tells of a single young miner who dug too deep and got stranded. His prayers to Jesus for rescue go unanswered for 47 years, and when he finally prays to Mary to let him go to heaven upon death, he’s told that heaven is not to be found underground, and he falls into hell. A cheerful tune accompanies the whole thing.

The actual Courrières mine disaster was far worse. In 1906 an explosion in the mines lead to 1,099 deaths. The search for survivors was abandoned after three days, but three weeks later 13 men emerged from the mine entrance having wandered in the dark for many miles before finding an alternate route out. The episode crippled the young administration of Président Fillière, who somehow still managed to serve another 7 years. You can read more about it on Wikipedia (or on Wikipédia if you want to practice your French).

Anyway, here’s the song. I might have a word wrong here or the:

Le Mineur (A. Vidalie, S. Golmann), 1954

Hallelujah!

Sous le règne de monsieur Fallières
Un jeune mineur de Courrières
Trouve en creusant tout au fond
Une fameuse veine de charbon.

À grand coups de rivelaine
Creusant son trou dans la veine
Sortit tant tonnes de charbon
Qu'il s'enfonça trop profond.

Jésus, Jésus sors-moi d'terre
Je vois le ciel de Courrières.
Oh, Jésus, toi qui a le bras long
Sors ton pauvre mineur de fond

Jésus et Marie, sa mère
Avaient trop de choses à faire.
Jamais depuis quarante-sept ans
Mineur n'a revu ses parents.

Alors Sainte-Marie, marraine
Paradis au bout de ma peine?
Mais ce truc-là, c'est pas sous terre
Mineur tomba aux Enfers.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, ..
Hallelujah!