Annotation:Reel de l'enfant

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X:1 T:Reel de l'enfant (Le) L:1/8 M:C| D:Victor 263548b (78 RPM), Joseph Allard (1928) F:http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/m2/f7/12576.mp3 Z:Transcribed by Andrew Kuntz K:G df||:{a}gfgb afdf|e~c3 BAAf|{a}gfgb afdf|egfa g2d2| gfgb afdf|e~c3 BcAa|bgaf gedB|1ceAc BGBd:|2ceAc BGG>G|| GDB,D DGBG|cGBG AGAB|GDB,D DGBG|ceA>c BGG>G| GDB,D DGBG|cGBG AGAB|GDB,D DGBG|ceA>c BGBd||

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REEL DE L'ENFANT. AKA and see "Gigue Pomponette," "Reel des chasseurs." French-Canadian, Reel. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB (Cranford, Cuillerier): AAB (Duval): AA'B (Joyal). Similar to "Lord MacDonald (4)." The reel was recorded twice by Montreal fiddler Joseph Allard (1873-1947): first, in 1928 as "Reel de l'enfant," and again in 1937 as "Reel des chasseurs," although on the record label he was given the pseudonym 'Maxime Toupin'.

Joseph Allard

Louis 'Pitou' Boudreault, a fiddler from Saguenay, Quebec, used to play a tune called "Le bobelo," which was the accompaniment for a kind of children's dance (often played before children's bed-time curfew at at a dance, 9pm), with leap-frog movements, that also involved adults and invariably ended in chaos. It was frowned upon by the clergy who tried to suppress it, notes Boudreault. One wonders if Allard did not have something like this in mind when naming the tune. Jean Duval notes that Montreal fiddler Isidore Soucy recorded a version of the tune as "Gigue Pomponette" in 1936, but that all versions can be traced to Scottish fiddler-composer William Marshall's (1748-1833) "Mr. Gordon of Hallhead’s Strathspey."