Mademoiselle from Armentières

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Mademoiselle from Armentières is the title of an English-language soldiers' song . The piece of music, also known by its hookline Inky, Pinky, parlez-vous or Hinky, Dinky, Parley Voo, was particularly popular with British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and US troops during the First World War .

origin

There are numerous theories about the origin of the song. According to Joanna C. Colcord ( Songs of American Sailormen , 1938), the origin of the song was "definitely" in the shanty Snapoo that already in the 19th century in the United Kingdom and the United States under the titles The Little Dutch Soldier and The Dutch Navy was known. Colcord opposed the claim that the song was first taught to the Americans in the trenches of the First World War by the British. Snapoo, on the other hand, was probably based on an old French folk song, according to Colcord. James J. Fuld later mentioned in his reference workIn addition to Snapoo , The Book of World-Famous Music had five other variations on how it was created, but all of which he himself considered rather improbable. So the melody of the piece on the British soldiers' song should Skiboo to the 1880s, the German student song The three riders , partly on the American Civil War song can When Johnny Comes Marching Home or the French song Mademoiselle de Bar-le-Duc on the Daughter of a French innkeeper and several Prussian soldiers decline during the Franco-Prussian War . As the last variant, Fuld names a parody of the ballad Der Wirtin Töchterlein based on the poem of the same name by Ludwig Uhland . Don Tyler names the song Three German Officers Crossed the Rhine as a template, which was sung to a similar melody.

Battlefield at Armentières (1914)

During the First World War, the area around Armentières was the scene of fierce fighting between Allied and German troops, including the Battle of Armentières (1914) and the four great battles of Flanders (1914, 1915, 1917 and 1918). At Armentières there was also a large depot behind the front, to which the troops were sent to recover from trench warfare . In the estaminets of Armentières, the soldiers received food and drink, but most of all they found the company of women. There was also military prostitution , which took place more or less in secret, and which was reflected as a theme in many soldiers' songs.

According to another tradition, an incident in which a waitress at a French café named Marie Lecoq slapped a general after making salacious remarks is said to have provided the inspiration for the first version of the text.

It is more likely, however, that the music and lyrics were improvised in the often long waiting times in the trenches. This explains the dialectic texts that revolve around topics such as sex and alcohol consumption or the mockery of superiors. The melody of the song is very simple, which inevitably shows similarities to other well-known melodies.

The first sound recording of the song was made by the Music Hall singer Jack Charman in 1915. In Charman's version, however, the text still differs from the later version, in particular the Hinky, Dinky is missing .

A first printed version of the song still under the title Hinky Dinky Parlez-Vous pointed James J. Fuld for the year 1919 in the book Ye AEF Hymnal. A Collection of the Doughboy Lyrics That Smoothed the Road From Hoboken to the Rhine , the 4th edition of which was published in 1919 by Henry Mayers in Brooklyn, New York. According to Fuld, the first edition of the work could have been published by Berger-Levrault in France as early as late 1917 or early 1918. In January 1919, the London publisher E. Marks & Son printed another variant, which the music and text of the song ascribed to the author Will Hythe. In September 1919 the London publisher B. Feldman & Co. published a variant according to which the text and music were written by Harry Carlton and Joseph A. Tunbridge.

Many different people later claimed to have written the music and lyrics of the song, including the British Edward Rowland and the Canadian Gitz Rice, or the British composer Harry Wincott (actually Alfred J. Walden), although the majority of these details were classified as doubtful.

text

The lyrics of the song exist in innumerable variations. The first line of text Mademoiselle from Armentières, parlez-vous? is sung twice, followed by an arbitrarily interchangeable two-line text, before the verse ends with the Inky, Pinky, parlez-vous or Hinky, Dinky, Parley Voo . The following stanza, among others, is widespread:

Mademoiselle from Armentières, parlez-vous?
Mademoiselle from Armentières, parlez-vous?
Mademoiselle from Armentières,
she hasn't been kissed for forty years.
Inky, Pinky, parlez-vous!

Frederick Thomas Nettleingham was already counting in his 1917 book Tommy's Tunes. A Comprehensive Collection of Soldiers' Songs, Marching Melodies, Rude Rhymes, and Popular Parodies over 40 different verses. In 1953 John T. Winterich published a selection of 101 stanzas, some of which were very vulgar, which he had selected from several hundred available. Winterich saw the song's popularity primarily as a result of its adaptability. The text variants include:

She got the palm and the Croix de guerre ,
for washin 'soldiers' underwear.
You didn't have to know her long,
to know the reason men go wrong.
She's the hardest working girl in town,
but she makes her living upside down.
On her bed she sure was fun,
moving her ass like a Maxim Gun .
The cooties rambled through her hair,
she whispered sweetly "C'est la guerre".
You might forget the gas and shell,
but you'll never forget the Mademoiselle.
Just blow your nose and dry your tears,
we'll all be back in a few short years.

In other media

Maurice Elvey's silent films Mademoiselle from Armentieres (1927) and Mademoiselle Parley Voo (1928) took up the popular title of the song.

The song or variants of it have been used in numerous films and television series. Director Peter Jackson ran a six-minute version of the song during the credits of his documentary They Shall Not Grow Old (2018), in which he showed restored and subsequently colored footage from the First World War.

literature

  • John T. Winterich, Herb Roth: Mademoiselle from Armentieres . Peter Pauper Press, Mount Vernon, New York, 1953, 60 pages. (Selection of stanzas of the song, with music for voice and piano, illustrated by Herb Roth, with a discussion of the song and its origins by John T. Winterich).
  • Melbert B. Cary, Jr .; Alban B. Butler, Jr .; Robert Winslow Gordon: Mademoiselle from Armentieres . Press of the Woolly Whale, New York, 1935. (Selection of stanzas of the song, edited by Melbert B. Cary, Jr., with music illustrated by Alban B. Butler, Jr., with a discussion of the song and its origins by Robert Winslow Gordon).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Joanna C. Colcord : Songs of American Sailormen . Revised and expanded edition, Oak Publications, 1964, ISBN 978-1-783-23514-8 , pp. 105 ff.
  2. ↑ Stuart Lavietes: James J. Fuld, Collector of Rare Music Scores, Dies at 91 . In: nytimes.com of February 7, 2008.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h James J. Fuld: The Book of World-Famous Music. Classical, Popular, and Folk. 5th revised and expanded edition, Dover Publications Inc., New York, 2000, ISBN 978-0-486-41475-1 , pp. 344-345.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Don Tyler: Music of the First World War . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, California, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4408-3996-2 , pp. 26-28.
  5. ↑ Glyn Harper: Johnny Enzed. The New Zealand Soldier in the First World War 1914-1918. Exisle Publishing Limited, 2016, ISBN 978-1-775-59202-0 , p.
  6. ↑ Constance M. Ruzich (Ed.): International Poetry of the First World War. An Anthology of Lost Voices . Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2020, ISBN 978-1-3501-0644-4 , p. 245.
  7. ↑ Harry Wincott; Composer Wrote 'Mademoiselle From Armentiers' Dies at 80 . In New York Times, Apr. 22, 1947, p. 27.
  8. ^ Gitz Rice ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved April 14, 2021.
  9. ↑ John T. Winterich, Herb Roth: Mademoiselle from Armentieres. Peter Pauper Press, Mount Vernon, New York, 1953.
  10. ↑ Will Gompertz: Peter Jackson's WWI film They Shall Not Grow Old . In: bbc.com of October 20, 2018.