Note 5 — THE PENZANCE OF OUR GRANDFATHERS.

“Malbrook is gone to the wars.” This once popular ditty was a version of the celebrated French song of

“Malbrough s’en va-t-en guerre,

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,”

which was composed after the battle of Malplaquet in 1709, by some French officers; who, after being defeated by the Duke of Marlborough, consoled themselves by making the facetious song in which they imagined

“Monsieur Malbrough is dead.—

What’s more—he’s buri-ed,”

many years before he gave up the ghost and ceased to be the object of the soldier’s admiration and terror.

The name of Marlborough having been first corrupted by the French into Malbrough, was further changed by the English into Malbrook. Only a few years since the old song was republished in Paris, in the collection of “Chansons Populaires,” under the title of “Mort et convoi de l’invincible Malbrough.” From the translation of an amusing essay, which precedes the song in this collection, we quote the following. Speaking of Marlborough, the writer says, “Not being able to conquer, the enemy lampooned him, and each of his victories was followed by a new satirical song; such verses being in France then, as in the good times of Cardinal Mazarin, the people’s most ordinary means of taking their revenge.”

The song was preserved only by tradition in some of the provinces, where it had been probably left by the soldiers of Villars and de Bufflers; but in 1781 it resounded, all of a sudden, from one end of the kingdom to the other. It happened that when Marie Antoinette gave to the throne of France an heir, he was nursed by a peasant named (probably nicknamed) Madame Poitrine, who had been chosen, among other qualifications, for her healthy appearance, and good humour. The nurse, while rocking the royal cradle, sung Malbrough, and the dauphin, it is said, opened his eyes at the name of the great general. The name, the simplicity of the words, singularity of the burthen, and the touching melodiousness of the air, interested the queen, and she frequently sang it. Everybody repeated it after her, and even the king condescended to quaver out the words, “Malbrough s’en va-t-en guerre.” Malbrough was sung in the state apartments of Versailles; in the kitchens; in the stables; it became quite the rage: from the Court it was adopted by the tradespeople of Paris, and passed thence from town to town, and country to country; it was wafted across to England, where it soon became as popular as in France. It is said that a French gentleman, wishing, when in London, to be driven to Marlborough Street, had totally forgotten its name, but, on singing the air of Malbrough, the coachman understood him immediately, and drove him to the proper address with no other direction.

Goethe, who travelled in France about the same time, was so teased with the universal concert of Malbrough, that he took a hatred to the duke, who was the innocent cause of the musical epidemic. Malbrough made itself heard, without ceasing. Apropos of everything, and apropos of nothing, it gave its name to the fashions, to silks, head-dresses, carriages, and soups—was reproduced, in short, in all manner of ways and forms, and, nothing short of the Revolution, the fall of the Bastile, and the Marsellaise hymn, were sufficient to smother the sounds of that hitherto never ceasing song. The warlike and melancholy air of the song did not, any more than its hero, originate in France, and we have sought in vain to trace its history back from the time when Napoleon—in spite of his general antipathy to music—roared it out whenever he got into his saddle to start on a fresh campaign. We are not unwilling to believe, with M. de Chateaubriand, that it was the same air which the crusaders of Godefroid de Bouillion sang under the walls of Jerusalem. The Arabs still sing it, and pretend that their ancestors learned it at the battle of Massoura, or else from the brothers-in-arms of De Joinville, who repeated it to the clashing of bucklers while pressing forward to the cry of

“Mountjoy, Saint Denis!”