Jeanne [English translation]

At Jeanne’s home, Jeanne,

her inn is open to homeless people,

you could call it the inn of the Good God

if there wasn’t already one of them,

the last where one can go in

Without knocking, without showing any credentials1...

At Jeanne’s home, Jeanne,

I doesn’t matter who are, nor when you come,

and as if miraculously, magically,

you become part of the family

in her heart, with a bit of moving over,

There is still a bit of room...

Jeanne, Jeanne,

She is poor and her table often has not much food

but the little that you find there is enough to satisy2,

through the way that she gives it,

her bread resembles cake

and her water wine like two peas in a pod3

Jeanne, Jeanne,

You pay when you can the fabtastic prices:

A kiss on her forhead or one her white hair,

Something like a guitar chord

the address of a frightened4 cat

or of a dog covered in mud as a tip...

Jeanne, Jeanne

In her roses and her cabbages hasn’t found a child

To be loved and defended against the four winds,

and to be held against her breast,

and to to be nourished with her milk...

People other than her would all be very despondent about that...

But Jeanne, Jeanne,

is no more bothered by that than by utter trivia5

to be mother to three sucklings, what’s the point !

when she is a universal mother,

when all the children or the earth,

Of the sea and of they sky are hers...

1. lit: showing a white paw2. lit: satisfies for life3. lit:two drops of water4. lit: scalded5. "les colins-tampon" (the Nickie drummers) was the name given by he French, after the battle of Marignano (modern Melegnano; the French - who won the battle - called it Marignan) in 1515, to the battery of drummers that formed part of the Swiss army (the losers) at that battle; those drummers were of course people who were no use as infantry, they were assigned to the drum battery because they knew neither which end of a horse was the front nor which end of a sword was the handle, nor even which end of a pike was the pointy one, and (mostly being rather young boys) probably couldn't carry a pike anyway, and only ever drummed the right signals because the NCOs had taught them - the cruel way - that they would suffer when they got it wrong, but they still got it wrong almost as often as not. So it wasn't worth the French army's time to take any notice of them. So the name for just one of them came to mean "something absolutely, utterly, indisputably, totally not worth bothering about". Often translated as "a rat's arse".

• Artist:Georges Brassens
• Album:Les trompettes de la renommée