Three Iconic Ballads of the Hanged: Part 2
Question: What do Georges Brassens, Théodore de Banville, the painter Jacques Callot, and Billie Holliday have in common?
Answer: They all produced an oeuvre on the infamous practices of King Louis XI of hanging anybody who displeased him.
Callot did his drawing called Les Misères de la Guerre showing captive soldiers being hanged. Banville composed his Ballade des Pendus on the theme of King Louis’ sad obsession, and Georges Brassens who was greatly enamoured of the Middle Ages, made it into a song, re-named Le Verger du Roi Louis. Billie Holliday sang Strange Fruit, words by Mitt Raskin.
The de Banville poem contains one of the best lines in French poetry:
Ce bois sombre, où le chêne arbore
Des grappes de fruits inouïs
Même chez le Turc et le Maure
in which he compares the swinging dead to fruits on the tree, so exotic that you do not find them even in Saracen lands.
Ballad of the Hanged by Théodore de Banville (Translated by San Cassimally)
With its boughs widely spread
The forest where Flora wakens
Has rosary beads of the hanged
That dawn softly turns golden
The sombre wood where ripen
On the oak strange fruits to see
Even for Turks and Saracens
It’s the orchard of King Louis’
.
Look at the dazzling heavens
All those wretched humans
Nurturing thoughts forbidden
In whirlpools forgotten
Flitting, like hearts beatin’
The rising sun to devour them ready
In the fires of dawn dancin’
It’s the orchard of King Louis
.
Those hanged men of the devil
Are for more hanged men callin’
Whilst on the sky azure and still
A bright star is shootin’
The dew in the air is dryin’
A flock of bird merrily
Are above their head peckin’
It’s the orchard of King Louis
ENVOI
Prince, crammed in a copse
In the sweet sonorous greenery
Sleep a pile of hanged corpses
It’s the orchard of King Louis
La Ballade des Pendus by Théodore de Banville
I
Sur ses larges bras étendus,
La forêt où s’éveille Flore,
A des chapelets de pendus
Que le matin caresse et dore.
Ce bois sombre, où le chêne arbore
Des grappes de fruits inouïs
Même chez le Turc et le More,
C’est le verger du roi Louis.
II
Tous ces pauvres gens morfondus,
Roulant des pensers qu’on ignore,
Dans les tourbillons éperdus
Voltigent, palpitants encore.
Le soleil levant les dévore.
Regardez-les, cieux éblouis,
Danser dans les feux de l’aurore,
C’est le verger du roi Louis.
III
Ces pendus, du diable entendus,
Appellent des pendus encore.
Tandis qu’aux cieux, d’azur tendus,
Où semble luire un météore,
La rosée en l’air s’évapore,
Un essaim d’oiseaux réjouis
Par-dessus leur tête picore.
C’est le verger du roi Louis.
Envoi
Prince, il est un bois que décore
Un tas de pendus enfouis
Dans le doux feuillage sonore,
C’est le verger du roi Louis.
Strange Fruit (Mitt Raskin)
Lyrics
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin’ eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin’ flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather
For the wind to suck
For the sun to rot
For the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop
