1941, Cherche-Midi prison

This song and the next are presented by Oddon as “refrains sung as ‘warnings’ before and after the rounds of the ‘22s.’” They served to alert nearby prisoners to the arrival of a “22,” a term used here to refer both to the warning signal used by the prisoners and, by metonymy, to the guards themselves.

Goodnight Friends, Friends Goodnight has its musical roots in the famous folk round Maudit sois-tu carillonneur [“Damn You, Bell-Ringer”] also known as Le coq est mort [“The Rooster is Dead”]. Sung – according to the score reproduced here – in a five-part round, in 4/4, with a two-bar temporal interval, this simple melody is a classic children’s song that was notably part of the Scout’s repertoire during the interwar period, as evidenced by its mention in the April 1, 1929 edition of the French Scout monthly Le Scout de France. However, it doesn’t seem to have been released on record at the time; the earliest recording we have tracked down is a children’s 45 rpm single from 1981. The score documented here attests to the circulation of Maudit sois-tu carillonneur within French Resistance circles; published in 1941, it was the product of the collection and illustration work by Yvonne Barratte, a painter, engraver, and children’s group leader. She first joined the French Red Cross in 1939-1940 as a volunteer nurse, then joined the Resistance, and was arrested in 1944 and deported to Ravensbrück, where she died in 1945. While deported, Barratte is known to have sung (and had her companions sing) many of the songs collected in this volume entitled Plein-air [“Outdoors” or “Out in the Open”].

Maudit sois-tu carillonneur is a cruel song, characterized by the curse on a bell-ringer by a narrator who can no longer bear to hear the bells ringing, bemoans that the bell-ringer was “created by God for [his] own misery”, and impatiently awaits his demise (“When will the bell toll for the ringer”). This text echoes other melodies in the collection, where the prisoners humorously sing of the hope that their terrible guards will soon meet their end (Ah la "hyène" et la "vipère" [Oh the “Hyena” and the “Viper”], La fouine [The Weasel]).

Faithfully reproducing the characteristic rhythmic pattern of the original round, the prisoners’ adaptation is built on a single rhyme (“bonsoir”, “couloir”, “au revoir”). With its focus on sisterhood, this efficient song hid a warning of danger within a greeting set to an innocent melody likely to go unnoticed.

[Sources: references 56, 67, 104 in the bibliography]

Comparative transcription