PREFACE.
Many of these translations were published during the course of the present year in the column of Ephemerides in the Montreal Gazette, and were written in response to an enquiry for English translations of the old Canadian songs.
The object of the translator has been to present, in an English dress and in a form that will allow of their being sung to the airs which most of us have heard with delight, a few of the more popular and striking of those songs of Old France, so wonderfully preserved by our song-loving countrymen. Of these, many have disappeared in their mother-country, and in nearly all of them changes and corruptions have debased either the words or the air. It is also to be feared, alas! that even in the Province of Quebec, which has been their ark of safety for so long, some of them are being forgotten.
The selections that have been made are those which appeared to the translator to offer the best opportunity for successful treatment in another language; while some of the
