He’s the one who nicknamed me “le papillon” a long time ago. He said I never just entered a room but skipped, flitted or flew into it. I remember loving it when he’d greet me this way. You can tell here that I wasn’t one to sit still very long for a photo either. He also sometimes called me “la pitoune” which I never fully understood. It’s pronounced like the word “spittoon” and has nothing to do with “poutine”, the french fry dish. Now I know that pitoune actually means a 4-foot piece of log! 

La sleigh de pitoune

Many of our ancestors were loggers in the wild Northern Ontario bush for entire winter seasons. It was a safer way to load their horse-drawn sleighs crosswise with these short pieces to get them out of the forest trails. This work was called “charrier d’la pitoune”. Dad recently refurbished a little sleigh loaded with 4′ pitoune as a cottage decoration. Now that I know the story behind it, it’s that much more special when I see it.

Thanks to my dad for his love of nostalgia and music and for having this guitar in our house for my entire childhood too. He had received it as a gift from my mom, to bring to parties and strum along with family and friends. Once in a while he’d tune it up at our kitchen table and pick out a few melodies for us and I just loved that. I was given piano lessons on our brand new piano at the age of 7 and my brother was the one who got guitar lessons. It eventually went to my younger brother who taught me my first 3 chords on it in 2004. Ever since then, I’ve been hooked on strings and still love to play guitar as well as the ukulele.

Right between those two worlds lives the Baritone Ukulele and lately, I’ve been looking for more ways to bring that deep bari sound into the mix. With that, here’s an arrangement of Papillon, tu es volage, in Bm for baritone ukulele, with a harmony part played on ukulele.  You can download the pdf here.

This one’s for my dad…

LeBlancPapillon · Papillon, tu es volage

From The Canadian Encyclopedia: ‘Papillon, tu es volage’. Folksong in the form of a dialogue. It is of French origin and has been found in Canada in several variants, most often in the minor key. I’ve only included the first and last verse in the voice of the fair maiden. I left out the voice of the fickle lover but the arrangement sheet includes the lyrics for the entire dialogue between them.