to sing, especially when working with others in the
woods or when on the march. The voyageurs relieved the tedium of their
long journeys by breaking into song at intervals. But the popular
repertoire was limited to a few folksongs, most of them songs of Old
France. They were easy to learn, simple to sing, but sprightly and
melodious. Some of them have remained on the lips and in the hearts of
the French-Canadian race for over two hundred years. Those who do not
know the _Claire fontaine_ and _Ma boule roulant_ have never known
French Canada. The _foretier_ of today still goes to the woods
chanting the _Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre_ which his ancestors
caroled in the days of Blenheim and Malplaquet. When the habitant
sang, moreover, it was in no pianissimo tones; he was lusty and
cheerful about giving vent to his buoyant spirits. And his descendant
of today has not lost that propensity.

The folklore of the old dominion, unlike the folk music, was
extensive. Some of it came with the colonists from their Norman
firesides, but more, perhaps, was the outcome of a superstitious
popular imagination working in the new and strange environment of the
wilderness. The habitant had a profound belief in the supernatural,
and was prone to associate miraculous handiwork with every unusual
event. He peopled the earth and the air, the woods and the rivulets,
with spirits of diverse forms and varied motives. The red man's
abounding superstition, likewise, had some influence upon the
habitant's highstrung temperament. At any rate, New France was full of
legends and weird tales. Every island, every cove in the river, had
one or more associated with it. Most of these legends had some moral
lessons attached to them: they were tales of disaster which came from
disobeying the teachings of the Church or of miraculous escape from
death or perdition due to the supernatural rewarding of righteousness.
Taken together, they make up a wholesome and vigorous body of
folklore, reflecting both the mystic temper of the colony and the
religious fervor of its common life. A distinguished son of French
Canada has with great industry gathered these legends together, a
service for which posterity will be grateful.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sir J.M. Lemoine, _Legends of the St. Lawrence_ (Quebec,
1878).]

Various chroniclers have left us pen portraitures of the habitant as
they saw him in the olden days. Charlevoix, La Hontan, Hocquart, and
Peter Kalm, men of wide