THE HABITANT. VERY now and then we turn a fresh page in our book-life and find a new world and new people-real live people we had not known. before, but are henceforward to live withPrivate Mulvaney, for example, or a dearer friend still, Miss Mattie Jenkins. We forget the creator in his creation, and in a twinkling the new friend he has given us is a life-long acquaintance. In his book recently published, Dr Drummond, of Montreal, has introduced to us a new friend, the Habitant. He has done his work admirably. M. Louis Fréchette, the poet of Lower Canada, in an appreciative introduction, applies to the author the name he himself received from Longfellow, "The path-finder of a new land of song," and not unjustly. Dr Drummond has drawn the French Canadian to the life. He has made the daring attempt to let the Habitant speak for himself as well as he can in English-a risky experiment. Charming as much of Hans Breitmann is, there is a rampageous flamboyant unreality in many of Leland's conceptions. Hans is a comic character, a grotesque, but 'Poleon and Damase are real people. The author, says M. Fréchette, "a resté vrai, sans tomber dans la vulgarité, et piquant sans verser dans le grotesque." Who is the Habitant? Briefly, the French peasant of Lower Canada. A few words of introduction may be forgiven before we let him speak for himself. When England says farewell to her colonist son, she does it usually with dry eyes. He can sink or swim as he pleases. If he does reach another shore and does succeed in making himself felt, she is proud of him, and then will consent to help him along, but not till then. The New Englanders were in the main left to themselves for nearly half a century, and by that time were a community to be reckoned with, strong enough to impress themselves and their spirit on their governors, as the correspondence of Dongan with Denonville shews. But other nations do things differently. Louis XIV was intent on having a colony in Canada, and it was fostered, coddled, bonus'd, and buttressed till the only thing that made it a success was its absorption by the English, who left the colonists to look after themselves, which they did with conspicuous success and throve wonderfully. But Louis left no stone unturned. He exported colonists by the score, with soldiers to protect them, governors to direct them, and priests galore to bring them up in the way they should go. But they were not satisfied; they wanted wives. Whereupon the provident King sent a cargo or two of wives from the orphanages of Paris, who were readily snapped up, but hardly "gave satisfaction," for Paris, with all its greatness, was scarcely an agricultural centre, and the girls knew nothing of farming. For the future the good King did better, and sent maidens from Normandy and Brittany, a hundred or two at a time with a matron to look after each cargo. In New France, meanwhile, the government provided for the damsel's reception. Celibacy was penalized, and the bachelor was bound over under pain of a fine to be a married man within a fortnight of the arrival of the next consignment of brides. The clergy seconded the efforts of the civil powers and were all for large families. The poor little children were numerous and neglected at first, ill clad and ill housed. But with British rule, the French peasant settled down to more solid comfort. He had no longer such strong inducements to take to the woods and escape paternal government, though up to the middle of this century the West swarmed with French Canadians turned Indian and mated with squaws. Farming and lumbering are the main industries of the French outside the towns, into which they throng to become operatives. Many thousands go to the States to fill the factories of New England, till there are there some half million French Canadians, many still strongly French, many denationalized with translated names. The priests follow them up, but are not so able amid American influences to retain their hold on their flocks as among the Catholic traditions of Canada, In Dr Drummond's poems we have as lively a picture of the French Canada of to-day as we have of the Old Régime in the fascinating histories of Parkman. We have the peasant as he is, simply good-hearted, affectionate, and shrewd. rusticus, abnormis sapiens, crassaque Minerva. We surprise him wooing, we watch him working, we listen to him aged and garrulous. The curé, the notary, the doctor, the farmer, and the lumberman meet us at every turn, and we have a capital sketch of the clever young man who "goes on Les Etats Unis." The picture of "Le Vieux Temps" and "Ole Tam" are idyllic. The old man dreams of old times; "O dem was pleasure day for sure, dem day of long ago, (In passing one may remark the Habitant is like our friend"who loved the exact truth to vindicate," and his corrections of his estimates of numbers and his conscientious supplemental statements are most pleasing. "De win' she blow lak hurricane, Bimeby she blow some more.") Yes, in the days of long ago he was happy in his father's home in "a nice, nice familee, Dat's ten garçon an' forteen girl, was mak' it twenty t'ree." The large families are still a characteristic of Lower Canada; in fact the Government bonus them, and the father of twelve children receives a grant of 160 acres of land free. The result is that the French spread and the English are being crowded out of Quebec Province, while certain townships of Eastern Ontario are getting uncomfortably French. For this bonus we are indebted to the late M. Mercier, but it was not always so. "De English peep dat only got wan familee small size Mus' be feel glad dat tam dere is no honder acre prize For fader of twelve chil'ren-dey know dat mus' be so, De Canayens would boss Kebeck--mebbe Ontario." But this is another story, our peasant says, and goes on to say they were "never lonesome on dat house," and tells of a merry-making when he was twenty-one, with Bonhomme Latour to make music with his fiddle, and "ole Curé Ladonceur" to give the sanction of the church and prevent excessive flirtation. Then follow stories of the 18th century days "w'en Iroquois sauvage she's keel de Canayens an' steal deir hair," and they set off for their homes with a warning from the Curé "prenez garde pour les sauvages." The natural consequence follows, and Elmire "Ma girl-she's fader beeg farmer-leev 'noder side St Flore, Got five-six honder acre-mebbe a leetle more Nice sugar-bush-une belle maison-de bes' I never see-" is betrothed ere she gets home. Perhaps there were other reasons precipitating the match than the fear of Iroquois, and at any rate all reluctance on the lady's part vanishes on the suggestion that "Polique Gautier your frien' on St Césaire Tax her marry me nex' wick-she tak' me-I don't care." I fear more marriages are foreshadowed than are ever registered in French Canada as elsewhere. Paul Joulin "de mos' riche man on Ste Angelique" proves too great a catch for Mamzelle Julie, though we are told "she's love only jus' wan man," and alas! "w'en Jérémie come off de wood nex' spring" it turns out he had experienced a similar change in favour of "'noder girl on Ste Dorothée." We have some interesting pictures of lumbering life, away in the woods, where for months through the winter, timber is hewn and made ready to be rafted down the rivers into the St Lawrence, and to Trois Rivières and Quebec, thence to find its way to the Tyne and the Clyde. "Yourse'f an' res' of de boy, Johnnie, by light of de coal oil lamp, An' you're singin' an' tolin' story, sittin' aroun' de camp, We hear de win' on de chimley, an' we know it was beeg, beeg storm, But ole box stove she is roarin', an' camp's feelin' nice an' warm. "An' Louis Charette asleep, Johnnie, wit' hees back up agen de wall, Makin' soche noise wit' hees nose, dat you t'ink it was moose on de fall."* Johnnie meanwhile is reading in his bunk a letter received three months before with some cabalistic signs the meaning of which the narrator conjectures, probably correctly. Yet for all this three months "It's fonny you can't do widout it ev'ry tam you was goin' to bed, W'y readin' dat letter so often, you must have it all on de head." But in deference to a request from the floor Johnnie puts Philomene into his pocket and comes down to sing, and the song is followed by the fiddle, and the fiddle by "leetle small danser." * Old English for "Autumn." |