À L'OMBRE DES MARIS -Brassens

À L'OMBRE DES MARIS – IN THE SHADOW OF HUSBANDS

This is an amusing song about the complication of extra-marital relationships among people most typically in the world of entertainment and the arts. In a programme shown last year on French TV, « Regard de Brassens », Brassens, in a recorded interview, told us frankly that he deliberately chose affairs with married women, because falling in love with a single woman could mean marriage and children and loss of his liberty. In the light of this principle, the song « A l’ombre des maris » has a comic irony that Brassens must have enjoyed.



Les dragons de vertu n'en prennent pas ombrage,
May dragons of virtue take no offence at this:
Si j'avais eu l'honneur de commander à bord,
If I’d had the honour to have command on board
À bord du Titanic quand il a fait naufrage,
On board the Titanic when it was wrecked at sea,
J'aurais crié : "Les femm's adultères d'abord !"
I would have yelled: “All adulterous women go first”

Ne jetez pas la pierre à la femme adultère,
Cast not a stone at the adulterous woman
Je suis derrière...
I am right behind her.

Car, pour combler les voeux, calmer la fièvre ardente
For to sate the desirs, calm the fevers that rage
Du pauvre solitaire et qui n'est pas de bois,
In a poor lonely soul, who is made not of stone(1)
Nulle n'est comparable à l'épouse inconstante.
Nothing can compare with an inconstant wife.
Femmes de chefs de gare,(2) c'est vous la fleur d'époi. (3)
Station-masters’ wives, you’re the pick of the crop.

Ne jetez pas la pierre à la femme adultère,
Cast not a stone at the adulterous woman
Je suis derrière...
I am right behind her.

Quant à vous, messeigneurs, aimez à votre guise,
As for you, lordly priests, love in your kind of way
En ce qui me concerne, ayant un jour compris
As for me, from the day, I grew to understand
Qu'une femme adultère est plus qu'une autre exquise,
An adulterous wife is exquisite as none other
Je cherche mon bonheur à l'ombre des maris.
I seek my greatest bliss in the husbands’ shadow.

Ne jetez pas la pierre à la femme adultère,
Cast not a stone at the adulterous woman
Je suis derrière...
I am right behind her.

À l'ombre des maris, mais cela va sans dire,
In the husbands’ shadow, but I don’t need to say.
Pas n'importe lesquels, je les trie, les choisis.
Not just any husband, I sort them, I choose them
Si madame Dupont,(4) d'aventure, m'attire,
If it’s madame Dupont, who p’rhaps catches my eye,
Il faut que, par surcroît, Dupont me plaise aussi !
It’s vital besides that I like Dupont as well !

Ne jetez pas la pierre à la femme adultère,
Cast not a stone at the adulterous woman
Je suis derrière...
I am right behind her.


Il convient que le bougre ait une bonne poire
It needs that the fellow has a nice enough mug
Sinon, me ravisant, je détale à grands pas,
Otherwise, changing tack, I clear off like a shot.
Car je suis difficile et me refuse à boire
For I am most choosy and I refuse to drink
Dans le verr' d'un monsieur qui ne me revient pas.
From the glass of a man, whose looks put me right off.

Ne jetez pas la pierre à la femme adultère,
Cast not a stone at the adulterous woman
Je suis derrière...
I am right behind her.

Ils sont loins mes débuts où, manquant de pratique
Long past my beginnings when lacking in practice
Sur des femmes de flics (5) je mis mon dévolu.
After wives of policemen, I went out on the trawl.
Je n'étais pas encore ouvert à l'esthétique,
I had not yet achieved a sense of aesthetics.
Cette faute de goût je ne la commets plus.
This error of good taste, I don’t make any more.

Ne jetez pas la pierre à la femme adultère,
Cast not a stone at the adulterous woman
Je suis derrière...
I am right behind her.

Oui, je suis tatillon, pointilleux, mais j'estime
Yes I am finicky, demanding, but believe
Que le mari doit être un gentleman complet,
That the husband must be a gentleman complete,
Car on finit tous deux par devenir intimes
For you finish up both getting extremely close
À force, à force de se passer le relais.(6)
Through -Through the changeovers of our mutual relay .

Ne jetez pas la pierre à la femme adultère,
Cast not a stone at the adulterous woman
Je suis derrière...
I am right behind her.

Mais si l'on tombe, hélas ! sur des maris infâmes,
But if you come across, alas ! husbands most vile,
Certains sont si courtois, si bons si chaleureux,
Still some are so polite, so welcoming, so kind
Que, même après avoir cessé d'aimer leur femme,
That even after having stopped loving their wives
On fait encor semblant uniquement pour eux.
You act as though still you’re the one for them alone.

Ne jetez pas la pierre à la femme adultère,
Cast not a stone at the adulterous woman
Je suis derrière...
I am right behind her.

C'est mon cas ces temps-ci, je suis triste, malade,
That’s my case at present, I am sick and downcast
Quand je dois faire honneur à certaine pécore,
When I have to perform with one crazy female
Mais, son mari et moi, c'est Oreste et Pylade,(7)
But her husband and I, we’re Oreste and Pylade,
Et, pour garder l'ami, je la cajole encore.
And to stay with the friend, I fondle her still.

Ne jetez pas la pierre à la femme adultère,
Cast not a stone at the adulterous woman
Je suis derrière...
I am right behind her.

Non contente de me déplaire, elle me trompe,
Not content with her vexing, she’s deceiving me
Et les jours où, furieux, voulant tout mettre à bas
And on days I get mad, want to have it all out
Je crie : "La coupe est pleine, il est temps que je rompe !"
I shout : “The cup is full, it’s time for us to break!”
Le mari me supplie : "Non, ne me quittez pas !"
The husband beseeches: “No don’t you desert me!”

Ne jetez pas la pierre à la femme adultère,
Cast not a stone at the adulterous woman
Je suis derrière...
I am right behind her.

Et je reste, et, tous deux, ensemble on se flagorne
And I stay, and, we both, butter up the other.
Moi, je lui dis : "C'est vous mon cocu préféré."
I say to him : My favourite cuckold is you
Il me réplique alors : "Entre toutes mes cornes,
He replies to me then : Of all the horns I wear
Celles que je vous dois, mon cher, me sont sacrées."
The ones I owe to you, dear friend, are sacred.

Ne jetez pas la pierre à la femme adultère,
Cast not a stone at the adulterous woman
Je suis derrière...
I am right behind her.

Et je reste et, parfois, lorsque cette pimbêche
And I stay and sometimes when that jumped-up creature
S'attarde en compagnie de son nouvel amant,
Lingers late in her latest lover’s company
Que la nurse est sortie, le mari à la pêche,(8)
When the nanny is out, the husband’s gone fishing
C'est moi, pauvre de moi ! qui garde les enfants.
It is me, poor old me, who looks after the kids

Ne jetez pas la pierre à la femme adultère,
Cast not a stone at the adulterous woman

1972 - Fernande





Translation Notes for A l’ombre des maris

1) As a figurative expression for “unfeeling”. Brassens uses “made of wood” but as wooden in English suggests awkward, I have substituted “stone”.
2) The stationmaster is a symbol of the deceived husband because of a line in a well-known vulgar song: “Il est cocu, le chef de gare” – he is cuckolded the stationmaster.
3) Fleur d’époi is a complimentary term, which would tell us that wives of stationmasters dress with the utmost elegance. However there is a secondary meaning because “l’époi” is the tip of a stag’s horns which are the symbol of cuckoldry.
4) Madame Dupont – the name is chosen as a common French surname, just as, in English, we would use Mrs Smith or Mrs Jones for a general name.
5) Femmes de flics. This disparaging verse about the wives of cops is somewhat gratuitous, but Brassens often felt the need to express his distaste for the police
6) À force, à force de se passer le relais. - Brassens’ repetition at the start of this line might suggest hesitation about giving erotic detail of the actual arrangements, with the passing over of the wife from one to the other. When I was struggling with this line, a little linguistic point struck me: English terminology is “pass the baton” a French word of course. The French, however , do not use it saying: “Passer le témoin” – pass the witness.
7) Oreste and Pylade -are characters in classical mythology (and in Racine’s Andromaque) who typify friendship. Orestes was the son of Agamemnon who was murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra. When he reached adulthood, Orestes returned to his native Mycenae to seek revenge for the death of his father. With the collusion of his sister, Electra and of his cousin and close friend, Pylades, Orestes killed his own mother, Clytemnestra and also her lover, Aegisthus. Pylades became the husband of Electra.
8) le mari à la pêche – There is a line of a song : Le cocu qui s'ennoblit en pêchant.

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