Honneur et Fidélité

Grim's "March or Die" post led to me reading up a bit on the French Foreign Legion. Here are the lyrics to their official march (translated, of course):

Le Boudin ("Blood Sausage," AKA "Marche de la Légion Étrangère")

Chorus:

Hey, here's blood sausage, here's blood sausage, here's blood sausage,

For the Alsatians, the Swiss, and the Lorrains,

For the Belgians, there is none left,

For the Belgians, there is none left,

They are lazy,

For the Belgians, there is none left,

For the Belgians, there is none left,

They are lazy.

1st verse:

We are crafty,

We are rogues,

Not ordinary guys,

We often have our cockroach, [dark moods]

We are Legionnaires.

In Tonkin, the Immortal Legion

Honoured our flag at Tuyen Quang.

Heroes of Camarón and model brothers

Sleep in peace in your tombs.

(Repeat chorus)

2nd verse:

Our ancestors knew how to die

For the glory of the Legion.

We will all know how to perish

Following tradition.

During our far-off campaigns,

Facing fever and fire,

Let us forget, along with our sorrows,

Death, which forgets us so little.

We the Legion.

(Repeat chorus)

What's up with the blood sausage and the Belgians? Apparently, blood sausage (le boudin) is the nickname for the bedroll that was tied on top the rucksack back in the 19th century, when this was written. One explanation for the role of the Belgians is that, back then, Frenchmen could not enlist in the Legion, but French criminals would pass themselves off as Belgians in order to enlist and escape the police. Being criminals, they weren't very good soldiers. There are other explanations, but I like that one.

4/1/26 Update: Really, I got too involved with searching for why the Belgians get picked on. There's no reason the chorus can't just be about breakfast, and maybe some Belgians were late one morning. Who knows?

Here's the Legion band:

The Legion is the only regular French army unit, apparently, that does not have "Honneur et Patrie" as it's motto sewn onto its flags but instead "Honneur et Fidélité." "Honor and Fatherland" doesn't make much sense for a unit of foreigners. It's second motto is "Legio Patria Nostra" -- "The Legion is Our Fatherland."

The Paradox of Enjoying Tragedy

I told Grim I'd post a few of Corb Lund's darker pieces but then got to wondering why I enjoy them. And why do any of us enjoy tragic stories? They've been around since the beginning of storytelling, so there must be some attraction.

It turns out, David Hume has some thoughts on this. The SEP quotes him thus:

It seems an unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions, that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. The more they are touched and affected, the more are they delighted with the spectacle; and as soon as the uneasy passions cease to operate, the piece is at an end. 

One answer is that tragedies refine or clarify our emotions in a kind of catharsis, which seems to have been suggested by Aristotle in his Poetics. There are a number of other answers in the SEP article if you are interested, but this one seems the most interesting to me. The SEP describes it like this:

... a plausible construction of the idea is that we come to learn about some of our emotions when their expression is elicited by highly affecting works of art, in the case of tragedies specifically by the “release” of the negative emotions of fear and pity that comes with the narrative resolution of the plot. There, the expression of our emotions does not leave them unchanged; rather, they are exposed, fine-tuned, and given a salient form when arising in conformity to a work of tragedy’s prescriptions for how to feel.

A further development of this idea suggests that part of this catharsis allows us a kind of "enlightenment about the nature of suffering."

Whatever the reason we enjoy tragic stories, here are half a dozen or so of Corb Lund's tragedies for you.

Corb Lund's Outlaws

The characters in Corb's songs are a wild variety. Here's three of his outlaws. The first song is about a tragic criminal and one of the darkest songs I know. The second isn't as dark and features a good lesson about how to treat wait staff appropriately, and the third is rather light-hearted for a song about outlaws.

 

But That's Not All I've Ever Been

There'll Be Some Changes Made

 A birthday song for Tex

Smells Like Calculus

 A little silliness as Monday hits ...

Go Rest High On That Mountain

An Oklahoma boy who made it good.

A Random Musical Interlude

If you're in New Mexico August 22-24

Spoons and a washtub bass

Gotta end with an outlaw

Tribute to Ozzy

From the album Black and Bluegrass: A Tribute to Ozzy Osbourne

 

And a little Metallica from the same band

More Roy Clark

 

Malagueña

 

Mike Rowe Teaches Everyone How to Sing the Star-Spangled Banner

And 249 years ago today ...

Hillbilly Highway to Guitar Town

In Memoriam

 

The Bellamy Brothers & The Isaacs

 

Rhonda Vincent and the Rage

 

I'd never heard of the ROMP Music Festival before, but it looks like a lot of fun. It's out in Owensboro, Kentucky, and this year it's the weekend of June 25-28.

Joe Mullins and the Radio Ramblers

 

Some John Hartford for Saturday Night

Well, This Happened

5/12/25 Update: I've decided to add a bit of content advisory to this video. It's Willie Nelson & some fellow named Orville Peck (real name?) singing about gay cowboys. I posted it as a kind of "What the heck?" thing, but maybe it was too much; it does get a bit risqué toward the end, though still well within YouTube guidelines. I'll leave further discussion to the comments and maybe a later post on the topic of entertainment. Also, what the heck?

 

Whiskey before Breakfast

 

Remarkable what one can do with junk.