Jean - the baby is dancing. French folk songs

Old France.

red tiled roofs of villages.

Fields bordered by thick forests.

mountain slopes with fragrant grass, flocks of cows and flock sheep.

If you listen, you will definitely distinguish how the stream sings nearby, and with its blacks, the quiet melting of the shepherds merges.

And above, over impregnable cliffs, you will see the castle of the count or the duke, and dust rises to him, hooves are knocking, a carriage rushes.

A peaceful life at any moment can be interrupted at the whim of warring barons - and then they will reach along the fields and country roads of a string of soldiers, the smoke of conflagrations will rise to the sky and camping bonfires.

In the thick of all this difficult, but often and a fun life, folk poetry lives from time immemorial. For a long time she was the only chronicle that preserved the memory of the past. So a person remembers his childhood, of all his joys, fantasies and sorrows. Sometimes it seems that children's memories are the brightest in life. Then legends arise - about the childhood of a person, about the childhood of the people.

more lively, the memories are preserved directly in children's folklore. Today we read with you counters, nursery rhymes, rhymed riddles, songs and ballads - examples of the most common genres of French poetic folklore for children.

to translate folklore is very interesting, but this is a special and not always grateful. It is clear that not a single author does not convey the whole aroma in translation, all the subtleties that sometimes polished in the language for centuries, taking the most accurate, poetic and children's form. Therefore, two serious tasks are faced with the folklore translator: to preserve the meaning and game embedded in every line, and convey them to the most similar and natural means of your native language.

the main thing that you achieve and what you are especially pleased with good luck, - When the spirit of the original, its originality remain in the language of translation. Then, I hope, in the game I will want to be considered French counters, and before going to bed to sing French lullaby, just like his own, dear.

Mikhail Yasnov.

for primary school age.