Véronique Chalot

You can say anything about the defunct weekly Avvenimenti, for which the writer worked for five years, except that it shied away from reckless gambles. Like trying to boost sales by bundling in CDs of traditional Kurdish laments, Russian dances, or songs of the Maremma and of anarchy. But it's often precisely by daring the unlikely that you unearth real treasures. And there were plenty to be found in that peculiar series, which dredged up from the cellars the lost tapes of Folkstudio, ranging from the Celtic ballads of John Renbourn to the bossa nova of Irio De Paula. What truly bewitched this writer, though, was an even dustier and more obscure CD: "La chanson de Provence – Antiche ballate provenzali e bretoni dal XIII al XIV secolo", curated by Véronique Chalot. On the cover, nothing but the gaunt face of this folksinger from Le Havre, who landed in Italy in 1975 as an ambassador of the Celtic revival and unexpectedly ended up signed by boss Cesaroni at his folk temple in Rome, to record this debut LP. Inside, among the many gems of this majestic, ancestral sound, is a ballad of the kind that, from the very first listen, clings to you like a spell: "Complainte de la blanche biche".

So much for the personal revelation. But then there's the history, and this ballad's roots run extremely deep. Already present in the repertoire of Malicorne, Tri Yann and Laurence Guillon, "Complainte de la blanche biche" is among the oldest songs in the entire French tradition. According to historian and ethnologist Henri-Irénée Marrou, alias "Henri Davenson", it was once widespread between the Vendée and Normandy, though its origins are believed to be Breton (even though no lyrics have ever been found in that language, only in a French dialect). The fact remains that the ballad quickly spread throughout almost all of northern France in at least fifty different versions, shifting in structure and verses – as recounted by Riccardo Venturi, a true Italian scholar of this traditional, who reconstructs its history in the pages of "Songs Against War".

It all originates from one of the lais of the 12th century, short "chants", verse tales practised by troubadours and often inspired by myths and legends of various origins. The genre's specialist in France in the 12th century is Marie de France, a mysterious writer-abbess whose true identity has never been revealed, fuelling theories of every kind, including the notion that she never actually existed and that her name is a purely literary invention uniting authors linked by a shared cultural background. Her work develops the themes of courtly love by transcribing legends from the Matter of Britain (the Breton or Arthurian cycle). And it is precisely her "Lai de Guigemar" that represents the first embryo of the "Complaint": Guigemar, a young vassal with a heart of stone, kills the white doe (biche) during a hunt, but she casts a spell back on him through the arrow, which rebounds and wounds Guigemar in the thigh: the only cure for the vulnus will be love, which the young man finally finds in a lady who comes from the afterlife, who turns out to be none other than the reincarnation of that very white doe.

Up to this point, it would be nothing more than the transposition, into the age of courtly love, of a powerful mythological figure, symbol of pride and virginal purity, but also a link between the world of the living and the afterlife, of which, in Celtic tradition, she is often depicted as a messenger.

According to Venturi, however, "this romantic story conceals a much older and far more tragic myth, disguising a theme that was commonplace in ancient ballads: incest, one of the most unspeakable sins of an archaic, rural society". In support of this thesis, he cites another standard of the era, of Scottish origin, "The Bonny Heyn", in which, "not by chance, the victim of incest (albeit accidental) is again presented as a doe, through the guise of a dream, a common device used to conceal reality".

Through the metaphor of the doe, we thus learn the story of the unfortunate Marguerite (Noguent in De France's original version), forced to endure repeated abuse from her brother Renaud and driven to such despair that she makes one final plea to her mother: “Son fanciulla di giorno, e la notte una bianca cerbiatta / Mi danno la caccia i prìncipi e i baroni/ E mio fratello Rinaldo è di tutti il peggiore/ Go, mother, go and tell him quickly/ Che fermi i suoi cani fino a domani a mezzogiorno”. The ending, however, is worthy of the most gruesome of murder ballads: the doe is killed, skinned and cooked for the noblemen's banquet, while the cruel Renaud mockingly asks where his sister might be; until she — in a finale with grotesque, supernatural overtones — reveals herself through the remains of the deer: “Non dovete che mangiare, io sono a capotavola/ La mia testa è nel piatto, il cuore alle caviglie/ Il mio sangue è sparso per tutta la cucina/ E sui vostri neri tizzoni bruciano le mie povere ossa”.

In a kind of reversal of the myth of Iphigenia – spared from sacrifice after being replaced by Artemis with a doe and carried off to Tauris – the white doe thus becomes the symbol of all the young girls atrociously abused within their own families, turning Marie de France's romantic myth into a universal cry of pain.

The "Complainte de la blanche biche" not only spread across Northern Europe – also through its Scottish twin "The Bonny Heyn" – but crossed the ocean into the New World, taking root in French-speaking Quebec, where – again according to Venturi – "it seems to keep a much more elementary melody, while the lyrics bring lost details to the surface: first and foremost, the possible guilt of the white doe's mother, who fails to warn her son (here named Julien). Having repented of her guilt, the mother lets herself be discovered by her son and decides to atone by losing herself in the woods; but the son takes her dagger and kills himself." An evolution that may stem from various lost European versions, one that Michel Faubert would gather in his own rendition of the song (on the 1992 album "Maudite mémoire"). There would also be those who created a polyphonic version (Le Poème Harmonique, on the album "Plaisir d'Amour – Chansons & Romances de la France d'autrefois") and those who shaped it along more properly folk-rock lines (Danielle Messia's Grattons-Labeur, on the 1976 album "Le bal des sorciers").

The version by Véronique Chalot, recorded with Vanni Draghetti (guitar, bass) and Stefano Lunardi (guitar, banjo and violin), is instead among the most faithful to the original and among the most successful in terms of arrangements too, managing to bring out the very pure melody at its best: accompanying herself on guitar, dulcimer and autoharp, the French folksinger transports us to the cold, misty woods of medieval Provence, unleashing a stunning display of her crystalline, mesmerizing voice, which surely deserved a wider audience. Little is known, in fact, about the rest of the career of this mysterious Norman damsel: besides releasing two further albums ("J'ai vu le loup" in 1978 and "A l'entrée du temps clair" in 1980) for Materiali Sonori, she took part in setting up the Traditional Dance Music Workshop "Incontro dei Gruppi di Ricerca Etno-Musicale" (France, Italy, Ireland) at the Centro Culturale in Florence. Having returned to France in 1989, she settled between Toulouse and the Pyrenees, devoting herself to Classical and Court music, founding the ensemble Volubilis and releasing the album "Entre cours et jardins" in 2000.

I almost forgot: Véronique Chalot's CD at Folkstudio is now impossible to find, but perhaps a few copies are still floating around flea markets and online auctions: if you get the chance, don't let it slip by.

Celles qui vont au bois, c'est la mère et la fille,

La mère va chantant et sa fille soupire.

Qu'a vous à soupirer, ma blanche Marguerite?

J'ai bien trop d'ire en moi et n'ose vous le dire.

Je suis fille le jour et la nuit blanche biche

La chasse est après moi des barons et des princes.

Et mon frère Renaud qui est encore le pire;

Allez ma mère, allez, bien promptement lui dire

Qu'il arrête ses chiens jusqu'à demain midi.

Où sont tes chiens Renaud, et la chasse gentille?

Ils sont dedans le bois, à courre blanche biche.

Arrête-les Renaud, arrête je t’en prie.

Trois fois les a cornés de son cornet de cuivre,

A la troisième fois la blanche biche est prise.

Mandons le dépouilleur qu’il dépouille la biche

Celui qui la dépouille dit: Je ne sais que dire.

Elle a les cheveux blonds et le sein d’une fille.

A tiré son couteau, en quartiers il l’a mise.

En ont fait un dîner aux barons et aux princes:

Nous voici tous illec, hors ma sœur Marguerite.

Vous n’avez qu’à manger, suis la première assise,

Ma tête est dans le plat et mon cœur aux chevilles.

Mon sang est répandu par toute la cuisine,

Et sur vos noirs charbons mes pauvres os s’y grillent.

Celles qui vont au bois, c'est la mère et la fille,

La mère va chantant et sa fille soupire.

Qu'a vous à soupirer, ma blanche Marguerite?

J'ai bien trop d'ire en moi et n'ose vous le dire.

***

Italian translation (by Riccardo Venturi)

Those who go to the woods are the mother and the daughter,

The mother walks along singing, and the daughter sighs.

What have you to sigh about, my fair Marguerite?

I have such anger in me, and I haven't the courage to tell you.

By day I am a maiden, and by night a white doe,

The princes and barons are hunting me.

And my brother Rinaldo is the worst of them all;

Go, mother, go and tell him quickly

To call off his hounds until tomorrow at noon.

Where are your hounds, Rinaldo, your noble pack?

They are in the woods, hunting the white doe.

Call them off, Rinaldo, call them off, I beg you.

Three times he urged them on with his brass horn,

At the third sound of the horn the white doe is caught.

Let us send someone to deliver the death blow and skin her,

The skinner says: I truly don't know what to say.

She has blonde hair and the breast of a young girl.

He has drawn his knife and quartered her,

They made a feast of her for princes and barons:

Here we all are, except for my sister Margherita.

You need only eat, I am at the head of the table,

My head is on the plate, my heart at the ankles.

My blood is spilled all through the kitchen,

And on your black embers my poor bones are burning.

Those who go to the woods are the mother and the daughter,

The mother walks along singing, and the daughter sighs.

What have you to sigh about, my fair Marguerite?

I have such anger in me, and I haven't the courage to tell you.

(Special thanks to Riccardo Venturi and the site Songs Against War for the valuable information provided)

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16/03/2026