Frère Jacques

This simple song features prominently in no fewer than three episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s in most of the beginning piano method books from which I teach, so a week seldom goes by without my hearing it. But the song I grew up singing – in English – is actually quite different from the original French. My song was about a lazy brother John who slept past the morning bells. The French version is actually chiding a Friar named Jacques (the French equivalent of James, not John). It is Jacques’ job to ring the bells for the matins so all the monks can rise to pray in the wee hours of the morning. When a priory tour guide explained this to us, my first thought was from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: “Why are you here?” “I'm here for your welfare.” “A night of unbroken sleep would be more condusive to that end.”