Saut crapaud ta queue va brûler.
Prends courage un autre va pousser.
This little ditty is the first French I ever learned in a classroom.
Growing up in South Louisiana, you learned other French words outside of class, but they couldn’t be repeated inside class unless you felt like being sent to the principal’s office.
Saut crapaud ta queue va brûler.
Prends courage un autre va pousser.
These were my first French words from a teacher.
Technically, she was a student teacher. Miss Chauvin was her name and she worked with Mrs. Zeringue, my third grade teacher at W.S. Lafargue Elementary School. We didn’t learn our teachers’ first names back then. I learned later in life that Mrs. Zeringue’s name was Suzanne. I never learned Miss Chauvin’s, which is sad because I had a huge crush on Miss Chauvin. She taught us about Acadian history and culture in the spring of 1966.
Saut crapaud ta queue va brûler.
Prends courage un autre va pousser.
I know it was the spring of 1966, because at the end of August 1965, Hurricane Betsy destroyed our brand new classroom. We held class in the teacher’s lounge until they built a new classroom for us and we didn’t move into it until after Christmas break. It was one of those “temporary” buildings that were still in use a decade after I graduated high school.
Saut crapaud ta queue va brûler.
Prends courage un autre va pousser.
Driving back to Tennessee from Louisiana was uneventful this week. Christmas with my parents and all of my siblings together for the first time in 10 years was great. Short visits with dear friends are always priceless. But the drive back was uneventful, other than me finding the pepper grinder I’ve been looking for. I found it at the outlet mall in Gonzales on my way out of the state.
Saut crapaud ta queue va brûler.
Prends courage un autre va pousser.
I kept singing this ditty, over and over as I drove what is now an extremely familiar route. We learned the song with a somewhat slow tune, but you can sing it fast or slow, as I’ve done a zillion times. I couldn’t get it out of my head all afternoon and into the evening on Friday.
Saut crapau, — Jump frog,
ta queue va brûler. — your tail is on fire.
Prends courage — Take courage,
un autre va pousser. — another will grow.
There are other ways to translate this (some rather risque) and other ways to spell the French words. Cajun was a spoken language, so there’s no right or wrong way here.
I’m sure it has a deeper meaning than a warning to a frog. Frogs don’t actually have tails. They have to lose their tails before they can become a frog. And if they did have a tail afterward and it burned off, another wouldn’t grow.
But whatever it means, to me it’s a ditty from a simpler age that pops into my head from time to time, like a post card to me, from me when I was 8 years old.
Don’t ask me what I had for lunch on Monday, though.
Tom Laughlin
