This card has another French connection, for it was issued there. Also "Frere Jacques" is one of the first nursery songs most of us are treated to, though our attempts at the French are often not so good. And not just that, but on one of these cards there is the tune which yesterday`s nursery rhyme was set to - Ah Vous Dirai-je, Maman.
Strangely, then, the French seem to have no direct translation of nursery rhyme. If you look it up you get "comptine", but that refers to games and rhymes which teach children to count, and whilst that applies to some nursery rhymes it does not apply to the more fun ones.
The story of our nursery rhyme, Frere Jacques, is that a Friar at a monastery overslept, and so did not ring the bell to call his fellow monks to morning prayer. It seems to have been written at the end of the eighteenth century. Our card does not seem very monastic though, it simply looks like a child being woken up when he has slept in. There is also no bell. So it seems likely that the card was drawn more to appeal to a child than to be a faithful representation of monastic life.
There is something that you may have overlooked though, for just above the cockerel`s head which is poking through the door is a signature, "H. Gerbault". This is a very famous artist indeed, who was born in June 1863, but look closer and you will see that above or before it is the phrase "d`Apres", which means "after", or, to all intents and purposes, a copy - in other words that this is art modelled on that of Monsieur Jean Louis Armand Henri (or Henry) Gerbault. And he was alive when these cards were circulating, for he only died in 1930.
When I say "these cards", I mean it, for there are several - including :
- Ah Vous Dirai-je, Maman
- As-Tu Vu La Casquette
- Au Clair de la Lune
- Cadet Rouselle
- Fais Dodo, Colas
- Il Etait un Petit Navire
- J`ai du Bon Tabac
- La Bonne Adventure
- La Boulangere a des Ecus
- La Chanson de la Mariee
- La Mere Michel
- La Polichinelle
- Le Pont D`Avignon
- Le Roi Dagobert
- Malbrough
- Mon Per` m` a donne` un Mari
Now they do have several back styles, which seems to suggest they were reprinted. Ours looks very stylised and 1920s, but there is a version with the bottle to the left hand side and the words and music to the right hand side, and one which is vertical and has only words, including to the effect that they have had seventy years of success and won several exhibition prizes, the latest being London 1908
As to what Riqles was, well it was a kind of a soft drink made with peppermint, though there was some alcohol in it and it was sold as being medicinal. Its full name is Alcool de Menthe de Ricqlès, and it was first created in 1838 by Monsieur Heyman de Ricqlès, of Lyon, France. That ties in really neatly with the seventieth anniversary being in 1908.