Les funérailles d'antan [English translation]

Some time ago the relatives of newly dead people kept you up to speed,

they kindly let their friends profit from it:

“we have a corpse at home, and if you would like to,

please do come and mourn him with us at the stroke of noon...”

But the living today are no longer so generous,

when they possess a corpse they keep it for themselves.

That’s the reason for which, since a few years ago,

you’ve missed lots of burials. (twice)

Chorus :

But where are the funerals of times gone by?

The small hearses, hearses, hearses, hearses

of our grandfathers,

that followed the road bouncing along,

the little stiffs, stiffs, stiffs, stiffs

plump and affluent...

when the heirs were happy,

for the grave-digger, for the undertaker, for the priest, even for the horses

they would buy drinks.

They are past and gone,

they have had their day,

the lovely funeral par, par, par, par, par parlours

We’ll never see them again,

and that’s really sad,

the lovely funeral parlours of when we were young

Now the hearses, at great speed and risk of accidents1,

carry the dead right up to the hellish middle of nowhere,

the unfortunates no longer have even the infantile pleasure

of seeing their duped2 heirs walking through the horseshit.

The other week some bastards, at a hundred an fourty per hour3,

were carrying one of theirs to a third-class cemetery...

When they’d flattened themselves on a hard-wood tree

you could see that the deceased had made some new ones. (twice)

Chorus

Rather than having a funeral without flourishes,

I would prefer, all things considered, to do without a grave,

I’d prefer to die in water, in fire, doesn’t matter where,

and even, if it were absolutely necessary, not to die at all.

O, let the time of the deceased bloated with pride be reborn,

the show-off days of have-you-seen-me-in-my-superb-casket,

when, even if it meant spending every last penny,

people really wanted to die at a higher level than they had lived4. (twice)

Chorus

1. There are two possible meanings for this. The phrase “à tombeau ouvert” has been used at least since 1894 to mean “À une vitesse telle que l'on risque la mort “ (in 1894 it was referring to riding a horse at insane speed) and TLF cites its use for “très vite, au risque d'un grave accident” in 1949; the addition of “grand” makes it fit the metre as well as suggesting an an even crazier speed. The other possible meaning is “to a wide open grave”. Both make sense in context. Probably Brassens intended both meanings to be seen so as to have a neat pun. 2. the expense of a very posh casket and lots of flourishes meant the heirs didn't get as mush money as they had expected3. about 88 mph4. literally: “to die higher up than their arse”- - this is an adaptation of the ordinary French “to fart higher up than their arse” to fit the funereal context