Colin’s Hen, or Le Lanlire

Sometimes, in an author’s writing life, the personal and the fictional collide. So it is that in the far north of England, we had a smallholding with a variety of animals. One of our feisty cockerels was called Colin.

At a pivotal moment in the story of Jean, the French-Canadian soldier who has escaped from the battles of the Somme, remembers a song from his life in Québec.

The song he remembers, La Poule à Colin, is a traditional folk tune, with a few nonsense lyrics thrown in. The full lyrics are presented by Mama Lisa in her World of Children and International Culture website.

I was very much taken by the coincidence of our own cockerel’s name, given him long before I embarked on this novel, and the owner of the unfortunate hen in this song.