Poetry
Lèyîz-m' plorer
Not translated into English
Nicolas Defrêcheux · 1854
Synopsis
Let me weep: a young man voices his despair after the death of the woman he loved. Nothing else: no story, no moral, no emphasis. He asks to be left to weep and says again that he has lost her, in a few stanzas made to be sung, in the speech of Liège, a language that was then used hardly at all except for anecdotes, satires and songs for occasions.
Context
The poem appeared in the Journal de Liège of 23 June 1854. Sung to the tune of Hippolyte Monpou's Gastibelza, it spread in offprints: six printings of two thousand copies between 1854 and 1856, an exceptional circulation for the time. The emulation it aroused gave rise to the Société liégeoise de littérature wallonne, which its author helped to found. It gave its name to a vein that critics call lèyîz-m' plorisme.
Who it is for
A few stanzas of a song in Liège Walloon; the text appears in anthologies, including a bilingual edition of 1931.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first lyric poem in Walloon; it is the only Walloon song Édith Piaf ever sang, who called it the best ever written.
Sources for this page 2
The pages consulted to check this page.