General informations - Bécam catalog

This catalogue of French-language song in the five departments of Brittany (Côtes d’Armor, Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Atlantique, Morbihan) was initialized for the purposes of my thesis of Ethnology BÉCAM Didier "Enquête officielle sur les Poésies Populaires de la France – 1852-1876 – Collectes bretonnes de langue française" presented in 2000. It was subsequently published in the CD-Rom accompanying the book by BERTHOU-BÉCAM Laurence, BÉCAM Didier "L’enquête Fortoul (1852-1876) – Chansons populaires de Haute et Basse-Bretagne" published in 2010 by Dastum and the Comité des Travaux Historiques. This book is still available in Dastum.

This catalogue of Breton songs of oral tradition in French took into account only the 322 songs of the Fortoul survey.It was later extended to include all songs published in books, magazines, manuscripts, vinyls, cassettes, compact discs.

This work was based on existing catalogues:

• that of Conrad Laforte « Catalogue de la chanson folklorique française » whose six volumes were published between 1977 and 1983;
• that of Patrice Coirault « Répertoire des chansons françaises de tradition orale » whose 3 volumes were published between 1996 and 2007. I benefited from the help of Georges DELARUE when the entire catalogue was not published.

It turned out that these catalogues were incomplete. This incompleteness, which in no way calls into question the interest of these catalogues, has various origins:

• The song-type is not listed;
• the failure to take into account recent publications of very important interest (for example the collections of Louisette RADIOYÈS in the Redon area);
• the non-consideration of published sound documents ( documents about collecting published in the form of vinyl records, cassettes or compact discs are relatively numerous in Brittany).

It was therefore decided to complete these catalogues.
It should be noted that this catalogue is limited to Brittany, but this limit in no way means that the songs listed are only attested in Brittany. They are also present in other French-speaking regions.

The Coirault and Laforte catalogues are only available in paper format, which severely limits their use. Our catalogue, developed in the form of a database and available online, allows for easier and more elaborate searches.
Information from previous catalogues:

• the song-type title,
• the form,
• the Coirault reference,
• the Laforte reference,
• the author and title of the work, manuscript or audio document,
• year of publication

are supplemented by:

• the original title of the song,
• the first two incipit,
• the number of couplets, verses, the presence of a chorus or a ritornelle,
• the place of collection,
• the interpreter,
• the use or function of the song (wedding, quest, dance, drink, etc.).

The typical songs in this catalogue have a Bécam reference type B-12345. This reference is arbitrary and has no thematic significance.
Bécam references:

• B-00001 to B-00758: Songs from the Coirault catalogue
• B-00759 to B-00927: Songs from the Laforte catalogue, not listed by Coirault

The following references correspond to standard songs absent from the Coirault and Laforte catalogues:

• B-00928 to B-01309: Short Songs
• B-01310 to B-01573: Enumerative songs
• B-01574 to B-01632: Christmas
• B-01633 to B-01904: Literate songs
• B-01905 to B-02661: Other additions

For added songs (> B-01905), titles are provisional, summaries are not available. Further analysis is needed.

Notion of song-type, critical title, version, occurrence

The song catalogues are based on the notion of song-type. Two songs belong to the same type if they say the same thing in the same way, that is, deal with the same subject, using comparable expressions. This song-type is identified by a critical title and by a reference (Coirault, Laforte, Bécam).
Each collector having given a title as it suited him to the song collected, or titled according to the incipit, it is necessary to give a title qualified as "critical" in order to be able to group the different variants of the same song and facilitate research.

To this notion of song-type, one must add the notions of version and occurrence.
A version is a song collected from a singer at one place and published by a "publisher" (the author of the work who brought the song to the public or the author of the manuscript where it appears). Even if the information about the singer and the place are not always mentioned by the publisher, they nevertheless are at the origin of the existence of the version. Each version of a song-type is identified by a number (1,2,3, ...). This number serves only as an identifier and has no meaning..
A version could be the subject of several editions (by the same editor in different books, in an anthology, in a written form and then in recorded audio form, etc.). These are multiple instances of the same version. The occurrences of a version are identified by a letter (a, b, c, ...) reflecting the chronology of publishing of the occurrence: occurrence "a" is the oldest.