Sheep in the bath?

April 12, 2008 4:28 AM

Help me find this French song about a sheep in a bath.

I'm trying to track down a song which I heard in the mid 80's. It was about Algerian immigrants who keep sheep in the bath tubs of their apartments. The song was sung from the viewpoint of the sheep. As far as I can remember it was sympathetic, not racist. An important point, as in trying to track down the song I have discovered that Sarkozy has recently attacked French Algerians for exactly this practice (they slaughter the sheep in the bathtubs of their apartments).

The chorus, as well as I can remember it, has first two lines something like this:

Pauvre mouton de la périphérie,
où sont elle donc ta bergère jolie?"

The song ironically references Marie Antoinette in one of its verses.

Name of the song and, more importantly, artist please.

posted by Sitegeist to media & arts (4 comments total)

p.s. My bad grammar - second line should be:
où sont elles donc ta bergères jolie?
posted by Sitegeist at 2:39 PM on April 12, 2008

Sorry, still wrong, should be:
où sont elles donc tes bergères jolies
posted by Sitegeist at 3:22 PM on April 12, 2008

You can thank my fiancé for this; she did the vast majority of the legwork!

It looks like it's the song "Le Mouton De La Baignoire" or "Le Mouton Dans La Baignoire" (we've found both titles for the same song) by Michèle Bernard.

It's available on a compilation album "Mes premiers vinyls" as track 10 on disc 2. (30 second sample on that link)

You can also buy it as a single track, a 1 euro download from fnac - though you may need a french credit card!

I hope this is the track you're after, we've not been able to find the lyrics yet, there's too much of a clash with a book of the same title by Azouz Begag which is rather racist.
posted by ArkhanJG at 4:22 PM on April 12, 2008

That's the song! Many thanks to your fiancé for the excellent detective work. It wasn't easy with the recent "sheep in bath" news cluttering up the search space.

I heard this song in my high school French class (you can see it wasn't my best subject). Excellent to find it again.
posted by Sitegeist at 12:52 AM on April 13, 2008