"Brave Margot" is a 1953 song by

Georges Brassens Georges Charles Brassens (; ; 22 October 1921 – 29 October 1981) was a French singer-songwriter and poet. As an iconic figure in France, he achieved fame through his elegant songs with their harmonically complex music for voice and guitar and ...

, about a young woman who breastfeeds a young kitten. It is one of his best known and most controversial songs.

Lyrics

The lyrics describe a young, well-meaning but naïve shepherdess, Margot, who finds a lost

kitten A kitten is a Juvenile (organism), juvenile cat. After being born, kittens display primary altriciality and are fully dependent on their mothers for #Establishing immunity, survival. They normally do not open their eyes for seven to ten days. A ...

and adopts it. When the little cat is hungry, she gives it her breast. This attracts a lot of male onlookers and brings all life in the village to a standstill. The women of the village get jealous and therefore take the kitten to put it down. Margot is sad, but gets a husband and never shows her breasts to anyone else again.

Cover versions

The song has been covered by

Patachou Henriette Ragon (10 June 1918 – 30 April 2015), better known as Patachou, was a French singer and actress, best-known for popularizing Georges Brassens songs by singing them before he became famous. She was an Officier of the Légion d'honneu ...

in the 1953 film ''

Women of Paris A woman is an adult female human. Before adulthood, a female child or adolescent is referred to as a girl. Typically, women are of the female sex and inherit a pair of X chromosomes, one from each parent, and women with functional uter ...

''.

Renaud Renaud Pierre Manuel Séchan (; born 11 May 1952 in Paris), known as Renaud, is a French singer-songwriter. With twenty-six albums to his credit, selling nearly twenty million copies, he is one of France's most popular singers. Several of h ...

covered it too on his 1996 album '' Renaud chante Brassens''.

In popular culture

When Brassens died in 1981, French cartoonist

Jean-Marc Reiser Jean-Marc Reiser (; born Jean-Marc Roeiser; 13 April 1941 – 5 November 1983) was a French comics creator. Biography A prolific cartoonist from 1959 until his death, Reiser made his debut in the publication ''La Gazette de Nectar'' for the ...

made a graphic homage, in which a man sits in a train talking about his disgust with Brassens' filthy lyrics. While he talks a young woman sitting in front of him breastfeeds her cat in the manner of Brave Margot. This sight touches him, as he recognizes the image from the song, causing him to reconsider his opinion about Brassens' music.

References

External links

Lyrics.

ANALYSE BRASSENS : Brave Margot (Georges Brassens)
An analysis of the song (in French).

{{authority control French songs 1953 songs Songs about cats Songs about shepherds Songs about fictional female characters Obscenity controversies in music Breastfeeding in art Fictional shepherds Fictional French people Songs written by Georges Brassens Georges Brassens songs