Song overheard briefly in M. Hulots Holiday

Thank you for your reply and apologies for the delay responding due to my having been on holiday.

I've followed the link you sent and it's left me with a feeling of not quite remembering a dream after waking-  insofar as the harder you try to remember, the more elusive it gets!

Although I would have first seen M.Hulots Holiday around 1970 I seem to recall singing the song in Infants School around 1956 or so..  Back then I was living in West Cornwall, an area that has more affinity with other 'Celtic' cultures like the Scots and Bretons than English. 

Thanks again for your researches' but please don't spend too much of your time looking.

Happy to try and help - we movie nuts like solving problems. So, when you would have heard the song in the late 50's would that have been contemporary at the time or something from the past?

Can you think of any similar songs that you do know the title as that may job the memory...

Thank you for your help -for something that's actually quite trivial I suppose !

I seem to recall singing this at infants school in Penzance west Cornwall around 1955.  At that school there was quite an emphasis on music and properly spoken 'queens english'.  I seem to think it may have been Kathleen Ferrier (or Joan Sutherland) who sang light operatic and traditional scottish songs in that era.  However the title escapes me and I might enjoy hearing it now

Again thanks but don't spend too much of your time searching

Jack (a massive truffaut fan) 

Hello Jack - I am still researching this (because I like to solve mysteries lol) - and have been listening to Kathleen Ferrier tracks I concur that it may be her voice, however, I am still stumped by the song in Hulot. From listening to Scottish songs, it seems the one she is singing if that is her) is less serious and faster-paced. Do you have any examples of some traditional Scottish songs that may be from the late 1940's and early 50s? Ferrier died in 1953, so if she did record this it would have been captured around that time or even earlier.

Hello cinefyl

Thank you for taking time to look into something others would deem pretty trivial.   I have been listening to Kathleen Ferrier tracks on 'You Tube' but only 'Down by the Sally Gardens' sounds vaguely like it in tempo and melody.

It's possible that Tati commissioned one of the studio muzos to write a track specifically for the movie to save paying PRS.  Either way it's deliberately out of place in an already chaotic French hotel foyer where you might have expected to hear Edith Piaf or accordion music. 

It kinda fits with my theory that Tati might have been influenced by 'Waiting  for Godot' where there's a whole lot of absurd things going on.  

Sadly while Tati is all but forgotten, Rowan Atkinson has made a fortune from plagiarising M.Hulot 

Best

JK