Marseillaise
Feb. 20th, 2006 11:40 am
A fact about the French Revolution: one of its first decrees was that there were to be no more “illegitimate” children. Any child born out of marriage was to be esteemed as a “child of the nation”—that is, an “enfant de la patrie”. So a possible, if arguably loose, translation of the first line of the French national anthem is: “Come on you bastards”.