Napoleonic & ECW wargaming, with a load of old Hooptedoodle on this & that


Tuesday 19 January 2021

Dondaine

 Moving swiftly on (before I get a glimpse of Mr Trump's pardons and have an aneurism), here's a workmanlike wargaming picture. My original reasoning for my WSS basing scheme was that, since the units only have 3 bases and they'll be doing some Old School tactical manoeuvring, I wouldn't bother with sabots, though I've become very used to using them of recent years.

After just a few test games, I confess I have changed my mind. Sabots there will be. They will not be magnetised, and - since my cunning WSS base sizes give a standard footprint (approximately) - I have adopted a one-size-fits-all plain sabot. Current thinking is that sabots will be a resource for the battlefield, and will be issued when needed. My Napoleonic units each have their own magnetised sabot, and they spend their lives on them, so this is a conscious departure from my standard system.

Because the sabots are a bit long and narrow, I was worried that 2mm MDF might warp if painted on one side only. I ordered in some samples from Uncle Tony Barr at East Riding Minis, and am pleased to find that they give no problems, so a bigger order will be on its way.

 Here's a quick photo, to give the idea. These should save time and broken bayonets.


Infantry and cavalry in line or column of march - even one of my strange limbered batteries 

 

Oh yes - dondaine. One of the many French nursery rhymes my mother taught me when I was an infant was En Passant par la Lorraine, a lengthy tale of a peasant girl who may or may not have captured the heart of the King's son (the song has a quirky, uncertain ending) through her fetching appearance, complete with clogs. This song contains the chorus hook-line:

avec mes sabots, dondaine,
oh! oh! oh! avec mes sabots

I have never been able to find out what dondaine means - and still haven't really got to the bottom of it. I am assured by one of my French relatives that in fact it means nothing - it is just a song-filler expression (equivalent to "tra-la-la" or, I suppose, "hey-nonny-no"). That's kind of an anticlimax after all those years of wondering, but I guess life is a bit like that.

If anyone knows different, please shout.

Here's a noble rendition of the song - just to prove it exists. I am confident you will not last to the end of the clip, but - take my word for it - this version only uses about half the verses my mother taught me. Obviously French kids had a good attention span in the days before Instagram.


 

13 comments:

  1. You know I thought you'd discovered an obscure battle at first. Then it took me a while after reading your post for the penny to drop. It's been a long day.

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    1. Originally, of course, I was going to title the post "Avec Mes Sabots", but a faint echo made me realise that I used this self-same title back in 2012. OK - I may be boring and unimaginative, but at least I'm consistent.

      Thus I went for Dondaine (3 syllables in a French song, of course), though the lateral hop of logic seemed more sensible then than it does now. If Dondaine really does mean nothing at all, then a Battle of Dondaine seems very likely sometime in the future.

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    2. I remember that one - immediately after the combat at Fol de Rol.

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    3. One thing that;s very likely is that a member of the French General Staff will be named Dondaine - I have a collection of stand-by personalities available for campaign use, based on private jokes - Feldmarschall Sebastien von Kegel is one such prominent Bavarian commander. Sometimes the name lasts longer than a recollection of where it came from.

      In a similar vein, my solo ECW campaign of a few years ago was populated by officers who were named after the streets behind my house when I was a little boy (all knocked down by Derek Hatton subsequently), and the owners of the shops my mother used to patronise in the years before I started primary school (Mr Bucknall the butcher, Mr Osborne the baker, Mrs Bundy the newsagent, Mr Pratt the toyshop, Mr Dewhurst the fishmonger, and many, many others).

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    4. I've been collecting late 17th century of late and I found it impossible to better the names of real people at the time. Zachariah Tiffin I thought sounded like a Harry Potter character, and Theophilus Oglethorpe had to be there, but Sir Clotworthy Skeffington? Really?

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    5. I had a belief problem with Sir Clotworthy Skeffington, but I see he is completely genuine, so I owe you an apology. Brilliant. His life story is a bit fantastic, too.

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    6. Cloudsley Shovell is another pretty special name from that era. Died in one of the biggest sea disasters off Scilly. Modesty prevents me from naming the Norfolk village where he was born.

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    7. Particularly good - agreed. His birthplace sounds like fine, upstanding sort of place.

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  2. Excellent stuff, this is what we read blogs for.. I tried 'Dondaine' in an on-line French to English translation page, and got 'doe' , as in a deer, a female deer. It seemed a pleasing coincidence.

    Following the demise of poor Eric von Kleist, my Prussian 7YW officers are following a pretty obscure theme - fairly confident no-one will get it..

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    1. This is a rich field of private study. One in my own catalogue is a former boss, from a former employer - if ever a general with zero talent is required, Sir Alexander Buckhaven is likely to be called to the saddle. No connection with any real person of the same name, obviously.

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  3. I had a collection of Renaissance commanders all based on various metals (but in German); hence Generals Wolfram, Zinn, Blei, Kupfer, Silber, Eisen, Zink, und Stahl!

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    1. Sounds like a bunch of hard-headed chaps! Excellent.

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    2. I'm dreadfully sorry, but I have to report that Martin S emailed to suggest that these metallic generals would be just the chaps to command troops from the alloys of Napoleon. Name and shame, I say.

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