Welcoming New Year’s Eve with La Guiannee in Southern Illinois

The custom survives in Prairie du Rocher, a small French-settled town in Randolph County, near the Mississippi River which was the water highway through New France. The village, whose name means Prairie of the Rock, is close to the reconstructed Fort de Chartres at Fort de Chartres State Historic Site, once the administrative center for colony in the upper Mississippi Valley. That’s Fort “de Shart” to be accurate, although locally often anglicized as “Fort Charters.”

La Guianee (pron GEE-uh-nay) features members of the local La Guiannee Society, dressed in 18th century costumes, who visit taverns and homes locally and in small neighboring towns. One stop is the Creole House in downtown Prairie du Rocher where the public can catch up with them. The night’s tour begins and ends for the singers, carrying their candles, at the Prairie du Rocher American Legion.

They used to visit nearby Fort de Chartres for a public stopover a few miles down the state highway, but due to the state’s financially delicate condition, the fort is closed, one of the state’s state historic sites and state parks shut down for the remainder of the fiscal year by the governor’s order.

Traditionally, the singers go from home to home where they exchange New Year’s well-wishes, sing their New Year’s song, and are welcomed, in turn, with refreshments. In verse, the singers ask the host for his indulgence and beg a pork backbone for a fricassee while inviting the household’s oldest daughter to join them.

It is a tradition that dates back to the Middle Ages when the poor formulated a little New Year’s fun by singing for their supper, serenading their host while asking for a gift of food for their dinner. The custom crossed the ocean to the Mississippi River vallley in 1699. In Prairie du Rocher, it has been practiced annually ever since without interruption and includes young and old, rich as well as poor.

I’ve been told that at one time less than a century ago there were several La Guiannee societies in the small town, but now the remaining practitiones have consolidated into a single group that carries on the tradition.

The singers travel by bus, these days, and have never canceled due to weather. Traditionally, singers are accompanied by fiddle and guitar and, in recent years, the mandolin. The lyrics remain French.

The custom has died out in the Cahokia area and in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, but lives on at Prairie du Rocher, each year greeting the promise of the New Year.