Salut à toi: punk anthem to the catacombs by Bérurier noir
Salut à Toi (= Hi You !)
Salut à Toi, oh mon frère (my brother)
Salut à Toi, Philibert (the first cataphile, the man who got lost in Paris Underground in 1793, whose corpse was discovered in 1804, and who was buried in the quarries, 20 meters from the surface)
Salut à Toi, le cataphile (= man who likes walking in the Paris Catacombs and underground quarries)
Salut à l’acéto qui brille (lightning carbide lamp)
Salut à Toi, pilier à bras (hand made pillars, first demonstration at the end of the XVth beginning of the XVIth century)
Salut aux odeurs de ganja (ganja smells)
Salut à Toi, pilier tourné (turned pillar, first method of underground excavation end of XIIth beginning of XIIIth century)
Salut aux pauvres murs taggués (poor tagged walls)
Salut à Toi, Montsouris (the undergrounds below the park of the same name)
Salut à Toi, le fumi (abbreviation for “fumigène” i.e. smoke bomb ; some cataphiles enjoy creating smoke in galleries to bother others)
Salut à Toi, la piscine (swimming pool, name of galleries full of water below Port-Royal subway)
Salut à Toi, qui hallucine (hallucinator)
Salut à vous Dinosaures (name of a room with painted dinosaurs in the GRS = Biggest South System)
Salut à Toi, le Minotaure (name of a painting)
Salut à ta copine Ariane (your friend Ariane, a French first name, but also the trademark for a plastic carbide lamp)
Salut à tous les cata-mans (a mix between cataphile and the English world « man »)
Salut les morts du Carrefour (the skeletons of the crossing galleries ; below Montparnasse cemetery you can see several ossuaries, and one is exactly inside a place officially called a Carrefour)
Salut à vous les détours (indirect streets)
Salut à Toi, puits sans échelons (airwell with no ladder)
Salut à Toi, qui est keupon (punk, but the world in French slang is also written keupon)
Salut aux sublimes chatières (wonderful cat-traps)
Salut à tous les bancs de pierre (seats made with stones)
Salut à Toi qui est perdu (who are lost)
Et puis à Toi, qui a trop bu (who are drunk)
Salut à Toi, Commandeur (name of a room in the gallery below Commandeur Street)
Salut à Toi, le Bunker (the German shelter)
Salut à vous les hamacs (the hammocks)
Salut à la terre sur mon sac (the mud on my backpack)
Salut à Toi, BDM (Bout Du Monde = End of the Word, the name of a dead end gallery)
Salut à Toi, qui te traîne (who crawls)
Salut au circuit officiel (the official visit, where you have to pay : The Catacombs)
Salut au 7ème ciel (paradise)
Salut à Toi, à Z la grande (great Z, a famous site, well-known for parties)
Salut à Toi, la rue Lalande (Lalande street)
Salut à Toi, la Soucoupe (the Saucer, a little underground place)
Salut aux loosers de déroute (disoriented losers)
Salut à Toi, IGC (Inspection Générale des Carrières = the service in charge of the quarries in Paris = General Inspection of the Quarries)
Salut à Toi, le macchabée (the stiff)
Salut à Toi, l’injection (concrete used to fill in the galleries)
Salut à la Visitation (inaccessible site below the Visitation, a religious congregation)
Salut à la chatière de sable (the trap dug in sand)
Salut les galeries pleines de câbles (galleries full of telephonic cables)
Salut au fontis menaçant (dangerous falling roof)
Salut à Toi, Port-Mahon (a well known quarry, classified as an Historical Monument, but always in danger of being filled with concrete by a builder above)
Salut à Toi, le bar des Rats (Rats Bar, so called by cataphiles but in fact for German an emergency exit from their shelter during WW2)
Salut à Toi, le Sauna (the sauna, a place in the 13th district quarries, so called because it’s a warm place)
Salut à vous FFI (the name of the French resistance, as well as the name of their shelter at Denfert-Rochereau, from which they organised the liberation of Paris, 19-25 august 1944)
Salut aussi à Rosalie (name of ancient entrance, and still of a place at the bottom of these stairs)
Salut à Toi, l’autochtone (the indigenous)
Salut à Toi, l’Octogone (the second Carrefour existing below Montparnasse cemetery)
Salut à Toi, Homme des Cavernes (Cave Man)
Salut à Toi la Taverne (the Tavern, an underground place in the GRS)
Salut au rachitique rat (the scrawny rat : they have nothing to eat in the underground quarries !)
Salut à tous les passages bas (all the low passages)
Salut les têtes fracassées (the broken heads, which have met a « step on the ceiling »)
Salut aussi à KCP (name of a room in the GRS created by Kemar Cochise and Patty)
The second part deals with few nicknames of cataphiles among hundred ones !
Salut à Toi, Happy Jack
Salut à Toi, Tétra Pack
Salut à Toi, Shadow et Salut Py
Salut à Shoot et à Droopy
Salut le Scout, Salut Red Nose
Salut Zigzbi, Salut Zygo
Salut à vous Scenic et le Jack
Salut et bonne nuit à Kodak (good night to Kodak)
Salut à Toi, Pépé cool
Salut à Toi, la Grenouille (the Frog)
Salut à Toi, l’Infirmier (the Nurse)
Salut à Toi, feu TNT (dead TNT ; he used to use TNT, and was crashed in a bike accident)
Salut Crapu, Salut Le Chat (the Cat)
Salut Mouche crevée (dead Fly) et Mythra
Salut à Toi, Caton l’Ancien
Salut à Toi, Nain de Jardin (Garden Dwarf)
Salut XL, Salut Gérard
Salut Sergent, Salut Kémar
Salut Misti, Salut Darkman
Salut à Toi, le Véloman (BicycleMan)
Salut à Toi, Mike et Aragan
Salut à Toi, Jean-Claude Saratte (famous commandant of the police in charge of the Paris quarries for tracking cataphiles ; when he got retirement, a big party was organised by cataphiles, who invited him … and he came !!)
Enfin salut à Toi, le fou qui brûle tes nuits au fond du trou ! (the mad who spend all his nights in the deep hole)
Les carrières c’est super (Quarries are fun)
On n’est pas nécrophiles (We are not necrophilic)
On n’est pas gothiques (We are not gothic)
On n’est pas skins (We are not skinheads)
On n’est pas fous (We are not mad)
On n’est pas terroristes (We are not terrorists)
On est CATAPHILES (We are CATAPHILES)
Traduction et adaptation Laura Heisler