James, from your question I'm going to assume that you are not familiar with the simple notation system called "ABC" that uses letters of the written alphabet to represent musical notes.
JCs Tunefinder is a site that navigates thousands of tunes in ABC format (
http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/tunefind)
Here's Sur Le Pont in G:
X: 1
T:Sur le pont d'Avignon
R:Chanson
O:France
B:Le livre des Chansons (Henri Davenson) n�45
Z:<anamnese@caramail.com> --
http://anamnese.fr.stM:2/4
L:1/8
Q:1/4=90
K:G
D | G3/2 A/ B B | A d G D | G3/2 A/ B B | A d G G |!
M:6/8
A2 G E2 G | A G A B2 G | A2 G E2 G | A3 G2 z ||
W:Hier, sur le pont d'Avignon (2x)
W:J'ai ou� chanter la Belle ; (2x) lon l�
W:
W:Elle chantait d'un ton si doux, comme une demoiselle,
W:Que le fils du roi l'entendit du logis de son p�re.
There's quite a bit here on melnet about ABC if you look around. One of the handy things about ABC is that there are several readers that will convert the letters to conventional notation, and also play tunes back for you in a simple and slowed-down form
http://forum.melodeon.net/index.php/page,abc.html.
Say farewell to your spare time!