Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 240 May 5, 1992 1) "Shvartse Karshelekh" (David Sherman) 2) More Yidlish (Hershel Bershady 3) Peretz book (Eli Katz) 4) Vilne (David Neal Miller) 5) Stranger than folklore (Bob Werman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 5 May 92 9:45:34 EDT From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.237 Cal Pryluck asks: > Now that Bob Rothstein has offered the final and definitive > Yiddish version of the Internationale, perhaps someone can > help me with a song from Yiddish vaudeville that has > floated around my mind for fifty years. Well, one thing I have plenty of is Yiddish songbooks. Shvartse Karshelekh ("Black Cherries") can be found on page 26 of "Favorite Yiddish Songs / Mir Trogn a Gezang", compiled by Eleanor Gordon Mlotek, published by Adama Books for the Workmen's Circle in 1972. (It's found in Judaica stores and is also available from the Workmen's Circle in NYC.) "Folk song, parts of which were published by Y.L. Cahan in 1912; a similar version was published by M. Gelbart in 1938. The stanza about black cherries was traced to the 16th century by the folklorist Y.L. Cahan. It is also part of a children's song that was once a love song: "Kumt der liber zumer shpiln mir in zamd" (When summer comes, we play in the sand)." Shvartse karshelekh rayst men, Un grine lozt men shteyn Sheyne meydelekh nemt men Un miese lozt men geyn CHORUS: Oy, vey iz tsu mir, Un vey tsu mayne por yor, A libe hob ikh gefirt Felike dray fertl yor. Vos toyg mir di polke mazurke, Az tansn tants ikh zi nit, Vos toyg mir dos meydele fun vurke Az libn libt zi mikh nit. Vos toyg mir der nayer valets Az tantsn tants ikh im nisht, Vos toyg mir dos meydele fun shilets, Az libn libt zi mikh nisht. Transcribed as it appears: I guess the stanzas are from different sources, given the forms of nit/nisht that appear. If I'm not mistaken, the sequence that begins "Oy, vey iz tsu mir..." is familiar outside Yiddish song. I have it in a piano book as part of the "Mexican Hat Dance". It was also used in a TV commercial years ago for Frito's corn chips ("I'm the Frito Bandido"). David Sherman Toronto 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 05 May 92 11:24:30 EST From: "Dr. Harold Bershady" Subject: PERHAPS THE LAST OF THE "YIDLISH" LIST Friends, relatives and Mendele subscribers have been sending me more 'Yidlish' words. I pass them on to the wider scholarly community. Thanks to Helen and Rikki Schneyer, Jared Lubarsky, Tom Wasow, Suzanne Bershady and David Sherman (whose last contribution I've simply aggrandized as part of the list): bluster, bold, deft, dental, device, dingle, ear, eminence, epic, falter, fermented, filter, fleece, fluster, girdle, grub, heist, hint, holster, inkling, jostle, junket, ladle, link, moult, notbyme, pinked, plunge, poise, poultice, rebel, reminisce, rubble, spinster, spittle, strum, svelte, trestle, tustle, vent, ventricle, veranda, vessel, vice. Genug (the real mccoy). Hershel Bershady 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 5 May 92 08:37:06 PDT From: katz@Sonoma.EDU Subject: Peretz Book To Professor van der Auwere: Thanks for your query and forgive the delayed response. There was a transmission error. The book costs $19.95 plus postage and handling ($2.00, I believe). Eli Katz 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 5 May 92 12:43:48 EDT From: David Neal Miller Subject: Vilne I was delighted to learn that Vilne, one of four Yiddish fonts I adapted (with permission) from acquired models, is alive and well and living in Toronto. (It is, alas, better travelled than I.) Vilne--as well as its companion font, Kovne--are based upon the Hebrew font distributed with the old Mac in Hebrew init/da; Vilne strips the Mac in Hebrew-specific encoding while Kovne retains the right-to-left encoding unique to Mac in Hebrew. Mac in Hebrew is/was shareware, with a fee payable, if memory serves, to the Cambridge (MA) Hillel Foundation; Vilne and Kovne are themselves in the public domain, though I credit myself in the GetInfo box. Perhaps regular users of Vilne and/or Kovne should pay the Mac in Hebrew shareware fee, or a portion thereof, to the original distributor of Mac in Hebrew? For my part, I gave copies of the fonts to several registered users of Mac in Hebrew, and never posted them to the public, but am gratified that they have found their way to Donyel-Moyshe. Flatbush and CrownHts are quite another matter: these are adaptations of Dovid Katz's eccentric but (to my mind, at least) very attractive Yiddish fonts, reassigned key positions and retrofitted with Yivo- standard graphemics. We use these here at Ohio State with Dovid Katz's permission, but they are absolutely not for distribution. Should anyone have come by a copy of Flatbush or CrownHts, I would beg him or her to send me a private message. I would welcome greater elaboration by users of Hebrew Nisus: are all standard Yiddish graphemics present? is the keyboard mappable to place Yiddish letters where the user wants them to be? can the supplied fonts be edited (by, say, Fontastic Plus, Fontographer, ResEdit, or whatever)? David Neal Miller 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 4 May 92 19:56 +0300 From: RWERMAN@HUJIVMS.HUJI.AC.IL Subject: Mendele 1.237 Eli Katz writes: Without in the least questioning the authenticity of the Chagall story, I'll point out that it's an exemplar of a folklore type (not necessarily catalogued). The version that I heard (at least 35 years ago) tells that Gorky and Chaliapin grew up together in Nizhni Novgorod. They both auditioned for the cathedral choir. Gorki was accepted; Chaliapin was not. **************** Life is stranger than folklore, in my experience. Here is an advanced version of the same myth, and I was one of the actors. [Incidently the other character in this story was a colleague of Martin Davis, who is now active on this list and whose name I have not heard these 40 years.] In Stuyvesant High School [1943] I was touted to be the mathematician of the class while a Jacob Schwartz was the chemist. In the chemistry regents, Schwartz blew it, getting only a 98; he had used a slide rule, a tool too erudite for the rest of us, and gotten the wrong answer. Although I went on to be the captain of the high school math team [sic!], Schwartz became a famous mathemetician who worked together with Martin Davis at NYU. I never went into math. [I got the 100 in the chemistry regents, though [no slide rule] and went into medicine and biology which is a bit closer to chemistry, I guess.] __Bob Werman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.240 Submissions: mendele@vax1.trincoll.edu Business: nmiller@vax1.trincoll.edu Please sign your articles.