Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.180 December 23, 1993 1) Pishy Pashy (Ellen Prince) 2) Pishy Pashy (Marnen Laibow-Koser) 3) Pishy Pashy (Ted Steinberg) 4) Pishy Pashy (Jascha Kessler) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Dec 22 11:19:29 1993 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: Pishy Pashy funny, we called it pishe peyshe (each word ends with shwa). but i guess this is the same shwa -> /i/ that you see in american yiddish khale/khali, zeyde/zeydi etc. anyway, i don't remember the rules but can ask the cousin who taught it to me. in my milieu, it was considered a game for children, which is why it may be thought of as a women's game--who else would play with children? btw, for what it's worth, there was no association of the name with the verb pishn, tho now i wonder why not. (as long as we're into this domain, in my house the female genital organ was called the 'pishy', sort of went with 'tushy', back vowel -> front vowel... since i had no brothers, the male organ was not even acknowledged, much less named.) ellen prince 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Dec 22 19:12:31 1993 From: laibow@brick.purchase.edu (Marnen Laibow-Koser) Subject: Re: Pishy Pashy If you're talking about the game where cards are stacked by consecutive values up or down, I refer you to Leo Rosten's _The Joys of Yiddish_. He calls it Pisha Paisha (his spelling; it seems to be pronounced Pisha Peysha) and says, if I remember (I don't have the book handy), that the name appears to come from a nearly identical English game called "peace and patience" or "pitch and patience", "patience" being another word for "solitaire". Hope this helps! Marnen Laibow-Koser 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Dec 22 20:22:13 1993 From: "Ted L. Steinberg" Subject: pishy pashy In response to Leonard Pitt's question, I have no personal experience with pishy pashy, but in my wife's family it was used to refer to what in ENglish is called pat-a-cake, the old hand-clapping game. Ted Steinberg 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Dec 23 01:24:51 1993 From: KESSLER Subject: card game I played Pisha Poysha, as we said it, taught by my Bubba, on Second Avenue in 1934-35, as near as I can figure it. I can see us, the whole other crowd, her daughters, son (my father) and others, so many, it seemed, in the other rooms, busy at food, cards, drink, laughter, noise, and the usual rowdiness of the same kind of Odessa folks you will read about in Gorki's autobiography, Volume I, MY CHILDHOOD. Rough bunch. But back in the kitchen, she made me eggplant pancakes, dipped in an egg batter and fried, dozens it seems, like the pancakes I read about later in Little Black Sambo, and we ate, and played Pisha Poysha. A sort of Go Fish, or kiddy casino, as near as I can recall at a distance of 60 years. I never played it later, and my father used to kid me when I asked him to play it with me, as infra dig, nonsense, etc, not fit for rummy and pinochle players at the age of 8 or so, you see? Beats a madeleine any day, if you ask me! Jascha Kessler/UCLA ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.180 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send submissions/responses to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files