Plattdeutsch Video

An amusing video from Youtube. A stickup artist walks into a convenience store with a gun, demanding money. The clerk responds in Plattdeutsch (Saxon), which he does not understand. A Swat team bursts in, demanding in Plattdeutsch that he drop his gun. He again does not understand, does not drop his gun, so they blow him away. The moral of the story is that fluency in Plattdeutsch could save your life. This is of interest to those who want to know what the saxon language sounds like.

Two Suennermarten songs

As I mentioned before, Suennermarten is St Martin's day, a holiday where we children would walk from farmhouse to farmhouse with lit lanterns, begging treats by singing certain songs. As before, I am forced to endure the lack of umlauts on this keyboard by typing an "e" after the vowel. Here are two of the songs:

Matt'n, Matt'n Heern

Matt'n, Matt'n Heern,
de Aeppel un de Beern,
de freet ik ja so gern.

Laat mi neet so lange Stahn,
Ik mutt ja noch nach Bremen gahn.
Bremen is ne schoene Stadt,
de hett fuer alle Kinner watt.

Roughly, in English ( can't get it to scan. Maybe if I worked on it longer?)

Martin, Martin Lord
the apples and the berries
those I eat so gladly

Don't let me stand so long,
I still have to go to Bremen.
Bremen is a beautiful city,
that has something for all children.

Kip, Kap, Koegel

Kip, Kap Koegel,
Suenner Martens Voegel,
Suenner Martens dikkebunk
Steckt sien Kop to 't Fenster uut.

Schipke van Mariken
Lett sien Seilen striken,
Seet sien Seilen up de Topp.
Gaefft mi wat in'n Rummelpot,
'n Oortje or 'n Appel.

Laat me neet so lange stahn
Ik mot noch'n Huus wieder gahn.

Hier waant de rike Mann,
De mi woll wat gaeben kann.
Voeael kann he gaeben,
Lang soll he laeben.

Wenn he kumt to't Starben,
Sal he de Himmel arben.
Gott sal him belohnen,
Mit hunnertdusend Kronen.

Mit hunnertdusend Klockies dran,
Dor kumt Suenner Marten an.
Hurra!

In English

Kip, Kap Koegel
Saint Martin's birds,
St Martins big fat bed
Sticks his head out the window.

Ships from Mariken
Let your sails strike.
Set your sails up to the top.
Put something in my rummelpot,
a penny or an apple.

Don't let me stand so long,
I still want to go to another house.

Here lives the rich man,
Who can give me something.
Much he can give me,
Long shall he live.

When he comes to dying,
Heaven he shall inherit.
God shall reward him,
With hundredthousand crowns.

With hundredthousand cookies then,
There will come saint Marten.
Hurrah!

A Frisian Folksong

I found this song, Buurlala, on Geoff Grainger's website. Buur means farmer in Frisian and la indicates the diminutive. What I found so charming is that it so perfectly outlines the picture of a peasant. Peasants are tied to the soil, to the here and now and have no high regard for the abstract. They are relatively powerless and are subject to the vagaries of war, famine and the weather. They try not to get too elated over good fortune because they know trouble will surely follow. I had an even harder time translating this song because I never spoke Frisian. It is very close to the Saxon language (which I have not spoken or even heard spoken for many decades), but it has it's own vocabulary for many things. For example, the Saxon word for crab is Krabbe but the Frisian word is Dwarsloper. The rule for pronounciation of the letter "G" is the same as in the Saxon language. It is pronounced like "ch" if it is not immediately followed by a vowel. Again, because of the lack of umlauts on my keyboard, I am adding an "e" after the vowels to make them umlauts. AA represents a vowel that is in between an "a" and an "o". To my knowledge, this vowel is found only in the Saxon, Frisian and Scandinavian languages. To some this might suggest that German and English are comparatively impoverished in vowels.

In translations, as a rule I try to stay as close to the original as possible, even if it means a tiny bit of work for the English reader. For example, in a previous song, I did not translate the word "clock" into the English "O'clock" because O'clock would not have scanned and I reasoned that any English speaker above the level of moron would understand the meaning anyway. You cannot translate anything perfectly but the further you stray from the original, the more you are creating something new entirely.

Buurlala

1. As Buurlala geboren weer do weer he noch so luett. (x2)
Sien moder nehm em woll op den Arm un legg em in de Wegg so warm.
"Deck mi to", seggt he. "Deck mi to ", seggt he. "Deck mi to", seggt Burrlala (x2)

2. As Buurlala na School hen muess, do wer he noch so dumm. (x2)
Er wue nix von worue, woans, verleet sik heel op Hans und Franz
"Segg mi to", seggt he. "Segg mi to", seggt he. "Segg mi to", seggt Buurlala (x2)

3. As Buurlala ranwussen weer, en staatchen Kerl weer. (x2)
Sien Haar weer dicht an'n Kopp afschoorn, de Kragen reck em bet oever de Ohrn
"Steiht mi goot", seggt he ". "Steiht mi goot", seggt he. "Steiht mi goot", seggt Burrlala (x2)

4. As Buurlala op Posten stuenn, woll mit sien laden Gewehr. (x2)
Do keem en Kerl ut Frankriek her, de wull gern weten, 'neem Dueuetschland weer.
"k scheet di doot!", seggt he. "k scheet di doot!", seggt he. "k scheet di doot!", seggt Burrlala (x2)

5. As Buurlala nu starven wull, ganz musenstill he leeg. (x2)
De Oellern Stuennen an sien Graff, un wishen sik de Tranen af.
"Weent man nich!', seggt he. "Weent man nich!", seggt he. "Weent man nich!" seggt Buurlala (x2)

6. As Burrlala nu storven weer, bi Petrus klopp he an. (x2)
Och Petrus, leve Petrus mien, ik muech so gern in'n Heven sien.
"Maak mi op!", seggt he, "Maak mi op!", seggt he. " Maak mi op!", seggt Buurlala (x2)

7. As Buurlala in'n Heven weer, uns Hergott sproeoek to em. (x2)
"Na Buurlala, wo gefallt dat di, hier baven in de Heven bi mi?".
"Na, dat geight", seggt he. "Na dat geight", seggt he., "Na dat geight", seggt Buurlala (x2)

My English translation:

Buurlala

1. As Buurlala was born, he was so very small (x2)
His mother took him up in her arm and put him in the cradle so warm.
"Cover me up!", said he. "Cover me up!", said he. "Cover me up", said Buurlala (x2)

2. When Buurlala had to go to school, he was so very dumb (x2)
He knew nothing of why and where, depended wholly upon Hans and Franz.
" Say it to me!", said he. "Say it to me!", said he. "Say it to me!", said Buurlala (x2)

3. As Buurlala entered the army, a stately lad was he (x2)
His hair was cut close to his head, his collar reached over both his ears.
"Stands me good!", said he. "Stands me good!", said he. "Stands me good!", said Buurlala.

4. When Buurlala as sentry stood, with his loaded gun (x2)
There came a lad out of France, who wanted to bet he could take Germany
"I'll shoot you dead!", said he. "I'll shoot you dead!", said he. "I'll shoot you dead!", said Buurlala (x2)

5. As Buurlala lay dying, still as a mouse he lay (x2).
The elders stood by his grave and wiped their tears away
"Don't cry!", said he. "Don't cry!", said he. "Don't cry!", said Buurlala (x2)

6. When Buurlala died, he knocked on St Peter's door (x2)
Oh Peter, dearest Peter mine, I would so much like to be in heaven.
"Open up!", said he. "Open up!', said he. "Open up!", said Buurlala.

7. As Buurlala entered heaven our lord God spoke to him (x2)
"Well Buurlala, how do you like here, up in heaven with me?"
"it's OK!", said he. "It's OK!", said he. "It's OK!", said Buurlala (x2)

note: Even in Heaven, Buurlala remains a peasant, not allowing elation to get the better of him. I translated "Na, dat geight" as "I'ts OK" because that would better convey Buurlala's ambivalent response into English than a more litteral translation of "well, it goes".

More Saxon Life

The landscape was flat as a tabletop and was endlessly crisscrossed by drainage ditches and canals. Probably a similar density of canals as you find in Mesopotamia except the purpose was to drain away excess water rather than to irrigate the fields. Many fields had drainage pipes buried underneath them to aid in the removal of water. Since the land was at sea level and many parts below sea level, the water did not want to go away. I had read that in Espelkamp, agriculture traditionally was impossible 2 years out of 6 because the water could not be gotten rid of in time to plow the fields. Much of the same prevails in most of the lands touching the North and Baltic seas. This would explain why the Saxons and the Scandinavians were traditionally so warlike. What do you do when you can't plow your fields and your family faces starvation? You go to war. It would also explain the settlement pattern of isolated farmhouses as opposed to settling in villages. It would give a defensive advantage in a place where frequent famines could turn your neighbor into a deadly enemy.

Several kilometers way, in the direction of Luebecke, was a hill that could not have been higher than 200 feet. To me as a child, this was a mountain.

The Saxons and allied tribes from the Jutland Peninsula were quite successful in prevailing against their Keltic neighbors to the South. Part of the motivation would have been hunger. Another factor though would have been their excellent steel swords. Swords that did not bend after the first blow, as the swords of the Kelts did. How did they make such good swords? Well, one of the many old tales that were told was about Wieland the Weapon Smith (called Wayland Smith in England). Reportedly he would forge a sword and then grind it down into dust and mix the dust with his chicken feed. He would feed the mix to his chickens, gather up the chicken shit, and heat it up to reduce it to metal again. In the process he would have added enough carbon to turn soft iron into steel.

The area I was born in was a peninsula ofWestphalian land jutting deep into Lower Saxony. This area was Keltic at one time and I think that some of the strange festivals we had may have had Keltic origins a long time ago. For example, we had a celebration called Suennermarten that had elements of similarity to Halloween. It took place at night every November 8th. We never heard of pumpkins but we had a huge turnip of roughly the same coloration called a Kuerbis. We would hollow it out, carve a scary face on it, and stick it out in a field with a lit candle in it. Groups of us kids would roam from farm to farm, carrying paper lanters on a stick with lit candles in them and a sack for treats. We did not say trick or treat. Rather, we sang a song, Suennermarten, Gauemarten, ect, and hold out our sacks for candy, pennies or fruit. Some farms we would skip by common consent because we knew from past experience that we could expect little better than rotten apples.

Formally though, the holiday was the feast of St Martin of Tours (suenner means saint in the Saxon language). This holiday in England is called Martinmass. I don't know how hollowed out scary turnips and children begging for sweets from house to house with lanterns came to be associated with St Martin. It is at this point that I think a Keltic connection may come in. At least, I tend to think of anything weird as being Keltic.

In better times than any I ever experienced, that did not have the postwar starvation and want, eating a goose was associated with St Martins day. The story is that the citizens of Tours wanted to make St Martin their bishop. He wanted to have nothing to do with it and hid out in a goose pen so that they could not force him to become their bishop. To no avail though because the cackling of the geese gave him away. As a consequence, every year on St Martins day, people eat goose to punish the geese for having given St Martin's hideout away.

There was a holiday whose name I cannot remember. People would sing and dance around a bonfire. When the flames had died down, couples who had just gotten engaged would hold hands and jump over the fire together.

In a neighboring village they had a maypole, but I never saw it.

Horsemeat was commonly eaten in my area. This, in spite of the fact that the eating of horsemeat was strongly prohibited by the Christians because at one time it was so strongly associated with the old religion.

I had read that in my area until late in the 19th century, you had to foreswear belief in Odin, Thor and Saxnot before the ministers would consent to baptize your child. Very probably no one believed in these any more and the oath had become merely a ritual harkening back to the old days. I never saw any of the kind of religiosity that is so common in the USA. Coming to New York from Germany, I was shocked to find the family of a friend saying a prayer before they ate. In my experience, prayer was a sort of tedious boredom that was confined to church and that you happily left there.

Another festival that we delighted in was Schuetzenfest. In the old days, a Schuetze was an archer and the festival must have originated as an annual competition of the yeoman archers. You could hear a band playing Prussia's Gloria and other marches. From farm after farm, people would join the crowd following the band, holding lit lanterns. Eventually we would gather in a clearing in the forest where there would be a shooting competition. A wooden eagle was suspended by a thread from the limb of an oak tree. Whoever downed the eagle by shooting the thread was crowned king for the day.

There were holidays like Fassnacht and Sylvesternacht that were drunken debauches that we children took no part in.

Holidays like Easter and Pingsten (Pentecost) were occasions where people dressed their best and attended country dances.

St Nicholas had no connection with Christmas. He was not a jolly elf but rather a figure that was universally feared by the children. His day was December 6th. He and his helper wore chains around their waist instead of belts and big black boots. I can still hear the ominous jangling of the chains and the pounding of their boots on our stairs as they came up. They would ask your parents if you had been a good boy all year? They seemed to like to linger for a while before responding. Rumours abounded regarding parents who said that you had been terrible, resulting in the children being beaten on the spot. You would leave your shoes outside the door. If you had been good, candy would be left in your shoes. If bad, lumps of coal.

Events like the rethatching of a house and funerals had many of the aspects of a holiday. All the men in the area would join in the work while the women prepared vast amounts of food and put it out on tables outside.

In regard to funerals, we had a strange local custom. The body was not buried immediately but was left in an open air pavilion in the middle of the cemetery. The body was not buried until it had lain in state for three days and nights.

Andrew's Birthday

I have tried and tried but bubbleshare does not seem to be accepting any new posts today, so I am posting his birthday pictures here. We had breakfast at Dim Sum Go Go and then we walked down Mott St to buy Andrew's birthday cake. Really a nice bakery. In front, they featured European style baked goods. The Chinese stuff was relegated to the back. Could it be that the Chinese have developed a taste for European style cakes? Alas, there was nary a sight of anything involving whipped cream. We passed the former Hunan restaurant at Mott and Bowery that is undergoing reconstruction. Some wiseass inserted an L in the sign, turning No Dumping into No Dumpling

Two Complete Science Adventure Books #3

I decided to read the Neil R Jones Story first, since a readers letter in a subsequent issue rated that as the better story. I did so doubtfully since I considered Jones to be a second or third rate SF author. The blurb reads,” Earth was a fortress, a Citadel in Space, ruled by swaggering Space Pirates and the evil cult of Durna Rangue. Death guarded its ray-shrouded surface…Death waited for Brian Trent and his faithful Red Swordsman as they sought to rescue the ravishing Marcia from Earth’s palatial pirate harems.

The story reads like it was written in the 1930’s, with most of the moons in the solar system being warm


And having breathable atmospheres. I suspect that Jones dug up an old manuscript that he had failed to sell in the 1930’s. Various “rays” accomplish different purposes. I would not be surprised if somewhere in one of the old SF stories there is a “ray” that will brush your teeth.

I included one of the rupture ads. After all, what pulp magazine would be complete without a rupture ad?

The weapons of choice were atom pistols and swords. In a way the story was prescient. After all, aren’t all pistols in the modern age made of atoms?

The evil Durna Rangue made all sorts of monsters to serve their purpose such as insect-human hybrids and dwarves that were full sized human beings shrunk down by a process of “atom compression.” “They are tremendously strong, for the cult has grafted into them the glands from the giant Martian ants.” Yes sir. The atom is a many splendored thing.

“Against the far wall, standing like statues, were such startling creatures as they had never seen before. They were men, yet their heads were those of insects, with large, strong mandibles. “The insect men-hybrids.” Spoke Brian in a low voice as others gazed in astonishment. “Another successful experiment of the cult.””

“ As if the arrival of Ellend had been the signal-gong, the announcers told of the initial event, the death ray joust. A strange contraption 50 feet square was set up, consisting of a platform surrounded by gleaming metal spikes low and close set. Two men were led into the center of this, armed with long poles ending in globes, seemingly fashioned of soft, light material.
“A joust,” Brian conjectured.” That means pushing each other over with those things, but why?”
As if in immediate answer to his question, there sprang up from the spikes surrounding the platform a tight-set grill of transparent blue columns.
“The ray curtain of the cult!” exclaimed Sunset. “remember in Chicog?”
Brian nodded grimly. “I get the idea now.”

“He got me! I felt it hit me!”
“”You’re all right,” argued Sunset. “He couldn’t have hit you.”
“But I felt it hit me!”
“Say, Ory, I’ve got it! Remember your wart? Those rods can’t hurt you! You’ve had a radium treatment!”
“By gosh, Sunset----that is it!”

By the end of the story, boy gets girl and everyone else gets killed.

This story would have been just fine in the 1930’s but by 1951 it was more than a bit dated. Still, it beats the crappy lead “story” I just read in the December 2008 Isaac Asimov’s SF Magazine. Cover art was by the great Allen Anderson. The story is listed in the ISFDB database but has never been republished.The next story Sword of Xota, by James Blish, is not even listed in the database. It is a delightful piece of space opera in which Tipton Bond defeats the Warriors of Day and is by far the better story of the two. it is a pity that the story has been forgotten and is accessible only to the few who possess copies of this magazine.

Letter to Isaac Asimov's SF Mag

I Looked at the 12/o8 issue of your magazine and bought it largely because of Bob Silverberg's article about Murray Leinster, one of my favorite authors. I had stopped buying SF magazines by the 1980's because I found the stories to be un-entertaining. It seemed to me that the new authors coming in, who were not schooled in the pulps, did not understand that the primary purpose of fiction is to entertain. Hopefully, I read the lead story, Way Down East by Tim Sullivan. I found the story so disappointing that I could not get myself to read any other stories in the issue. Endless dialogue between two characters who were not particularly interesting. I asked myself several times how the dialogue advanced the plot, the story? The answer is that there is no plot or story. No thought provoking concepts such as Murray Leinster graced his stories with. And then, by some sort of Deus Ex Machina, the alien suddenly dies. We learn nothing about his culture and viewpoint and how his death would impact our planet. The "story" ends with more inane dialogue between the two idiots. Let Bob Silverberg read this "story". I am sure that his reaction would be like mine. In the meantime, I will not easily be tempted to buy your magazine again.

Saxon Life

We had few forms of entertainment in the modern sense. No book stores, magazine stands, television. It is true that there was a telephone in the local pub but it was the only one around for kilometers. Shopping was very limited. There was a local store but the merchandise was basically limited to things like sugar, salt, flour, mason jars, sausage casings

Commercially prepared foods and off the rack clothing were unheard of. If you wanted to eat cherries out of season, you would have had to put them up yourself while they were on the trees. Clothing was made by the women, or, for something special, custom made by the taylor.

There was a great reverence for storks. Everyone would stop what they were doing to watch a flight of storks passing overhead. Like all the other children, when my mother was expecting the birth of my brother, I dutifully put cookies on the windowsill to encourage the stork to come. When a stork elected a neighbor's chimney to build a nest on, he felt so honored, that he built himself a new chimney rather than chasing the stork off his old one.

Hay was cut by hand using a scythe and left to dry. When dry, a horse drawn gadget was used to gather it in furrows. Then we would arrive with pichforks and the horsedrawn haywagon and pitch the hay into the wagon (yes, children would do this also). Someone would remain in the wagon to distribute and hay and pack it so that the wagon would hold the maximum amount of hay possible. Pretty soon the hay would reach a level where the smaller children could no longer reach the top of the hay. I would then sometimes take the reins from the adult and take over control of the wagon. I still remember how to command a horse in the Saxon language. Hay balers were unheard of

Hay was stored in the hayloft of the barns. One of the forms of entertainment we children indulged in was to climb up to the rafters in the barn and to let ourselves drop into the loose hay. We never seemed to tire of this.

School vacations were geared to the needs of a farming community. One of the vacation periods was popularly referred to as potato harvest vacation. Potatoes were harvested by hand, using special pitchforks with metal balls on the ends of the tines so that they would pass around the potatoes rather than piercing them and thus spoiling them. I don't think I have ever been so exhausted as I was after harvesting potatoes for a whole day.Towards the end of the day, we would gather up the dried potato vines and make a huge bonfire. We would toss potatoes into the fire to cook. The outside of the potatoes would be charred but we were so ravenously hungry from the hard work that they seemed like the most sensationally tasty food that we had ever had.

The local fuel of choice was peat. People would travel to the local peat bog, dig out bricks of peat and stack them to drain and dry. In the Fall they would hitch a horse to the wagon and bring home fuel for the winter. Walking on a peat bog is a strange sensation. It is like walking on an unusually solid pudding.

I was told that before the war, many Polish laborers came to work on the farms. They were called Saxengaenger (those who walk to the Saxons). They became quite fluent in the Saxon language (but not in German, which was not spoken in these parts). They would come back to work year after year until they had saved up enough money to buy their own farms in Poland. Interestingly enough, when many Silesian refugees from the allied sponsored ethnic cleansing of eastern Europe were settled among us, the locals thought of them as being Polish. Kind of ironic since they were driven out of their ancestral homes for the crime of being German.

In most of Europe, farmers live in villages and travel to work their outlying fields. Not so in the Saxonland. Here people lived in isolated farmsteads, separated from other farmhouses by forests and fields. One of my friends lived some distance from me. I would walk along a dirt road through a section of forest. Along the way was a thatch roofed farmhouse inhabited by a strange old woman. Her hair was in pigtails nearly reaching the ground. The pigtails were encased in cloth sheaths. It was said that she had never cut her hair in her life.

It gets dark early in the Winter in those northern latitudes and as it gets dark, a wind would pick up making the ancient timbers of the farmhouse creak. This would creep us kids out after a while and we would move to the living room where my friend's grandmother would seem to perpetually sit at the spinning wheel. We would ask her to tell us a story, and what vivid stories they were. She was the most gifted storyteller I have ever heard. Her words could make you feel the cold, the wind blowing through your hair, hunger, fear, elation. Stories about Thor and Freya, the tricks that Loki played, the dwarves. The stories, of course, were told in the Saxon language, as she spoke no German. It is a pity that no one ever recorded her stories. I don't know how much she made up and how much were traditional stories.

In connection with dwarves, there was a local wood that no one ever entered. Not even to gather firewood or mushrooms. It was supposed to be a haunt of the dwarves.
Little skeptic that I was, I entered the wood one day to explore. Instantly I was swallowed up by a gloom and silence. The canopy of the huge trees completely closed overhead. This was a virgin forest that had never been cut. The air was damp and moss grew high up the trunks of the trees. The floor had the spongy feel of ages of leaf litter. Suddenly I felt a prickling in the back of my neck. I turned around and I saw a little man with a full beard standing there, looking at me. This was very peculiar because I had never seen a man with a beard before, much less an adult who was very short. I changed directions but so did he, following me and getting closer and closer. In a burst of panic, I ran out of the wood as fast as I could never to return.

The elderberry bush had a special place in people's regard. In ancient days, it was believed that the goddess who protected the household, mother Holle, lived in the bush. I don't know if anyone still believed this but the fact is that every farmhouse had an elderberry bush near it and no one would dream of molesting an elderberry bush. Mother Holle was also believed to live up in the sky and when she shook her featherbeds out the window, the escaping feathers fell to earth as snow. Once, when it was starting to rain a friend wryly observed that Mother Holle must be pissing. As young children, we sang a song about dancing around the Hollebush.

Saxon and Frisian Music

I was born in and grew up in a remote Saxon farming village in North Germany. We were isolated from the outside world to a great extent by endless swamps, peat bogs, etc. Most of the population did not even speak German but rather the Low Saxon language (Plattdeutsch, or rather Plattdueuetsch (damn the lack of umlauts on this keyboard). On entering school, some of my friends had a great deal of difficulty because they could not understand the teacher because the language of instruction was German, a language which they did not understand. Life was the very traditional life of a Saxon farming community. Many of the roofs were thatched and the typical house was the Saxon Longhouse where the barn and the human residence were combined in one long building. At the gables were carved wooden horseheads which looked down at you spookily when a dense fog rolled in off the North Sea and you couldn't even see your feet but if you looked up you could see the horseheads staring down at you.

Wooden shoes were the universal footwear. Grain was taken to a local windmill in horse drawn wagons to be ground into flour. In my mind's eye, I can still see the sails turning and the rhythmic clopping of the wooden gears of the windmill.

It was a life of hard physical labor, relieved by traditional festivals and weddings and funerals. There was no band at the country dances. Rather, people sang the music that they danced to. And there seemed to be a preference for songs that were slightly risque or humorous. In the following, I will provide what I can remember of some of the songs and I will follow with a translation into English.

Nu Danzt Hannemann

Nu Danzt Hannemann, nu danzt Hannemann
Nu danzt Hannemann und siener Leeven Fruh

Oh du mien Moeppelken, mien Moeppelken, mien Moeppelken
Oh du mien Moeppelken, mien Moeppelken bist du.

He hat'n scheev Gesicht, He hat'n scheev Gesicht
He hat'n scheev gesicht, un een paar grote Ohrn.

Oh du mien Moeppelken, mien Moeppelken, mien Moeppelken
Oh du mien Moeppelken, mien Moeppelken bist du.

He hat Stevel an, He hat Stevel an
He hat Stevel an un een paar blanke Schoh

Oh du mien Moeppelken, mien Moeppelken, mien Moeppelken
Oh du mien Moeppelken, mien Moeppelken bist du

There are some more stanzas but this is all I remember. Now follows the English translation:

Now dances Hanneman

Now Dances Hannemann, now dances Hannemann
Now dances Hannemann and his beloved wife

Oh you my dear one, my dear one, my dear one
Oh you my dear one, my dear one are you

He has a crooked face, he has a crooked face
He has a crooked face and a great big pair of ears

Oh you my dear one, my dear one, my dear one
Oh you my dear one, my dear one are you.

He has boots on, he has boots on
He has boots on and a pair of white shoes

Oh you my dear one, my dear one , my dear one
Oh you my dear one, my dear one are you.

With a great deal of amusement, my mother remembered my little girlfriend, Erika, and I, six or seven years old, arm in arm, clattering off to a funeral in our wooden shoes, singing the following song:

Lott is dood! Lott is dood!
Jule liegt in't Starven!
Laat ehr man!Laat ehr man!
Denn gift dat wat to arven.

Eeen, twee, dree, veer!
In'd'n Hoppensack,
In d'n Hoppensack,
In d'n Hoppensack is Fuer!

In English. (I believe the Hopsack was a local pub)

Lott is dead! Lott is dead!
Jule lies in a ditch!
Let her man! Let her man!
Then there's more to inherit.

One, two,three, four!
In the Hopsack,
In the Hopsack,
In the Hopsack there is fire!

I don't know if there is anyone interested in this stuff but I may follow with some more songs.

The following is a very old Saxon love song from the web site of Geoff Grainger. Geoff is an Englishman who fell in love but she rejected him. He was so distraught that he decided to either commit suicide or join the British army. He joined the army and was stationed in Lower Saxony, where he fell in love with the culture, language, music, etc. He has been making a living for years performing Saxon and Frisian folk music. In other words, he went native. He said that he had a much easier time learning Low Saxon than German because the language is so much closer to English. He said that he first heard Dat du mien Leefsten Buest performed by a choir of elementary school children. A strange but beautiful song for such young children to sing.

In regard to pronunciation, the most glaring oddity is pronunciation of the letter G. If the letter G is not followed by a vowel, it is pronounced CH. Segg is thus pronounced sech. For lack of umlauts on this cursed keyboard, I am spelling the umlaut of O as oe. This keyboard also does not have a sharp S, so I am substituting a ss.

Dat du mien Leefsten Buest

1. Dat du mien Leefsten buest, dat du woll weesst.
Kumm bi de nacht, kumm bi de nacht, segg wo du heest (x2)

2. Kumm du um Middernacht, kum du klock een!
Vader sloeppt, Moder sloeppt, ik slaap alleen. (x2)

3. Klopp an de Kamerdoeoer, Faat an de Klink!
Vader meint, Moder meint, dat deit de Wind. (x2)

4. Kummt denn de Morgenstund, kreit de ol Hahn.
Leefster mien, Leefster mien, nu moesst du gahn. (x2)

5. Sachen den Gang henlank, lies mit de Klink!
Vader meent, Moder meint, dat deit de Wind. (x2)

My translation into English

That you're my Dearest One

1. That you're my dearest one, that you well know
Come by at night, come by at night, say who you are. (x2)

2. Come by at midnight, come at clock one!
Father sleeps, mother sleeps, I sleep alone. (x2)

3. Knock on the chamberdoor, grasp on the latch!
Father thinks, mother thinks, that it's the wind. (x2)

4. Comes now the morning hour, cries the old cock.
Dearest mine, dearest mine, now you must go. (x2)

5. Walk down the passageway, leave by the latch!
Father thinks, mother thinks, that it's the wind. (x2)







The following is a very old dance song. The dancers are lined up in a row of men facing a row of women (all wearing wooden shoes, of course)and they dance close to each other and then away from each other, etc.

Gah vun mi! Gah vun mi!
Ik will di nich sehn.
Kumm to mi! Kumm to mi!
Ik buen so alleen!
Fideralalala! Fideralalala!
Kumm to mi! Kumm to mi!
Ik buen so alleen!

Un wullt du nich kamen,
So will ik di haaln
Mit Peer un mit Wagen
Mit iesen beslaan.
Fideralalala! Fideralalala!
Mit Peer un mit Wagen
Mit Iesen beslaan.

My English translation.

Go from me! Go from me!
I don't want to see you.
Come to me! Come to me!
I am so alone!
Fideralalala! Fideralalala!
Come to me! Come to me!
I am so alone!

And if you don't want to
I will haul you!
With horse and with wagon

All studded with iron
Fideralalala! Fideralalala!
With horse and with wagon.

All studded with iron

Hans Stefan Santesson, Etc.

Hans Stefan Santesson was editor of the Unicorn Mystery Book Club from the 1940's to the 1950's, of Fantastic Universe SF magazine from 1956 to 1959 and of The Saint Mystery Magazine until it expired in 1966. Hans retained the editorial office of the Saint Mystery Magazine (at the corner of 5th and 42nd St) for his own uses after the magazine died. The building was so old and decrepit that Con Edison supplied it only with DC power. This meant that no standard appliance would work in the building. During one of my visits Hans chortled triumphantly that he had finally located a clock radio that worked on dc.

A constant stream of people would visit or call him during the course of the day, asking for his advice. One day his Pakistani friend Choudry popped in, desperately asking where he could sell a 1000 pound lot of shrimp before it defrosted. I don't think that any of these people realized how poor Hans had become since his last regular employment ended

The office was piled high with books. One day I noticed a new book on top of a pile. It was a new book by his friend, Ivan Sanderson. Something about flying saucers having been observed entering and departing from various bodies of water around the world. I asked Hans if Ivan was crazy or if he was just some sort of con artist? Hans replied,"as Ivan's oldest and best friend, I will only say that Ivan would sell his mother for a nickel.

Ivan Sanderson had set up a Fortean society called SITU (Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained. It was based at his farm out in Blairstown, NJ. We were invited to a meeting of SITU. I was so excited. I was going to meet one of the greatest con artists of the twentieth century. My steed at the time was a 1953 Chevy 210 with an awesome two speed Powerglide automatic transmission. I made sure that all 21 grease nipples were stuffed with grease (you ask why not an even number? Well, the drive shaft had a grease nipple also). I even washed out the air cleaner with kerosene and put new oil in the oil bath( just the week before I had had a spectacular explosion in the air cleaner as the engine backfired-nothing could kill that baby. The car was ready to take us to Blairstown in style. Then came the news, Ivan had died. I was so disappointed. And we never found out who inherited the farm. Was it his wife or one of his two mistresses, to all of whom he had promised sole ownership of the farm? The following is a picture of a 1953 Chevy 210 that looks much like mine, except that mine was black.


Hans was born in Paris of Swedish parents. He said that his mother had left her husband in Sweden because she had discovered that he was a homosexual lover of the King of Sweden. They then made their way to New York where Hans grew up in Harlem. Hans attended Columbia University where he became friends with many people from India. He took up the cause of Indian independence and was very proud of the fact that the British empire had put a price on his head at one point. The Indian government appreciated his past efforts on India's behalf. Hans had a heart condition and when he could not afford his stay at Lenox Hill Hospital, the Indian embassy paid for his hospitalization.

When I knew Hans in the 1970's, he lived at 458 Undercliff Ave in Edgewater, NJ. I am one of the few people who was ever allowed into his apartment. His mother's room was left untouched from the time that she died, except for a large Swedish bible on her bed. This was a family heirloom and was one of the oldest bibles translated into Swedish. I would say that Hans' poverty would have been immediately alleviated had he sold that bible. But this was something that he would never consider doing.

Hans' chosen method of communication was a postcard written in his own crabby handwriting. A typical message might be, "Bertil Falk is coming to town. There will be a Hydra meeting...." Hydra Club meetings were preceded by a meal at the Raj Mahal restaurant on 4th Ave. This is the only Indian restaurant I have ever seen that featured Barfi on the desert menu (Yes, the English ward "barf" is derived from barfi that had been left out in the hot Indian sun all day without refrigeration). The attendees were mostly authors and editors.There was for example the travel writer, Camille Mirapoix, who would regale us with the details of her latest trip via bush plane, jeep and muleback to the land of Hunza. She was always accompanied by her boyfriend whom she identified as "The Professor." He never got a word in edgewise but she certainly did enough talking for the two of them.

After we ate, we would adjourn to the apartment of Debbie Crawford on W 16 St. She was an editor of the Book of the Month Club but she specialized in writing juveniles about young girls growing up on the Jersey shore. She became involved with this crowd when she was the girlfriend of Willy Ley. She remembered very fondly skinny dipping off the dock in Red Bank, NJ, swimming among the jelly fish with Willy, Fletcher Pratt and other SF writers. Debbie would hand out manuscripts from the Book of the Month slush pile and ask us to separate out the worst dregs. There was plenty of beer available and with enough beer, anything is possible. My daughter Astrid was a major center of attention. As the only extremely intelligent, extremely cute little girl there, she was the Belle of the Hydra Club. While there was no formal membership requirement, she was as much a member as anyone. When her mother and I are gone, she will probably be the sole remaining member of the Hydra Club.

3rd Ave EL

As a child, I was fascinated by New York's EL's. These were elevated trains built before the invention of electric propulsion. The first, the 9th Ave EL, dating to 1867, was initially powered by a moving cable, but this proved impractical and steam engines were substituted. Except for a brief stub that connected the Polo Grounds (Giants stadium) to Yankee stadium across the Harlem River, this El was torn down in the 1940's. The remaining stub was torn down around 1958 but I could see it from where I lived around Jerome Ave in the Bronx.

The 3rd Ave EL in Manhattan was still standing when we came to the USA in December 1955 but had been shut down and was due to be demolished. My parent's bought their first dinette set in the shadow of the EL at 3rd Ave and E 86 St. The Bronx portion of the 3rd Ave EL continued until 1973 when it too was torn down. I used to ride the EL every chance i could get. The trains skirted the buildings so closely that you could probably have stuck your hands out the windows and touched them going by. The train threw out awesome sparks and you were at the perfect level to stare into the windows of the tenements going by.

I watched Yul Brynner's Port of New York (1949) and clipped a segment where an actress stood waiting on the 3rd Ave EL platform at Canal St and I posted it on Youtube.

Girls for the Slime God

I was alerted to Mike Resnik's anthology, Girls For the Slime God in Earl Kemp's ezine, EL. At the core of the anthology is 3 novelettes by Henry Kuttner that appeared in Marvel Science Stories in 1938. Now your typical Science Fiction magazine from the 1930's featured a scantily clad woman wearing a brass bra and little else, who is being menaced by a slobbering BEM (Bug Eyed Monster) while the hero, clad in heavy space armor, is about to dispatch the monster. While the covers promised exciting sexual content, the actual contents of the magazines had about as much sexual content as a Sunday school prayer book. The exception to this rule was to be found in the first three issues of Marvel Science Stories (the Post Office then threatened legal action and the magazine substituted a much blander fare). Mike was alerted to these stories by an article by pornographer and SF fan William Knoles that appeared in Playboy in 1960. The article is reprinted in the book.

To quote Knoles," A quivering bosom was no novel sight for a 1930's S-F hero. Space girls expressed most of their emotions through their pectoral muscles. Bosoms swayed, trembled, heaved,shivered, danced or pouted according to their owners' moods. In fact, if a hero in those days had been a little more observant, and had carried a tape measure, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble. When he opened an airlock and a gorgeous stowaway fell out, uniform ripping, it usually took him 5 or 6 pages pages to find out if she was a Venusian spy or not, whereas the reader knew at once. If her torn uniform revealed pouting young breasts, she was OK--probably someone's kid sister. If she had eager, straining breasts, she was the heroine. But a girl with proud, arrogant breasts was definitely a spy--while a ripe, full bosom meant she was a Pirate Queen and all hell would soon break loose."

The first of the stories reprinted here is Henry Kuttner's Avengers Of Space. As early as the third page, the heroine, Lorna, has her dress torn off, while the hero, Shawn, pulls her though a shattered car window "the glass that remained played havoc with the girl's dress, ripping it off her slim body. For a second, Shawn felt the warm firmness of her half-bared bosom hot against his cheek. Even at that moment the blood pounded dizzily in his temples at the girl's alluring nearness, at the musky perfume that was strong in his nostrils. Shawn's throat felt dry. His pulse beat faster at the touch of his hands upon her rounded, vibrant body."

An endless series of monsters menaces Lorna and tear her clothing off. One time, while runniung away from dinosaur men on the moon Titan, she even tore her own clothing off, item by item, to distract the dinosaur men, who would stop to sniff her clothing before resuming the chase.

The book is a delightful journey through the pulp SF fiction of the 1930's, "when pulp was king, men were men and women were naked -Karen Taylor"

As far as I know, the book is out of print. I got my copy through alibris.com. 1000 copies were printed by Obscura Press. My copy is number 274.