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.