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.