Luett Anna Susanna

Luett Anna Susanna

1. Anna Susanna, stah op un bööt Füür!
Och nee, mien leev Moder dat holt ist to düür.
Fide ral-la-la-la, fide ral-la-la-la,
Och nee, mien leev Moder dat holt ist to düür.

2. Schüür mi den Grapen und feeg mi dat Huus,
Hüüt Avend kaamt dree Jungesellen in't Huus.
Fide ral-la-la-la, fide ral-la-la-la,
Hüüt Avend kaamt dree Jungesellen in't Huus.

3. Wüllt se nich kamen, so wüllt wi jüm haaln,
Mit Peer und mit Wagen, mit Iesen beslaen.
Fide ral-la-la-la, fide ral-la-la-la,
Mit Peer und mit Wagen, mit Iesen beslaen.

4. Künnt se nich danzen, so wüllt wi't jüm lehrn,
Wi wüllt jüm de Tüffeln in Botter ümkehrn.
Fide ral-la-la-la, fide ral-la-la-la,
Wi wüllt jüm de Tüffeln in Botter ümkehrn.

5. Künnt se nich küssen, denn mööt wi't jüm lehrn,
Wi wüllt jüm dat Maulwark in Botter insmeern.
Fide ral-la-la-la, fide ral-la-la-la,
Wi wüllt jüm dat Maulwark in Botter insmeern.

My translation into English

Little Anna Susanna

Anna Susanna, get up and build a fire!

Oh no my dear mother, the wood is too dear.

Fide ra-la-la, fide ra-la-la,

Oh no my dear mother, the wood is too dear.

Shell me the barley and sweep out the house,

This evening come three young lads to the house.

Fide ra-la-la, fide ra-la-la,

This evening come three young lads to the house.

If they will not come, we will haul them all here,

With horse and with wagon, studded with iron.

Fide ra-la-la, fide ra-la-la,

With horse and with wagon, studded with iron.

If they can't dance, we will teach them how,

We will take their slippers and turn them in butter.

Fide ra-la-la, fide ra-la-la,

We will take their slippers and turn them in butter.

If they can't kiss, we must teach them how,

We will take their maws and smear them with butter.

Fide  ra-la-la, fide ra-la-la

We will take their maws and smear them with butter.

In the Beginning

My memory reaches back to when I was still an infant wearing diapers and drinking formula from a bottle. We were living in a room in a farmhouse in the remote hamlet of Wehe. Incidentally, Weh would translate into woe in English. My mother used to prepare my bottle by adding malt to the milk. Perhaps this is why I have always liked the taste of malted milkshakes. In the room was my parent's brass bed and little else besides the Volksempfaenger (Peoples radio), a radio dating back to wartime years. There was no bathroom. None of the farmhouses had bathrooms. We used the outhouse out back. You stayed clean by bathing in the horsetrough out back. This was only feasible in warmer weather. In cold weather you heated up water on the stove and took a sponge bath. The memory makes me shudder. Water came from a hand pump out back. In cold weather my mother would have to boil water to melt the ice in the pump. They were times of harsh starvation. We were semi-adopted by an American family who used to send food packages. I wish I knew their names and addresses.

No one in the area spoke German, only the Saxon language. One time my parents paid a teen-age girl to baby sit me. She looked like a Valkyrie with long blond pigtails, like all the other girls in the area. When my parents came home, she complained "He will neet slaapen". I had simply refused to go to sleep.

While still an infant, I was sent to live with my grandmother who lived in a room in a farmhouse in Espelkamp. This was many kilometers away, too far for an infant to walk. When we visited my parents, she would tow me while I sat on her Bollerwagen, a flat contraption of wood slats and little wheels. My grandmother ( Franziska Emma Bussar) and I used the bollerwagen when we went gleaning potatoes in the fields or picking wild mushrooms. Even as an infant I learned to distinguish edible from poisonous mushrooms. I still retain a taste for wild foods.

I lived with my grandmother for many months. I don't know why I was sent to live with her. My mother claimed that it was because my father had developed Grippe (Influenza) but that illness does last more than a week or so. Perhaps they were just not getting along and I was in the way. Eventually I returned to live with my parents again

At one point my father got himself a huge motorcycle. I would sit behind him holding on for dear life as he went careening around the countryside at high speed.

At every opportunity we foraged in the wild for mushrooms, elderberries, lingonberries, etc. My parents rigged up a contraption to extract the juice from elderberries by tying a cloth between the legs of an upended chair and using it to squeeze the juice from elderberries.

My father worked at various odd jobs. For a while he worked as a waiter in an English officers club far away. I remember him working in a pottery, stirring up a big pot of red glaze.

With little money, there were few luxuries like Xmas presents. My father though was an artist and sculptor of considerable distinction. With a rusty penknife and scraps of wood, he carved me a marionette, a devil with jointed limbs, which he also beautifully painted.

Around the time I was 4 years old, we started becoming much more prosperous when my father got a job with the Kolbus company in Espelkamp. Kolbus started out as a blacksmith shop that then added a foundry and started manufacturing machines. During WWII, they subcontracted making canon shells for Krupp. Strangely enough though, the Kolbus family were Americans from Kentucky who, in the 19th century, decided that the Saxon land was a land of opportunity. Old man Kolbus used to take his blacksmiths on tours of factories in the United States. These blacksmiths were such superb craftsmen that they only needed to look a machine over in order to duplicate the machine. All this without the use of blueprints. Basically, Kolbus would steal the latest American machines without paying lisencing fees and sell them cheaper than the Americans could.

My earliest memories of the Kolbus factory were of a place that looked like something out of the 19th century with machines driven by leather belts from overhead pulleys. The blacksmiths only spoke the Saxon language.

Kolbus specialized in book binding machines. My father created the Kolbus emblem (still in use) of a partially open book, standing on a gear wheel.

The war had interrupted my father's education. He had just graduated the Gymnasium. He had however learned mechanical drawing and was hired to, for the first time ever, draw up blueprints of the machinery being manufactured. This came just in time because the economic resourgence began hitting the Saxonland and all of Germany with the speed of an expresstrain. Large numbers of refugees from the allied sponsored ethnic cleansing in the east were settled among us. Many of these were highly skilled engineers and craftsmen and many went to work at Kolbus. Farmers began selling their land and housing developments were established to settle these people. These people only spoke German because it was Konrad adenauer's policy to try to end Germany's historical linguistic divisions by mixing the populations. Saxon speakers from the east were sent to South Germany, German speakers were settled in the North among Saxon speakers.

As an engineering staff was built up, my father found himself the chief engineer even though he had no engineering degree. Unfortunately, because he was not a German citizen, he was not able to finish his education because places in the universities were reserved for Germans.

With our new found prosperity, we moved to an appartment on the corner of the Sutride and Luebekerstrasse on top of Bohnes pub. We actually had a bathroom and running water(cold water only) with a flush toilet. There was a coal fired water heater in the bathroom so that we were able to take a bath in any season. My parents bought the first refrigerator anyone had ever seen.

Doing the laundry, although still labor intensive, had become greatly improved. In the basement were huge kettles under which you would light a coal fire and boil the laundry. On top was a beam that you would use to agitate the laundry back and forth. Laundry soap consisted of an evil looking smeary substance that strongly resembled wagon grease. The laundry then was passed through a wringer and hung up to dry. Previously my mother would have to do the laundry in a tub using a washboard. She had to make her own laundry soap using wood ash and grease.

Central heating was unheard of. We had a coal stove for heat. It was also wonderful for roasting apples on top. My mother though, city girl that she was, never got the hang of lighting the fire in the stove. In desperation she began using hard paste floor wax to help the process. My father though flipped out at the expense. Then she found another means. Poppy seeds. My father had found a Wehrmach metal lined munitions chest that he had traded in for a 100 kilos of poppy seeds. You have to understand that poppy seeds are a necessity of life for a Hungarian. He was unsuccessful though in finding a place that sold a poppy mill. In disgust he exclaimed that it was incredible to live in a civilized country where you could not buy a poppy mill. Poppy seeds are extremely oily and are just fine to light a coal stove with.

There was limited shopping in a country store next to the pub. Sausage casings, sugar, salt flour. Simple things. No canned goods or prepared foods. We had a potato cellar in the basement where we stored a years supply. At one point a three wheeled sales truck appeared, selling fish from the North Sea. My mother used to animatedly haggle with the owner, whose prices always seemed to go up, claiming storms in the North Sea. We ate a great deal of herring. One of my favorite foods is still fried herring, canned or fresh. A couple of years ago I found a source of green herring (herring preserved in salt water) in a Russian store in Brighton Beach. I cooked myself a batch of fried herring. Pretty soon the apartment became filled with smoke and a powerful stench. My sons gagged and I have not made it since. My mother also made an outstanding herring and beet salad.

The only place to buy milk and butter was at a dairy several kilometers away. I would hang two milk cans on the handlebars of my bike and buy it at the dairy. One can was for regular milk and one for buttermilk. My father and I loved buttermilk. My mother was dairy intolerant and the sight of our drinking milk would nauseate her. The mere sight of buttermilk though would utterly disgust her.

In the village of Rahden several kilometers away there was a greater semblance of what would be viewed as normal shopping. There was, for example, a butcher and a Konditorei (an eat in bakery). We loved to eat in the Konditorei, preferably with great gobs of freshly made whipped cream on everything. We began entering the famous fresswelle where people ate with great abandon, following so many years of privation. My parents (and everyone else) gained considerably in weight.

Perhaps a little off-topic. land was formally measured in hektares, having displaced the older system of measurement in acres. Informally though, land was measured in an even older system, the Morgen. I believe a Morgen was the amount of land that you could plow with an ox in one morning (hence morgen). This would then be the same measure of land as the Old English Hyde of land. This is not surprising since the English are nothing more than local Saxon boys who made good.

I entered school. This was a long hike of several kilometers. One of our amusements was hanging out by the blacksmith shop in Rahden after school, watching the blacksmith shoeing horses. The days of horses were numbered though, as we increasingly saw the use of tractors. One day the rumor circulated that one of the farmers had bought a combine. We all rushed over after school to see this wonder. If a flying saucer had landed from Mars I don't think it would have equaled the sight of this combine. We all stood watching it in open mouthed astonishment.

Somewhere in all this, the local windmill took down its sails and substituted a diesel engine. Streets were being paved. Gas stations and automobiles were seen more and more frequently. Ways of life that had endured with little change for untold centuries were disappearing. To me though, until I die, the Saxonland of my childhood will always be home to me.

1947 Dodge

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.