“Vus hosti dekh azoy ayngelibt in mir?” Performed by Lifshe Schaechter-Widman

Vus hosti dekh azoy ayngelibt in mir? / Why did you fall so in love with me?
A lyric love song sung by Lifshe Schaechter-Widman.
Recorded by Leybl Kahn, 1954 NYC

Commentary by Itzik Gottesman

Yet another lyric love song, a dialogue between boy and girl, from Lifshe Schaechter-Widman [LSW], recorded by Leybl Kahn. She most probably learned this in her home town in the Bukovina, Zvinyetshke. The song implies that the “Christian Hospital” is the worst place for a person to be.

 A page from Leybl Kahn’s notes on LSW’s songs, 1954-55.

The typical four-line stanza in Yiddish lyric song usually has an ABCB rhyming scheme. In this song, the singer rhymes “gezeyn” with “fayn” in the 2nd and 4th line, in the first stanza. Rhyming the “ey” and the “ay” sounds seems to be acceptable to the Yiddish folksinger and LSW is not the only one to do this.

TRANSLITERATION

LSW spoken: A libeslid.

Vus hosti dekh azoy ayngelibt in mir?
Vus hosti af mir azoy derzeyn?
Kenst dekh nemen a sheyn meydele mit nadn
in leybn mit ir gur fayn.

Sheynkeyt hob ikh shoyn gezeyn.
in raykhkeyt makht bay mir nit oys.
Az ikh gib mit dir a red a pur klige verter,
tsisti bay mir mayne [di] koykhes aroys.

Shpatsirn ze’ mir gegangen,
der veyg iz geveyn far indz tsi shmul.
A shvartsn sof zol dayn mame hubn,
zi zol lign in kristlekhn shpitul.

Shpatsirn ze’mir beyde gegangen,
der veyg iz geveyn far indz tsi breyt.
A shvartsn sof zol dayn mame hubn,
vayl zi hot indz beyde tsesheydt.

TRANSLATION

LSW spoken: a love song.

Why did you fall so in love with me?
What did you see in me?
You could have taken a pretty girl with a dowry,
and lived with her just fine.

Beauty, I have already seen,
and wealth doesn’t matter to me.
When I speak just a few smart words with you,
you pull out all of my power.

We went a walking,
the road was too narrow for us.
A black end may your mother have,
I hope she lay in the Christian hospital.

We went a walking,
the road was to wide for us.
A black end may your mother have,
for she split us up.

“Ikh tu dir a brivele shraybn” performed by Harry Ary

Commentary by Benjy Fox-Rosen

A powerful song lamenting the horrors of war. A soldier lies wounded in the hospital and writes to his mother and fiancé.

This recording is from Ruth Rubin’s field recordings courtesy of Lorin Sklamberg and the YIVO Sound Archive. It was recorded in 1955 in Montreal. The singer is named Harry Ary, he is the same singer who sings “In Droysen iz Finster” from Ruth Rubin’s “Jewish Life: The Old Country” LP of field recordings. I love his delivery and especially the very slight differences between each verse. He may be my favorite male singer on that record.

Note the difference in the opening phrase on the first, and later verses; at the beginning of the second and third verses, he sings a sharp fourth instead of the natural fourth.

On the second and third verses, when he repeats the last two lines, I especially like the different way that he treats, “mayn harts” and “mayn kale.” The variations have very much the same shape, but are sung varied slightly each time. Also his final cadences at the end of each verse are of particular interest to me, for he sings almost a quarter tone sharper than a flat second (in the mode), and this is of course intentional. This difference in tuning is often overlooked in transcriptions and re-interpretations of folk sources, however these controlled variations in pitch are what make this singer particularly interesting.

I will write you a letter Mamenyu,
And Mamenyu, I write of my health,
Oy, my hand was amputated,
And in both eyes, Mamenyu, I am blind.

I lie in the hospital, wounded,
And the doctors stand around me,
My heart is gushing with blood,
My dear Mamenyu is not near me.

I write a letter to my bride,
And I write of her alone,
That she should rip up the engagement,
And go with someone else to the khupe.
(translation by Benjy Fox-Rosen)

Itzik Gottesman writes: Below is the version of the song from “Yidishe folks-lider” edited by Moyshe Beregovski and Itzik Feffer, Kiev 1939, page 119. The melody is essentially the same, and the words vary only slightly. However one textual change should be noted: in the Beregovski-Feffer version the singers says in the second line of the third verse “I write to you only about myself” which is the opposite of Harry Ary’s version.”