Re: Yiddish poetry

[Renaissance Man <rainlore...>]

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 10/01/2004 at 19:23 Lori M Simon wrote:

>I agree with Irwin.  I'm sure that's what Sylvia meant.  There are many
>songbooks I have seen where songs with known composers are listed as folk
>or traditional because the editors or publishers had either no knowledge
>and no resources for finding the information, or no inclination to do so.
> Many composed songs and poems became folklorized within the author or
>composer's lifetime.  I forget about whom the story is told (I'm sure
>someone on this list can refresh my memory), but the songwriter was
>listening to a singer sing one of his songs.  Afterward he went up to
>talk to the singer and told him that certain lines should have been
>otherwise, and were changed from the original.  The outraged singer said,
>"Who are you to tell me this?  I've been singing it this way for 10
>years!"  The songwriter left it at that.

This is about Gebirtig. The singer was a beggar who turned up in Gebirtig's 
back yard, the song in question is Kinder yorn, and the beggar had been 
(mis-)singing it for 20 years. It's in Sara Rosen's "The Life of Mordechai 
Gebirtig" - lovely anecdote.


Shabbat Shalom

Richard


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