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I've Been Thinking 'Bout the Railroad In Yiddish Ditty 'Di Ban,' Clues to Divisions Among Jews
By Philologos
Published February 20, 2012, issue of February 24, 2012.
Maurice Wolfthal writes from Houston:
“I recently enjoyed Theodore Bikel’s rendition of the Yiddish song ‘Di Ban’ [‘The Train’] after not having heard it for more than 30 years. Part of the humor stems from his choice of dialect. Where most Yiddish speakers use the vowel ‘oy,’ he uses the ‘ey’ of English ‘grey,’ as in keyekh [strength] instead of koyekh, reyekh [smoke] instead of royekh, ribeyney shel eylem [Master of the Universe] instead of riboynoy shel oylem, etc. Have you any idea where this dialect was used?”
The dialect Mr. Wolfthal asks about is that of Lithuania and Belarus, known to linguists as Northeast Yiddish. “Di Ban” is a delightful little song, and you can hear Bikel sing it in a zippily comic manner (the version I’m familiar with is slower) on the Internet, but I’m not sure it was he who chose Northeast Yiddish for it. Although I could be wrong, the song strikes me, for reasons I’ll explain, as being Litvak in origin.
“Di Ban” was apparently composed in the mid- or late 19th century, as railroads began to spread through the more rural regions of the czarist empire, because its words are put in the mouth of a pious Jew who, astonished by his first sighting of a locomotive pulling a train, asks (the shift to “ey” from “oy” is indicated by bold type, while the “ay” is pronounced like the “y” in “sky”): “Tsi hot men azeyns gezen, tsi hot men azeyns gehert, / Az fayer un vaser zoln shlepn vi a ferd? — that is, “Has anyone seen or heard the likes of it, / Fire and water pulling like a horse?” This is followed by a refrain that goes “Oy, hot er a fayfer, mit ayn ayzenem keyekh, untn gist zikh vaser, eyvn geyt a reyekh” — “Ah, what a whistle it has, with the strength of iron, / Below water pours into it, above smoke comes out of it.”
Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/151443/?p=all#ixzz1n61iMp6x
Published February 20, 2012, issue of February 24, 2012.
Maurice Wolfthal writes from Houston:
“I recently enjoyed Theodore Bikel’s rendition of the Yiddish song ‘Di Ban’ [‘The Train’] after not having heard it for more than 30 years. Part of the humor stems from his choice of dialect. Where most Yiddish speakers use the vowel ‘oy,’ he uses the ‘ey’ of English ‘grey,’ as in keyekh [strength] instead of koyekh, reyekh [smoke] instead of royekh, ribeyney shel eylem [Master of the Universe] instead of riboynoy shel oylem, etc. Have you any idea where this dialect was used?”
The dialect Mr. Wolfthal asks about is that of Lithuania and Belarus, known to linguists as Northeast Yiddish. “Di Ban” is a delightful little song, and you can hear Bikel sing it in a zippily comic manner (the version I’m familiar with is slower) on the Internet, but I’m not sure it was he who chose Northeast Yiddish for it. Although I could be wrong, the song strikes me, for reasons I’ll explain, as being Litvak in origin.
“Di Ban” was apparently composed in the mid- or late 19th century, as railroads began to spread through the more rural regions of the czarist empire, because its words are put in the mouth of a pious Jew who, astonished by his first sighting of a locomotive pulling a train, asks (the shift to “ey” from “oy” is indicated by bold type, while the “ay” is pronounced like the “y” in “sky”): “Tsi hot men azeyns gezen, tsi hot men azeyns gehert, / Az fayer un vaser zoln shlepn vi a ferd? — that is, “Has anyone seen or heard the likes of it, / Fire and water pulling like a horse?” This is followed by a refrain that goes “Oy, hot er a fayfer, mit ayn ayzenem keyekh, untn gist zikh vaser, eyvn geyt a reyekh” — “Ah, what a whistle it has, with the strength of iron, / Below water pours into it, above smoke comes out of it.”
Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/151443/?p=all#ixzz1n61iMp6x
Interesting read on Jewish culture and the emergency of industrial modernist life.
