Researching Yiddish penny songs (tenement song broadsides of theater and variety show songs, 1895-1925)
Index of songs on this site
Youtube: all the Penny Songs I've recorded so far (with subtitles)
About this project ♦ ♦ About Jane Peppler
List of the still-lost songs: do you know any of them?
Search the blog:

This song is so irritating I refuse to sing it. Rund specified it should be sung to "It's a Long Long Way to Tipperary." Well, we just recorded a different Yiddish parody set to "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," listen to that one instead: Di Yidishe Hofnung.

I am pretty sure I would have loathed Morris Rund. He was a bundle of resentment and paranoia. He worked all night at the bakery, having fantasies of what his wife was doing with the boarder while he was gone. But woman-hating men are still with us, a hundred years later, and they're just as idiotic now. So anyway here is one of his many rants against the modern woman. The original broadsides are at the bottom of this post. My transcription and translation:




Congratulate me, friends, but listen why:
Today I become a bridegroom
And soon I'll be head of a household
I invite you all to my wedding
I'm not joking
I'll present my bride to you, she's from Galicia

My wife wears a little blue hat
With a yellow feather on the side
She's a suffragette, she wears pants instead of a dress
She goes to all the meetings
She gives speeches there, she doesn't take any guff (bluff)
So friends, come and see my bride
And shout out mazltov!

My bride came here, God forbid, not out of destitution,
She soon got a haircut and pretty soon she wasn't a maiden
She smokes a lot of cigarettes, she drinks shnaps,
She became a suffragette and mixes into politics

My bride often plays cards, too,
When she's sitting in company
Three times a week she shaves her beard
And gives speeches about womens' rights
She should run for President
But how do you like this?
I'm going today to buy her a stove pipe hat and pince-nez!

One thing I don't understand, I'm thinking about it now.
When she will, later, give speeches,
And leave the kid with me,
I'll have to put the kid to bed,
It'll cry till morning,
And God forbid the kid wants to breastfeed
Because she has to be the one to do that!

Click for a larger view:

---

For sheet music and/or performances contact me: jane@mappamundi.com

---

Labels: battle between the sexes, history, humor, male chauvinism, marriage, sarcasm, wedding, womens rights