Researching Yiddish penny songs (tenement song broadsides of theater and variety show songs, 1895-1925)
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This is the second penny song about the sinking of the Titanic - the first was Dos greste yam umglik fun der shif Titanik.

So first, here's my rendition of Di korbones fun der shif Titanik from yesterday.



I was able to re-use Roger Lynn Spears' piano track from Farges nit kadish zogn because this one was based on the same melody, Shenkt a nedove (by Arnold Perlmutter and Herman Wohl). This contrafactum was also written by Morris Rund.

Now let's get a good look at the magnificent cover page for the penny song. I don't know how anyone could have resisted this illustration by Lola [Leon Israel], a well-known political cartoonist of the time. Click for a larger view.



For once, Morris Rund left his own name and photo off the front page in favor of this magnificent illustration. It reads, under the statuary urns:

Isidor Straus
A nobeler bayshpiler
Di bravkeyt fun yidishen man
"Froyen un kinder muzen friher geretevet veren. Mikh hob tsayt shpeter, shpeter." -- Izidor Straus

Ida Straus
A nobeler bayshpil fun der ? opfervliger liebe fun der yidisher froy
"Vu du vest zayn, vel ikh oykh zayn. Oyb shtarben, zolen mir shtarben tsuzamen!"

More after the jump.


Translation of the inscriptions:

Isidor Straus: a noble example [of] the bravery of Jewish man.  "Women and children must be saved first. There's time for me later, later."    Ida Straus: a noble example of the ? love of the Jewish wife. "Where you are, that's where I'll be. If we must die, we should die together"

Isidor Straus and his wife were co-owners of Macy's Department Store (along with his brother). In Ida's Wikipedia article it reads:

Although the officer in charge of the lifeboat was willing to allow the elderly couple to board the lifeboat ... Isidor Straus refused to go while there were women and children still remaining on the ship. He urged his wife to board, but she refused, saying, "We have lived together for many years. Where you go, I go." Her words were witnessed by those already in Lifeboat No. 8 as well as many others who were on the boat deck at the time. Isidor and Ida were last seen standing arm in arm on the deck.

... A popular song featuring the story of Ida Straus, "The Titanic's Disaster", became popular among Jewish-Americans... Although Isidor's body was recovered, Ida's body was not. A cenotaph at the Straus Mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx is dedicated to Isidor and Ida together. Its inscription reads: "Many waters cannot quench love - neither can the floods drown it."

As in the other Yiddish ballads about the Titanic, a great point of wonder is that the wealthy died right along with the poor.

Here are the lyrics and translation:


The whole world is mourning the great shipwreck
Thousands of people were lost,
Ah, now more and more tears are pouring
The ocean has sacrificed many victims,
It's robbed children of their fathers and mothers.
Now many orphans and widows have been left behind.
They're tearing their clothes in mourning and crying terribly.
Nobody expected such a calamity.
How mightily the ship was proceeding against the waves!
An iceberg came suddenly and sank the Titanic,
And thousands of people found their graves in the sea

Children's fathers sank in the sea
The orphans and widows brought to this.
Hundreds of corpses sank there to the bottom
and cannot have proper Jewish burials.
Oy, such a terrible death!

The ocean made no distinction and swallowed everyone the same way
No exception. Christian or Jew,
Poor or rich,
All were taken together
The catastrophe was so terribly immense
Hundreds of bodies have now been found
Among them, oy, Isidor Straus.
He fell, a victim, along with his wife.
"Save the children first," they said.
Weep and lament, Jews, at such a destruction.
The ocean robbed you of the pride you earned.

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

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Labels: disaster, history, love, marriage, morality, mores, New York