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Send your wife to the country by Louis Gilrod
Sing to the melody from
ALL ABOARD FOR DREAMLAND


Note that this song is not titled as you would expect (and as the Yiddish reference has it).

On A Sunday Afternoon was published in 1904 by composer Harry Von Tilzer (we have had previous songs by him) with the original English words by Andrew B. Sterling.

As usual Louis Gilrod's Yiddish version is cynical and mocking of the habits of families who were getting ahead - being able to afford to send your wife to the country while you theoretically were sweating away in your non-air-conditioned office in the city was a sign of status.

Sending the wife to the country is a continuing trope in Yiddish songs. On my other blog, PolishJewishCabaret.com, we have a song from a generation later about a wife who comes home early from Zakopane (a Polish resort) to the extreme distress of her philandering husband. See also (on this blog) the very similar song Country Pleasure.

Here's my living room recording from yesterday:


Translation from the Yiddish and transliteration after the jump.




Send your wife into the country

When summer comes it's a golden time, married people rejoice then.
Every married man, if he wants to live well and enjoy pleasures his wife shouldn't know about, know what he does?

He sends his wife to the country. He takes off his ring and becomes single again. When his wife's in the country he doesn't do any thinking about anything.
He looks for a "Line" who's no greenhorn here. When his wife's in the country he sleeps on the roof.

I know someone who has no love for his wife. He can't sleep at night if she's in the room. She's a Cossack, he says, and she looks at him funny. Since he wants to be rid of her, I quickly say to him:

Send your wife to the country - be clever and don't become distraught.
When she's in the country, you can sneak around.
Send her mother off there too and try to poison the two of them together.
Then they'll stay in the country and you'll be all right.

Hear what happened to me, what a joke. A maiden - milk and honey! - found me in the street late at night.
She says she should come home with me if I'm looking for fun.
"I have my own wife to have fun with," I say. She tells me:

"Send your wife to the country. You're no member of fine society if you don't change it up. Send your wife to the country and be a smart young man."
She wanted money from me. A policeman came and took her! Now she lives in a country called Sing Sing [prison].

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

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