From tape marked “Literary Origin.” Note on tape log inside box:] Text: Yehoash. Tune: ?

From tape marked “Literary Origin.” Note on tape log inside box:] Text and tune: Peretz Hirshbein.

From tape marked “Literary Origin.” Note on tape log inside box:]

From tape marked “Literary Origin.” Note on tape log inside box for Tape 57, Song 9:]

[Note from typewritten tape log in box:] These [marriage songs] are not songs of ceremonials or rites. These are songs which touch upon the marriage theme, either in jest, satirically, in dance or even in a children’s rhyme like [Tape 70] No. 3. Sometimes they bear the mark of the marriage entertainer (badkhn). [Handwritten note:] Like [Tape 70] No. 5

The singer lays her head on her mother’s bed; her mother has pleasure from her daughter, calls her beautiful, she should sleep in good health.
The singer lays her head on her father’s bed; he comments on her beautiful black eyes, he has pleasure from his daughter, she should sleep in good health.
The singer lays her head on her husband’s bed; he has kind words for her, has pleasure from her loves her, she should sleep in good health.
She lays her head on her mother-in-law’s bed; she curses her and says she doesn’t do any work, and sleeps constantly.

[Typewritten note on tape log inside box:] Note: Nos. 6, 7, and 10, show linguistic contamination. The original Yiddish East European terms may have already been forgotten by the singer, who has substituted more recent forms of expression.The noises heard on some of the tapes are [due] to traffic disturbances coming in through the windows, and the advanced age of the group, whose attention span is limited.]

She explains the game in English. Note from tape log on outside of tape box for the original, spliced tape, not included on the tape log of the dupe:] My childhood in Montreal, Canada, is closely bound with my Yiddish education in a secular Jewish school. Many of these rhymes stem from that environment, as well as the one at home, where my Bessarabian-born mother, shared her own childhood memories of games and rhymes and taunts and teasers, with me. Blessed with a retentive memory...I later picked up many more from my informants. Ms. Michaels prefaces each section of the song with an English explanation. The children are in a circle, with hands cupped. One child stands into the center of the circle, and closes his/her eyes. Another child places a ring or other object iin the hands of a third child and all the children close their hands. The one in the center has to guess in whose hand the object is. “...in vemens hant ligt dem goldenem fingerl” If s/he answers correctly another child goes into the center; if not the game repeats with the same child in center. 41842

Note from tape log on outside of tape box for the original, spliced tape, not included on the tape log of the dupe:] My childhood in Montreal, Canada, is closely bound with my Yiddish education in a secular Jewish school. Many of these rhymes stem from that environment, as well as the one at home, where my Bessarabian-born mother, shared her own childhood memories of games and rhymes and taunts and teasers, with me. Blessed with a retentive memory...I later picked up many more from my informants. A fast, rhyming tongue twister! 41842

[Note in the LOC tape box} In this category of song, which spans the last quarter of the 19th century and into the 20th, there are a number of songs of literary origin. The poems of David Edelshtat, Morris Winchevsky, Morris Rosenfeld, A. Litvin and others, were popular in both the American-Yiddish-speaking community and the East European Yiddish-speaking community. However, variants were created more in the East European community. 41903 Ruth Rubin tape was digitized.

[Note in the LOC tape box} In this category of song, which spans the last quarter of the 19th century and into the 20th, there are a number of songs of literary origin. The poems of David Edelshtat, Morris Winchevsky, Morris Rosenfeld, A. Litvin and others, were popular in both the American-Yiddish-speaking community and the East European Yiddish-speaking community. However, variants were created more in the East European community.

Note from black hardbound catalog:] Fragment. Whenever noises are heard on the tape, they are either from traffic noises which intruded themselves into the area where taping was taking place, or the noises of restlessness and fidgeting on the part of the group, which was present. Taping in groups stimulated the memory. Hearing the singers, the response would often be, “That’s not the way I sang it.” And their variants would be given.

[In typewritten catalog, RG620 black hand-bound hard-cover book, RR’s catalog tape numbers are wrong: 4/4-4/10 should be 2/4-2/10]