An Analysis of Yiddish Counting-out Rhymes from the collection of Mordkhe Schaechter

• In Event: Yiddish Language and Yiddish Linguists

Abstract

ITZIK GOTTESMAN (UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN)

The Yiddish rhymes of children that count the participants in a game are called TSEYLENISHN or OYSTSEYLENISHN. In English the most popular example would be “Eenie, meenie, minee mo”. Many examples can be found in the important Yiddish children’s folklore collections of S. Ansky, Shmuel Lehman and Pinkhes Graubard among others. These were collected in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. There are also many examples in the Yiddish memoir literature that was published before and after the second world war. This genre of folklore has always fascinated folklorists because of its creativity, folk humor – some of it quite vulgar, parodic wildness, and often the apparent nonsense of many of the words in the rhymes. It is also a folklore genre that many Jews remember from their childhood. As he was working on his dissertation on Yiddish linguistics at the University of Vienna from 1948 -1951, the philologist Mordkhe Schaechter and his sister, the poet Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, set out to collect Yiddish children’s rhymes: Schaechter from the Jews in the Viennese displaced person’s camps and Schaechter-Gottesman from Yiddish literature. They then planned to send the materials to the YIVO Institute office in New York City. Only some of the counting-out rhymes that they collected were published afterwards. Schaechter did publish a short note on one rhyme speculating on the etymology of apparent nonsense syllables. This presentation will examine the Schaechter materials to see if there is an overall structure to the genre of Yiddish counting-out rhymes and if so how it is similar and different to other culture’s rhymes. The talk will include rhymes from other Yiddish collections as well to see if a geographic comparison is possible – comparing Yiddish rhymes from Poland with those from Lithuania, Romania and Ukraine. Audio recordings of Yiddish counting out rhymes from the Ruth Rubin collection at YIVO will be played to familiarize the audience with the materials.

Author

• Itzik Gottesman, University of Texas at Austin