Avek di yunge yorn

If ever there was a Yiddish song that proved the Jewish people were influenced by Ukranian folk songs, this must be it. The theme is characteristic of folk songs: "My youth has fled. Oy vey. And I didn't even carpe diem!" The melody is so typical of Eastern European folk songs, that it's almost strange to hear it sung in Yiddish. You'd expect it to be sung by three lovely young Ukranian peasant girls, dressed in beautiful white dresses embroidered with red, blue and yellow patterns, smiling brightly, and singing in perfect harmony with nasal voices (apparently, singing through the nose helped project the sound farther out to the wedding guests in the days preceding amplifiers and microphones). Anyway, here it is, with my best attempt at a nasal folksinger's voice.


 

Over the hill, across the hill	Afn barg, ibern barg	אױפֿן באַרג, איבערן באַרג
Doves are flying in pairs	Flien toybn porn	פֿליען טױבן פּאָרן
I haven't yet known any pleasure	Kh'hob nokh keyn nakhes nit gehat	כ'האָב נאָך קײן נחת ניט געהאַט
And already my youth is gone	Avek mayne yunge yorn	אַװעק מײנע יונגע יאָרן
Harness the black horses my brothers	Shpant zhe brider di shvartse ferd	שפּאַנט זשע ברידער די שװאַרצע פֿערד
And let us run and travel	Un lomir loyfn, forn	און לאָמיר לױפֿן, פֿאָרן
Maybe I'll manage yet to overtake	Efsher vel ikh nokh deryogn	אפֿשר װעל איך נאָך דעריאָגן
My young years	Mayne yunge yorn	מײַנע יונגע יאָרן
I met the young years	Kh'hob bagegnt di yunge yorn	כ'האָב באַגעגענט די יונגע יאָרן
On the wide bridge	Af dem breytn brik	אױף דעם ברײטן בריק
Years, years, come back again	Yorn, yorn, kert zikh um	יאָרן, יאָרן, קערט זיך אום
Even if only as guests	Khotsh in gest tsurik	כאָטש אין געסט צוריק
No, no, we won't go	Neyn, neyn, mir veln nit geyn	נײן, נײן, מיר װעלן ניט גײן
Who would we go back for?	S'iz nito tsu vemen	ס'איז ניטאָ צו װעמען
You shouldn't have	Host undz nit gezolt	האָסט אונדז ניט געזאָלט
Humiliated us in your youth!	Yungerhayt farshemn	יונגערהײט פֿאַרשעמן

This Jewish theatre photo, with a woman who looks remarkably like Molly Picon, appears whenever I open "Avek di yunge yorn" in my VLC media player. I've no idea how VLC selects the photos to show, but it's obviously not at random!

There's one Yiddish word in this song that's a bit difficult to translate: nakhes (נחת). The singer complains that he hasn't yet known any nakhes and already his youth is gone. Beinfeld and Bochner's bilingual dictionary translates it as "pleasure, satisfaction, delight". But there's something more in the word nakhes - it shares a root with the Hebrew words nakh, ("resting") and menukha ("rest"). It gives off an aura of peace and tranquility, as well as pleasure. It is also used to express pleasure and pride in somebody, especially a child or grandchild, when he is well behaved, polite and learns well, as in Sholem Aleykhem's famous ironic monologue, "nakhes fun kinder" (pleasure from children). My grandfather Lova often used to exclaim, "Oy shtik nakhes!" while we were gardening together. Even though I spoke no Yiddish at the time, I remembered the expression many years later. According to my mother, he used this as a term of endearment to myself, as the person giving him nakhes, just as an American grandfather might call his grandson "honey". I chose to translate nakhes below as "pleasure", but this leaves out some of the nuances.

Maria Primachenko - Ukrainian Wedding - 1966

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to:

• Eleanor Chana Mlotek, for publishing the lyrics and music to this song in her anthology, "Mir Trogn a Gezang"
• foxen10 for the horse's whinny
• tgfcoder for the doves cooing outside his window
• Audacity for making it possible for me to mix all of the tracks together!
• Sholem Jozef, for reviewing and correcting my translation