Von: "Siegfried Knoepfler"

Datum: 23. März 2005 KW12 23:45:30 MEZ

An: "NadineStahWhite", "Maryann Vagg", "Sue Laughton"

Betreff: Proposal for a Sore Fingers Week activity

Dear adorable ladies,

for quite a long time Nadine was urging me to teach the world, or at least a few autoharpers in the UK, German folk songs (Volkslieder). Well, I'm now in the position to make you a proposal!

:-)

In a song book (Deutsche Volkslieder) I recently acquired, I found a song which I fondly remember from my childhood days. It is actually a Swiss-German song, well known also north of the Swiss/German border. I think it would make a nice surprise for Heidi Cerrigione when she comes to the UK Autoharp Day in October since she has ancestors from Switzerland.

I will bring a handful of photocopies of the tune and the lyrics to Sore Fingers and I offer to teach anyone interested the song and the pronunciation of the Swiss-German words as true as possible.

The song is known by its first line, "Es Burebüebli mahn i nit", the tune has a quick 3/4 dance rhythm, and in the words the singer tells that she clearly cannot be expected to accept a farmer's boy (verse 1), she's deserving someone real handsome, refined and without faults (verse 2), but, of course, there are no master's sons without faults (verse 3), therefore she'll remain unmarried until death, thus putting an end to love (verse 4).

(The lyrics seem to portray a certain female attitude of "choosiness". Actually I suspect here a male author at work, caricaturing a behaviour pattern perceived by man as snotty, arrogant and silly. So it would take really emancipated, liberated women to sing this song, thus caricaturing the caricature!)

I'm sendig this e-mail in a still safe time distance from SFW because I observed how difficult it is, in fact, to get people there together for a certain event. Now that you all know about my proposal you won't be surprised when I'm going to ask you for a time and a place to meet -- if you are actually interested in learning this song, of course! If you are, and you think that others might be interested as well, please feel free to inform those other people, too.

Cheers!

Siegfried in Cologne, Germany