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Klezmer
 Klezmer
Music, History, and Memory

WA LT E R Z E V F E L D M A N

1
 1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© Oxford University Press 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
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rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–​0–​19–​024451–​4

This volume is published with the generous support of the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the American
Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
This volume is dedicated to the memory
of Moyshe Beregovski (1892–​1961).
 “That which has been, has still to reveal to us what it is. It does not lie
there as an inert residue. There is more in the past than what has so far
been objectively and rationally extracted from it.”
—Karl Jaspers, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte
 CONTENTS

Prefaceâ•… ix
Acknowledgmentsâ•… xix
About the Companion Websiteâ•… xxiii

Introductionâ•… 1

PART 1 â•… THE KLEZMER PROFESSION: SOCIAL

AND ARTISTIC FUNCTION

1. The Music of the Klezmer Within East Ashkenazic Musicâ•… 31

2. What’s in a Name? The Word Klezmer and Jewish

Professional Musiciansâ•… 59

3. The Klezmer Ensembleâ•… 99

4. The Role of Russia in the Study of Klezmer Musicâ•… 117

5. The Jewish Wedding and Its Musical Repertoireâ•… 137

6. East European Jewish Danceâ•… 163

PART 2 â•… GENRE AND ST YLE IN KLEZMER MUSIC

7. The Genres and Repertoires of Klezmer Musicâ•… 205

8. Moralishe Niggunim: the Musical Genres of the Weddingâ•… 215

vii
viii Contents

9. Rhythmic Melody Among the Ashkenazim: Nign and Zmires 235

10. Old European Components in the Core Repertoire 249

11. The Sher: History and Choreography 261

12. North and South in Klezmer Music: Northern Redl

and Southern Freylekhs 275

13. Skotshne and Freylekhs 299

14. The Khosidl at the Interface of Mystical and Secular Expression 315

15. The Bulgar: a Transnational Klezmer Dance Genre 347

16. Postlude: a Klezmer Legacy 367

Appendix 1: Overview of Modal Usage in Klezmer Music 375

Glossary 387
Bibliography 391
Index 405
 P R E FA C E

Over a hundred years ago a khasene, a Jewish wedding was about to begin
in a shtetl in Podolian Ukraine. The fiddler Tarrasiuk from Ternovka was
davening minkhe, praying the afternoon prayer. A tall man with a long red
beard, he swayed in his prayers as the bride and her relatives await the
music to start the kale ​bazetsn ceremony, the bride’s cathartic lamentation,
which must precede the ceremony under the khupe, the wedding canopy,
where the couple will be legally married.
In a shtetl near Vinitsa, also in Podolian Ukraine, in winter, the daugh-
ter of one of the wealthiest Jewish merchants of the town has just been
married under the khupe. Tarrasiuk’s contemporary, the violinist known as
Marder Hagodel, “The Great Marder,” was just waking up in a clean room
in the town’s best hotel. It was ten-​thirty at night. He had slept through
the previous day, after eating a tasty meal at the hotel, recovering from his
arduous trip by train and wagon from Vinitsa. His son-​in-​law has led the
band through all the preliminary music, the mazltovs for the relatives, the
kale-​bazetsn, even the music for the khupe and the ritual dances. Only now
will the Great Marder enter the wedding salon to fulfill his obligations to
play for this wedding. He crosses the snowy street and enters the wedding
salon, where his patron and the other respected guests are waiting at their
table. Marder enters, greets his band, and they quickly tune up. For the
next hour the salon resounds with the long held chords of the bass, cello
and viola as Marder’s violin sings its touching Jewish laments and fantasies.
The bride’s father winks to his new brother-​in-​law, he costs a fortune, this
Marder, but he is worth it!
In a shtetl near Vilna in Lithuania, a poor Jewish workman was mar-
rying off his daughter. Of course the wedding took place at home in the
summer, how could he afford to hire a hall and pay for heating and lighting
in winter? And for music he could only engage four of the youngest mem-
bers of the local klezmer—​a fiddle, clarinet, trumpet and drum. He did not

ix
x Preface

have to pay them a kopeck—​if the guests want to dance, let them pay for
each number! Of course this was a happy occasion, but he knew that some
of his neighbors would sneer at this band, calling it a—​“a fidl,​paykl, ​tokhes
kapelye,” a fiddle, drum and backside band.
The summer of 1915 in the town Gline in Galicia. The previous win-
ter, as the Austrian troops had retreated before the advancing Russians,
they had set fire to the Jewish quarter of town. The Cossacks destroyed
most of the rest. By summer, after the Jews had been burnt out of their
homes, cholera spread in the town. It was carried by the Russian troops
and spread by the miserable conditions of the dispossessed Jews. Soldiers,
Poles and Jews began to die. Following ancient custom, as a remedy, the
rabbi decreed that the community must do a spectacular good deed, they
must marry off two of its poorest members, both of them orphans, and
hold the wedding at night in the cemetery. They chose a poor porter, a
strong man in the prime of life and a poor girl much younger than him,
whose parents had just died in the cholera. The rabbi, shammash and gabai
of the synagogue measured the circumference of the cemetery grounds
with white sheets. Later in the day the whole Jewish population of the
town began to arrive, led by the klezmorim. The rabbi and his assistants
set up a wedding canopy on the cemetery grounds and the musicians
began to play unearthly music. The violin led with a melody while the
cimbalom, the contra-​fiddle and the bass, held a drone. The ceremony
was short, and unlike other weddings, no happy tune was played at the
end of the ritual under the khupe. The klezmorim led the way out of the
cemetery, through the poor Gentile neighborhood, playing a sad little
tune. This whole ceremony was known as the shvartse khasene, the “Black
Wedding” where the klezmorim played the special melody that would
coax the spirits of the dead relatives from their graves so they could join
in the ceremony. By having the dead share in the primal ritual of life the
community hoped to enlist them to intercede with Heaven so that the
Angel of Death would leave their town.
In the summer of 1920 in Edineţ, a lively town in northern Bessarabia, a
wedding is taking place. Since the Romanians marched in two years earlier,
setting up a cap on a pole to which all townsmen had to salute, the Jews
were often afraid. But by now things had settled down and they are more
hopeful about the future. The Edinetser kapelye, of which the town was
proud, led by its Gypsy violinist and its Jewish clarinetist, was playing for
general dancing at the wedding of a relative of the Feldmans, local furriers.
A young clarinetist from the Tarrasiuk clan of Ternovka, on the Russian
side of the border, had come as a refugee from the Civil War there, and has
been invited to play as an adjunct for almost no pay. As the band plays a
sher, young Meshilim, son of the furrier Reb Velvel Zev, contributes toward
 Preface xi

the cost of the klezmorim. It is scenes like this that he will remember, after
he has emigrated to New York. Many years later he would relate them to his
son, also named Velvel Zev.

Klezmer Music: An Invocation

Klezmer music stands across from us and apart from us. It is a little island just
off the shore. On a clear day we can make out trees and pathways, half-​ruined
houses from the days when it had been inhabited. Sometimes ghostly music wafts
our way from the island, almost too faint to hear, but at other times strident and
piercing. Some free summer afternoon I think I would like to go out to the island,
but there is no bridge and no ferry service. The water is unaccountably deep and
turbulent—​I don’t dare to try to swim. I stare out at the blue, almost cloudless
sky, wondering why I cannot traverse that short distance. In fact, as the weeks
and months pass the island seems to move further out to sea. I can recall the days,
over a decade ago, when people still managed to come to our shore from there,
but nowadays the traffic has ceased. The closest we come is to listen to the tales
of those who had met natives of the island many years ago. We can only wonder
what had gone on there. Some tales speak of hedonistic celebrations, others of
ecstatic near-​mystical trances or of sober artistic meditations, while still others
tell of unspeakable vulgarity, or of bland routine days closing with a few perfunc-
tory ditties at night.

As a teenager in the 1960’s, I once heard the Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer
being interviewed in a Reform synagogue in Manhattan. Singer had characterized
the condition of the Yiddish language as “sick.” Later in the interview the rabbi mis-
quoted the writer by saying, “Mr. Singer, earlier you had said that the Yiddish lan-
guage is dead.” Singer corrected him: “Rabbi, I had said that the Yiddish language is
sick.” The writer paused, then went on, “And in our history the difference between
‘sick’ and ‘dead’ is a big difference.”
In the 1960s, when Singer was saying these words about Yiddish, the music of
the klezmer—​the traditional instrumentalist of the Yiddish-​speaking Jews—​was
“sick” but not actually dead. To be sure, to most observers the music may have
seemed more dead than alive. The 1950s and 1960s were witness to the death
of most of the famous klezmorim in America—​such as the clarinetist Naftule
Brandwein (1884–​1963), the violinist Berish Katz (1879–​1964), and the cim-
balist Josef Moscovitz (1879–​1953). Shloimke Beckerman, the outstanding clari-
netist, passed away a decade later in 1974, but he had long ceased to perform his
Jewish repertoire in public. Moreover, the music that they had played at weddings,
at landsmanshaft gatherings, at public dances, at restaurants, or on the radio hardly
found an audience among the American-​born generations of Jews. Indeed there
xii Preface

was still something of an audience for their music among American Greeks and
Armenians, but among the Jews other music—​whether Israeli, Cuban, or American
genres—​had taken its place. Of the outstanding musicians mentioned above, only
the clarinetist Beckerman had a son, Sid, who continued something of his musical
tradition. Beckerman’s nephew Sam played accordion for the sole European-​born
klezmer who still had something of an audience: the clarinet virtuoso Dave Tarras
(1897–​1989). And some American-​born musicians (notably, the clarinetists Max
Epstein and Sam and Ray Muziker) still performed it on a high level. But while
this music had lost much of its viability, it survived in part among more provincial
Jewish communities in the Bronx and Philadelphia, among other places. Outside of
the United States, in Canada and Argentina, a similar scenario played itself out on
a smaller scale.
A few lines of a personal nature may help to explain why I was not content to let
this music be forgotten, and how it connects with my memory and the memory of
my family.
My father was born in 1898 as Meshilim ben Zev Feldman, in the small town
Edineț, province of Hotin, Bessarabia, into a family of furriers. At the age of twenty-​
four he emigrated to America with a Romanian passport as Max Feldman and
ended up as a small merchant, first on the Lower East Side and then in the Bronx.
As a child I can see my father, usually focused on something other than me, or any
other person. In the morning, he davens. At night, he reads the Yiddish daily der Tog.
During the summer, while visiting us in the Catskills for weekends, his greatest plea-
sure seems to be sitting under a shady tree, once again reading der Tog. Yet I know he
has another side. At weddings and bar mitzvahs I remember him hopping across the
dance floor, dancing a sher with my mother and other couples, or snaking through a
freylekhs or bulgar. Even at home, in enthusiastic moments he was known to cut his
feet across the floor in strange scissor-​like movements. There are never words, only
this language of dance. My mother tells me that she had taken me to his regional
landsmanshaft organization, the “Edinitser Society,” when I was too young to walk.
Who knows what bulgars and shers I might have witnessed, held in my mother’s
arms? My governess, a poor and selfless intellectual from Chişinau, poked fun at my
father’s conservatism. He was not “progressive” like her; she was from the regional
capital and could read as well as speak Russian, while he was from a distant shtetl.
After Yiddish, he had learned only an imperfect Romanian and once in America had
not mastered English as well as she had. Yet, she had to admit, where he was from
“the men are light on their feet.”
Our neighborhood in the West Bronx was then home to a large Yiddish-​speaking
community and a smaller Ladino-​speaking one from Turkey and the Balkans. By
age ten, I was attending the Turkish synagogue as well as my father’s little shul. In
Music and Art high school I became acquainted with our Greek and Armenian
neighbors, one of whom painted icons in the local Greek cathedral, in nearby
 Preface xiii

Washington Heights, eventually playing around the Catskills with the young Greek
band Leventiko Pende (the Levantine Five). My active languages began to include
Hebrew, Yiddish, Turkish, and some Russian and Romanian. My father enjoyed
the many recordings of Greek clarinet music I borrowed, telling me that the Greeks
played a “Semitic” music that differed from ours mainly in its rhythms. Indeed, on
some of these recordings Dave Tarras was playing but issued under a Greek name!
When I made friends with a Ruthenian-​American whose uncle had been a fiddler,
I came home with stacks of Galician country music from Canada. My father was
visibly moved to hear these kolomeykas played on the fiddle; this was music close
to his heart. Unlike many Jewish immigrants to America, my father had quite a lot
to say about the “Old Country,” and much of it was quite positive. He also taught
me to distinguish different kinds of Romanian music. To him Wallachian music
from Bucharest was exaggerated, artificial, and silly. The real music of the Volokhs
was Moldavian music, or better still Bessarabian music. While he spoke of some
genres as Jewish and others as Moldavian, I am not sure he would always have been
able to draw a clear line between the klezmer music of the Volokhs and of the Jews,
because in Bessarabia most professional bands had been mixed for generations.
Years later, after my father’s death in 1970, the great klezmer Dave Tarras told me
a few details about Edineț. Tarras remembered it as “a lively Jewish town” where
all but the poorest people had their own cellars in which they made and stored
wine. In New York, one of the landsmanshaftn for whom he played regularly was
the “Edinetser Society.” The Edinetsers appreciated his music so much that Tarras
had composed a bulgar tune in their honor: the Edinetser Bulgar, one of his earliest
recordings from the 1920s.
The opening vignettes in this preface show contrasting aspects of this music, as
they were revealed to me in different points in my life. Such stories played no role in
a generalized “memory” to which all American Jews were expected to subscribe but
existed only as personal, familial, or regional histories. All emanate from memories
of particular Jews, all but one from people I had known personally. The first, from
Tarras, is a story that he was told as a child and emphasizes the piety and serious-
ness of his fiddler great-​uncle, head of the prestigious Tarrasiuk kapelye. The second,
gleaned by the cellist Joachim Stutschewsky from one of his klezmer informants in
Tel Aviv, speaks of one of the greatest klezmer fiddlers in Podolia during the same
era. The short vignette from Lithuania comes from the bassist Naftali Aharoni in
Jerusalem, born Aronczyk in Vilna in 1919, to describe the polar opposite in sta-
tus of Marder and Tarrasiuk—​the minimal klezmer group for the wedding of poor
Jews. From the poet and klezmer Yermye Hescheles of Gline in Galicia (1910–​
2010), whom I interviewed in New York, I learned of the “Black Wedding,” held in a
cemetery—​the antithesis of any wedding I had seen or been told about. And finally,
I have a composite picture from my father’s stories about Edineț and Dave Tarras’s
biography as he related it to me.
xiv Preface

The Name “Klezmer Music”

and the Klezmer Revitalization
Growing up as an artist, a musician, and a scholar, I became increasingly curious
about this music that was becoming elusive in my own post-╉World War II American
environment. I was primarily interested in learning Jewish instrumental music, and
secondarily in reestablishing an audience for it. To these ends, I collaborated with
the mandolinist/╉clarinetist Andy Statman in studying with Dave Tarras, who had
been something of a household name in my family. By 1976, I was consistently
using the English term “klezmer music” for the repertoire that Statman and I were
learning from Tarras and from old recordings and notations. But where did this
term come from, and why was I using it?1
Already by the mid-╉1970s, I felt the necessity of having a name with which to
define the music we were learning. It was instrumental music and so did not fit into
any known category of “Jewish music.” It was not cantorial singing, nor Hasidic
song, nor Yiddish folksong, nor Yiddish theater song, nor Israeli song. As we will
see in the Introduction and Chapter 1, even in Europe, the song culture in Yiddish
was highly differentiated from the world of klezmer music and dance. They became
even more so in America, where these two expressive forms were largely supported
by different social groupings within the Yiddish-╉speaking Misnagdic community
during the interwar period and beyond. In New York, Yiddish songs of a variety
of genres were supported largely by avowed Yiddishists, who might be Bundists,
socialists, or politically unaffiliated beyond their loyalty to Yiddish. On the other
hand, the music of the klezmorim survived in America largely through the petit-╉
bourgeois landsmanshaft organizations who hired them for weddings, bar-╉mitsvahs,
and dances. Coming as I did from a landsmanshaft culture, the distinction between
the world of the klezmorim and dancing, with its moderately religious and “tradi-
tionalist” background, and that of the more “progressive” world of Yiddish song,
was very palpable.
Written material on the topic was scarce, and none of it was in English. I had
access to Joachim Stutschewsky’s Hebrew monograph Ha-╉Klezmerim (1959) and to
Moyshe (Moisie) Beregovski’s Yiddish article “Yidishe instrumentalishe folksmuzik”
(1937), as well as Ivan Lipaev’s seminal Evreiskie orkestry (1904) in Russian, located
in the Slavonic Division of the New York Public Library. In their different ways
these three texts, describing the Jewish wedding music mainly of my grandparents’
time in Russia and Ukraine, excited my imagination. On two trips to Romania, the
Balkan countries, and Turkey in 1969 and 1971—╉when I was working at Columbia

1
╇ The Yiddish singer and researcher Michael Alpert reminded me that, when I visited him in Los
Angeles in 1976, I had employed the term “klezmer music,” which no one seemed to understand at the
time (Alpert, pers. communication, 2007 and 2014).
 Preface xv

Graduate School on quite another folklore topic—​I had contact with scholars at the
Folklore and Ethnography Institute in Bucharest, including the noted researcher
on Romanian, Crimean Tatar, and Yiddish music, Ghisela Suliţeanu. An older
Romanian friend of mine in New York—​who had known the noted ethnomusi-
cologist Constantin Brailoiu—​directed me to Harry Brauner, another major Jewish
musicologist at the Institute in Bucharest, whom I visited in 1971. I became aware
that Romanian scholars distinguished between muzica populara (folk music of the
people) and muzica lăutareasca, (music of professional musicians). This seemed like
an apt distinction for the Yiddish musical culture as well, which had had its profes-
sional musicians. The Yiddish language did have a term for the musician who per-
formed music at traditional Jewish weddings in Eastern Europe: he was a “klezmer.”
In my family, the term klezmer sometimes came up (as in my father’s memories of
the musicians in Edineț) but never in connection with the present. A group or band
were klezmorim, a kapelye, or else simply “di klezmer”—​a collective plural.
It seemed the Yiddish language had no general term for the music that the
klezmer musician had played. This in itself was nothing unusual. I was aware that
dance and wedding repertoires in Turkey, Greece, or Romania had no generic
names, other than the names of specific dances or wedding rituals. At most there
might be a name like the Turkish davul-​zurna (drum and shawm) to refer to any
celebratory or dance music played by Gypsies on these instruments—​as I learned
while studying Turkish dance in Erzurum in 1971. When I performed with Statman
in the rembetika ensemble Palioparea in New York, I understood that it was a new
urban genre and so it acquired a name.
Pre-​Soviet Russian scholars (both Jewish and non-​Jewish), including Ivan
Lipaev, Joel Engel, Zusman Kiselgof, and Nikolai Findeisen, had not invented a
name for the Jewish instrumental music that they were collecting and studying
(see Chapter 4). During the 1920s and 30s, the Soviet Jewish researcher Moyshe
Beregovski created several different terms in Russian and Yiddish to refer to this
instrumental musical repertoire played by the klezmorim. It appears that he was the
first to attempt to name the entire repertoire. When writing in Russian, Beregovski
used evreiskaia narodnaia instrumental’naia muzyka ( Jewish instrumental folk
music), literally translated into Yiddish as yidishe instrumentale folks-​muzik. But he
also created two Yiddish terms: klezmerishe folks-​muzik and klezmerishe muzik. He
had apparently created these terms already in the later 1920s (Irzabekova 2013).
In his 1937 Yiddish-​language article, he used the term klezmer on almost every
page, and it was evidently still widely understood by Yiddish speakers even though
the semi-​official organization of Jewish musicians, and the “traditional” weddings
at which they had played, were by then things of the past. Writing in Hebrew in
the 1950s, Joachim Stutschewsky transposed Beregovski’s klezmerishe muzik into
muzika klezmerit. The credit for the invention clearly goes to Beregovski; but in the
America of the 1970s I was obliged to reinvent the wheel for the contemporary
English language.
xvi Preface

In 1976, Ethel Raim—​director of the Balkan Arts Center (now the Center for
Traditional Music and Dance)—​and I wrote to the National Endowment for the
Arts in Washington, DC for a grant to document and present Dave Tarras and his
accompanists. The title we chose was an English translation of Beregovski’s yidishe
instrumentale folks-​muzik to “Jewish Instrumental Folk Music.” But by the time
the first concert with Tarras was being planned, it seemed appropriate to choose
between klezmerishe folks-​muzik and klezmerishe muzik. I chose the latter, simplify-
ing and Anglicizing it to klezmer music. Thus our concert poster read: “The Balkan
Arts Center Presents: Jewish Klezmer Music: A Tribute to Dave Tarras.” The con-
cert in New York in November 1978 seems to mark the first appearance of the term
“klezmer music,” which has continued to describe the music up to the present day
in a great many languages.2 It seems incredible that at the time we felt the need to
add the word “Jewish” to be sure that “klezmer music” would be understandable to
an American audience! In 1979, Andy Statman and I used it again as the title for
our album Jewish Klezmer Music,3 (which I translated back into Yiddish as yidishe
klezmer muzik on the album cover).
At present the continued relevance of the term “klezmer music”—​often shortened
simply to “klezmer”—​for the variety of musical genres it is used to cover is being
debated, but its use in the 1970s and 80s certainly helped to focus attention on the
genre. The fact that 1970s American English still had no term for a musical repertoire
that had almost three generations of performance and development in America testi-
fies to the underdeveloped state of Jewish studies in general, and Jewish ethnomusi-
cology in particular. It also testifies to the limited commercial viability of the music
outside of its Jewish life-​cycle function.4 The leading performers themselves were

2
I learned in 2007 from James Loeffler (University of Virginia) that American Jewish journalists
in the interwar period had used the term once or twice, but it had no linguistic or cultural continuity in
English after the War. Entries in the Encyclopedia Judaica, notably that by Hanoch Avenary of Tel Aviv
University, did employ the term “klezmer music,” no doubt derived through J. Stutschewsky’s muzika
klezmerit, to be discussed below. But none of this had any currency in post-​W WII North America.
All current international terms—​including the German Klezmer-​Musik, are calques from post 1978
English, and not from any original Yiddish term. Hebrew has retained Stutschewsky’s muzika klezmerit.
3
Barbarba Kirshenblatt-​Gimblett (NYU) called it “the first ‘authenticity’ album, marking the
entry of the term klezmer music.” See her, “Sounds of Sensibility,” in Slobin 2002: 141. Our LP record
jacket also contains my rather thorough description under the rubric “klezmer music.” This was the
first such description in the English language. Professor Kirshenblatt and I chose the name “Klezmer-​
Muzik”—​Yiddish orthography for English “Klezmer Music”—​for the reissue of 78 recordings at the
YIVO issued by Folkways in 1981 (edited by Henry Sapoznik). Professor Martin Schwartz in Berkeley
also used our English term “klezmer music” for his reissue of his private collection in 1982, and which
he defined further as “Early Jewish Instrumental Music.”
4
American discographic evidence reveals that part of the klezmer dance repertoire retained per-
haps more viability in the 1960s among American Greeks and Armenians than among Jews. From
the 1940s to the 1960s there were also klezmer recordings made by Greek and Armenian musicians
(such as Tetos Dimitriades and Gus Vali in New York and Ray Mirjanian in Philadelphia), aimed at
 Preface xvii

either no longer alive or in any case no longer performing publically, and the available
discography was very limited. It would seem that naming the genre helped to focus
the attention of a younger generation of Jewish Americans whose interest in the pos-
sible existence of such a musical style had been frustrated in part by their inability to
articulate what exactly they were looking for. The rapid and widespread acceptance
of the new name “klezmer music” was largely due to its usefulness as a marketing
tool, roughly analogous to bluegrass or jazz in an earlier American context.5
The first Tribute to Dave Tarras concert in 1978—​with Sam Beckerman and
Max Goldberg, and including a cameo performance by Andy Statman and myself—​
proved to be a major milestone on both a personal and a cultural level. As I have
described elsewhere (Feldman 2002), the concert and the ecstatic dance party
following it turned into a major cultural catharsis for New York Jews. Many then-​
younger musicians and singers who would later involve themselves professionally in
klezmer music or in Yiddish song (such as David Krakauer, Frank London, Hankus
Netsky, Bob Cohen, Josh Waletzky, Paula Teitelbaum, and Janet Leuchter) avow that
this one concert had a galvanizing effect. As Village Voice critic Nat Hentoff wrote:
“Dave Tarras’ musical lineage spans three generations, and he needn’t look far for an
heir,” and “I saw much musical life to come from these, our common, roots” (Hentoff
1978: 24).
The Moldavian Jewish connection also brings to the fore the author’s “halfie”
status, a term, according to Abu-​Lughod, for “people whose national or cultural
identity is mixed by virtue of migration, overseas education or parentage” (Abu-​
Lughod 1991: 137). From an ethnographic perspective this “halfie” status con-
fers certain advantages through insider knowledge or access, but also carries the
danger of unexamined assumptions transferred from one culture to the other. In
a sense, most of my work with klezmer music as both a scholar and a performer
since my graduate student years has been a struggle to avoid the pitfalls of this
situation while taking full advantage of its benefits. My research in Moldova from
2011 to 2015 has allowed me to reconnect with my father’s shtetl Edineț, and
with the memories of the older Moldavian lăutar musicians still playing there
in a recognizably local style, as well as with still older musicians who have emi-
grated to Germany, Israel, or Canada in post-​Soviet times. I plan to treat this rich
Moldavian klezmer/​lăutar tradition separately in another monograph.
In several ways the present work is a continuation of the groundbreaking research
of Moyshe Beregovski (1892–​1961) in early Soviet Ukraine, supplemented by more

both a Jewish and a Near Eastern market. Among anecdotal evidence I can cite a conversation I had
in Toronto (ca. 1985) with a Jewish record shop owner who told me that at that time he continued to
stock Dave Tarras LPs—​which were issued on the Greek-​American “Colonial” label more for the local
Greeks than for Jews.
5
Alan Bern made a similar point in his interview for David Kaufman’s documentary The New
Klezmorim: Voices Inside the Revival of Yiddish Music (Toronto, 2000).
xviii Preface

historicist methods developed by Hungarian and Romanian ethnomusicology as

well as post-​World War II developments in the field. Prior to my work in Moldova,
I conducted my field research by extensive interviews with the few European-​born
klezmer master musicians still alive in the late-​twentieth century, especially Dave
Tarras (1897–​1989) and Yermye Hescheles (1910–​2010). Of course, since klezmer
music has now become a popular music with a wide and heterogeneous audience
both in America and abroad, it is inevitable that much publication will be of a pop-
ular nature. While there is no shortage of such publications in English, German,
Italian, or a variety of other languages, there is also a small but growing number of
critical studies based on major primary sources. While larger, synthetic studies of
the music of East European Jews are yet to be written, this preliminary research into
one important repertoire is long overdue.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For a book with such a long gestation, acknowledgements grow exponentially,

and citing them reveals much about how this research progressed. My earlier
work on the bulgarish dance (1994) was in a sense an homage to my teacher Dave
Tarras (1897–​1989), and to his role in transmitting, composing, and developing
Moldavian klezmer music in America. But within the following years—​through the
agency of my friend, the Yiddish folklorist Itzik Gottesman—​I had the good for-
tune to meet the poet, journalist, and klezmer violinist Yermye Hescheles (1910–​
2010), originally from the shtetl Gline in Eastern Galicia. Through our extensive
interviews in 1998, Hescheles became a direct link to the klezmer music of Eastern
Europe. I regret that I will not be able to share this book with him.
Teaching affords many opportunities to test and refine ideas. Between 2000
and 2008 my teaching of klezmer and Yiddish music at the Music Department of
New York University, the Music Department of Bar Ilan University, Beit Shalom
Aleichem (Tel Aviv), and the Rubin Academy for Music and Dance in Jerusalem
helped to shape several of the topics presented in this book. I was able to develop
my ideas about Jewish dance and its relationship to klezmer music through my
guest teaching of Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-​Gimblett’s course in “Jewish
Performance” at New York University (2008), which led into my course in Gesture,
taught at New York University in Abu Dhabi (2012–​14), in which both the Yiddish
language and Ashkenazic dance had a prominent role. This in turn was fed by the
“Yiddish Dance Research Symposium: Defining Yiddish Dance,” sponsored by the
Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CTMD) and held at NYU in December
2007, with the continued enthusiastic support of directors Ethel Raim and Pete
Rushefsky. My class “The Dancing Ashkenazim” at Beit Avichai in Jerusalem
(2005–​7) attracted interested dancers from Yiddish, Hasidic, Yemenite, Iranian,
and Indian backgrounds. I later developed these ideas in my workshop “Ashkenazic
Dance: History and Theory,” given at Yiddish Summer Weimar in 2009, and in
Advanced Yiddish Dance classes in Weimar in 2010 and 2015, at the invitation of
Alan Bern, whose support for klezmer and Yiddish music has been extraordinary.

xix
xx Acknowledgments

Over the years, both my dancing and discussions with the Yiddish dance pioneer
and singer Michael Alpert have been stimulating and enriching. I would like to thank
Professor Steven Blum for inviting me to create the lecture and concert series “The
Revival of Klezmer and Yiddish Music in New York, 1975–​2002” at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York in 2003. Two chapters of this book were
sharpened by presentations at the Association for Jewish Studies Meetings, in the
panel that I organized with James Loeffler of the University of Virginia—​“Music in
Ashkenazic Society: ca. 1600–​1920” in 2008 (Chapter 1) and “The Sher: History
and Choreography” (Chapter 11) in an earlier panel in 2007. Our relationship goes
back to Professor Loeffler’s graduate student days and his unpublished “Lexicon of
Klezmer Terminology” (1997). I refer to his assessment of several topics, from the
role of Jewish musicians in Russia (Chapters 2, 4) to the decline of the traditional
Jewish wedding in America (Chapter 5).
Perhaps the most stimulating environment in which to develop ideas about
Jewish music were the meetings of the Ashkenaz Study Group of the Jewish Music
Research Centre in the Hebrew University, under the auspices of Professor Edwin
Seroussi. There I presented the material for “Music of the Sher” (Chapter 11) in
2003 and “North and South in the Klezmer Dance Repertoire” (Chapter 12) in
2007. In this and in other contexts, my conversations with the musicologists Andre
Hajdu and Eliyahu Schleifer were invaluable. My many conversations and field
trips to Hasidic events and individuals in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, and Lod with the
researcher Yaakov Mazor were revelatory.
Of the individuals whose interest contributed to this book, foremost is my wife
and colleague, Professor Judit Frigyesi. Her presence is felt both in my assessment
of the connection of the klezmer repertoire with Ashkenazic nusah, about which
we had lectured together at Wesleyan University as early as 2002, and in the area of
gesture within music, about which she lectured at the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute in
2013. She was also able to draw in my Emirati, Arab, Indian, Chinese, and African
students to the mysteries of Bartok and Haydn and the beauty of Hebrew Sabbath
zmires. Our joint lecture at Wesleyan had been arranged by our friend and col-
league Professor Mark Slobin, whose propagation of the research of Beregovski
and sustained interest in the klezmer phenomenon goes back to the 1970s—​when
I was a graduate student and co-​organizer of the initial Dave Tarras concert in 1978
with the CTMD. From that era I invoke the memory of my mentor Harold Powers
(1928–​2007), whose incisive queries about music and modality changed the direc-
tion of my research and indeed of my life. And it was in his Music Department in
Princeton University that I taught my first course in klezmer music in 1985.
Among fellow scholars, I will mention Lyudmila Sholokhova, now the head
librarian of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, who rediscovered
and catalogued the Beregovski sound archive in the Vernadsky Library in Kiev, and
who has read most of my manuscript, while sharing her voluminous knowledge of
early Soviet research in Jewish music. In the next generation, my former student and
 Acknowledgments xxi

collaborator, musicologist Michael Lukin from Petersburg and Jerusalem, whose

research on Yiddish folk song is path breaking and whom I quote especially in
Chapter 8 on the musical repertoire of the wedding. Jonathan Boyarin, Professor of
Anthropology and Modern Jewish Studies at Cornell University, has shown interest
in the project from the start and contributed a reading of the chapter on the struc-
ture of the Ashkenazic Wedding (Chapter 5). The eminent poet and travel author
Robin Magowan has read the chapters in Part One and tried to convey his mastery
of the English language to me (probably to little avail!). From beginning to end, my
friend and assistant Ms. Christina Crowder has done everything from editing the
text to digitizing music and participated in long-​ranging discussions whose results
can be seen especially in Chapter 13 on the Skotshne. Without these discussions—
​often on the road between Chişinau and Edineţ or Bucharest and Iaşi—​many
thoughts expressed here might not have come to light. And it was she who urged
me to include the appendix on modal usage.
I should thank those scholars who helped to furnish me with rare materi-
als, principally my friend and senior musicologist Izaly Zemtsovsky (now of San
Francisco), who while a professor at the Russian Institute for the History of the Arts
in St. Petersburg brought me a copy of Beregovski’s Nign collection manuscript,
which I use extensively in Chapter 9. Professor Mark Kligman of UCLA, then of
the Hebrew Union College in New York, allowed me to copy several early cantorial
manuscripts, including that of Hirsch Weintraub.
Lastly I wish to thank all those institutions and individuals who supported the
writing of this book: The Littauer Foundation, for my organization of the Hescheles
interviews (2000); The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, for the plan-
ning of the present book (2001–​2); Professor Avraham Novershtern of Tel Aviv
University and Beit Shalom Aleichem, in consort with Professor Edwin Seroussi
of the Hebrew University, who funded the early writing of the book (2003); and
the Magowan Family Foundation, who demonstrated a commitment to seeing that
the writing of this book was successfully accomplished (2002–​8). NYU Abu Dhabi
deserves my thanks for generously supporting my fieldwork in Moldova from 2011
to 2015 for my next klezmer topic, in the course of which I was also able to consider
material and issues connected with the present book.
Walter Zev Feldman
New York City
September 11, 2015
 A B O U T T H E CO M PA N I O N W E B SI T E

http://www.oup.com/us/klezmer
On the companion website for Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory, you will find
two chapters online:

Appendix 2: Archaic Folk Dances: Koylitsh Tants, Patsh-​Tants, Shtok, Shuster

Appendix 3: Regional Centers of the Klezmorim:

1: Vilna
2: Volhynia and Podolia: Berdichev
3: Galicia
4: Moldova

There are three musical notations:

Example 00.01: Aaron Beer no. 357 (1791)

Example 10.9: Beregovski Sher no. 191
Example 14.14: Beregovski Skotshne no. 33

The reader is directed to several recorded musical examples, some of which are
online here, while others can be found on available websites or on commercial CDs.

Track 8.1: Yürük Semai in Makam Gülizar, Isak Fresco-​Romano (d. 1814).
Bezmara Music Ensemble: Tanburi Isak. Produced by Fikret Karakaya and
Walter Feldman. Track 10. Thessaloniki: EnChordais, 2005.
Track 10.1: Belf ’s Romanian Orchestra, Mayufis, 1912. Cited as A Dreidl
(Mayufis), from the playing of Cimbalists Lepianski, cited in Findeisen, 1926.
Track 10.2: Beregovski Gas Nign no. 72. The Alexander Fiterstein Trio: Live at
Music Mountain, track 1.

xxiii
xxiv About the Companion Website

Track 14.1: Mitzve Tenzel. FAU Judaica Archives. Israel J. Hochman’s Orchestra,
(Brunswick Records: 40001-​A , August 1921).
Track 14.2: Khosidl. Belf Orchestra, 1912. (Klezmer Music: Early Yiddish
Instrumental Music: 1908-​1927. Arhoolie Folklyric CD 7034, track 20).
Track 14.3: Khasin u Rabina, as recorded by the Belf Orchestra, 1914.
Track 14.4: Nokh Gavdule (Nokh Havdole), as recorded by the Belf Orchestra,
1911.
Track 15.1: Tatavliano Hasapiko, Istanbul, as recorded by Antonio Papatzis,
accordion, Athens, 1930.
Track 15.2: Slow Hasapiko Politiko, as recorded by Antonio Papatzis,
accordion, Athens, 1930.
Klezmer
 Introduction

This book sets out to examine a single musical style and repertoire, today known as
klezmer music, through a process of historical change from its beginnings in the six-
teenth century until it lost its traditional social function after the Second World War.
Its methodology lies within historical ethnomusicology, but by taking East European
Ashkenazic Jews as its ethnographic basis, it also involves Jewish studies. In broad
terms we will adhere to the definition proposed by Richard Widdess: “Historical
ethnomusicology … might well take as its twin objectives the uncovering of his-
torical events, and the study of their relationships in terms of processes of change,
taking into account all available evidence, including that of socio-​musical continuity
and change observable today” (Widdess 1992: 220).
However, studying any musical style of the East European Jews poses an immense
problem in evaluating what can be inferred about the culture of the past from any-
thing observable today. Because of the obvious ruptures in the physical, geographi-
cal, and cultural continuity of this ethnic group, klezmer music is a difficult topic
to study. This rupture began with the twin processes of massive emigration, and
either benign or repressive cultural assimilation. Within Eastern Europe and Russia
it ended with the physical genocide initiated by Hitler and the cultural genocide of
Stalin—​including the execution of thousands of Jewish culture-​bearers between the
late 1930s and the early 1950s. While today Jews are certainly not absent in some
of the former Soviet republics and in Russia (including some Yiddish speakers),
the professional klezmer instrumental repertoire has little continuity among them.
Much of this music was still viable in Jewish contexts in Eastern Europe in the inter-
war period, but most of what has survived following the Holocaust was to be found
in North and South America. Thus, even while maintaining our focus on the Jewish
music of Eastern Europe—​and not its American offshoots—​when addressing any
audience in the early twenty-​first century, we cannot but take into account the often
contradictory lens through which the music of the klezmer was viewed in America
in the post-​World War II era, prior to the klezmer revitalization of the late 1970s.1

1
Like Mark Slobin, I prefer Michael Alpert’s term “revitalization” to “revival” in relation to klezmer
music. As Slobin wrote in 1984: “The reader will perhaps have noticed by now my avoidance of the

1
2 Klezmer

Memory
The title of the book should make clear that it adopts a broadly diachronic
approach. While some of the historical documents go back as far as the sixteenth
century, the musical data and the specific social continuum from which it ema-
nates can best be examined only from the middle of the eighteenth century on.
“Music” and “history” are self-╉explanatory, but I have included “memory” in the
title because the subject of the klezmer was a facet of cultural memory (rather
than current practice) even for Beregovski writing in the Soviet Ukraine of the
1930s. It is much more so for us in America today, and even for my Moldovan
informants and colleagues in Chişinau, Edineț, Mainz, and Tel Aviv.2 For my
older informants and teachers, such as Dave Tarras/╉Tarrasiuk (1897–╉1989)
from Podolia, Yermye Hescheles (1910–╉2010) from Galicia, or Naftali Aharoni/╉
Aronczyk (b. 1919) from Lithuania, much of what they described went back over
sixty years. For Hescheles, a good part took place even before his birth, because
as the leader of a klezmer kapelye, he had to know the history and status of each
klezmer ensemble in his region. As he said to me, his first klezmer teacher “must
have had a vivid way of speaking, because everything he told me is engraved on
my mind!” (Feldman 2003: 41).
This use of memory is virtually the opposite of that of the institutionalized
“memory” described by Pierre Nora (1989) for French culture, in that—╉as
I noted in 1994—╉American Jewish institutions, “had no interest in using klezmer
music to augment or to ‘symbolize’ ethnic or religious cohesion” (Feldman
1994: 5). This may be also seen as part of the phenomenon described by Jonathan
Boyarin: “arguably, more has been forgotten in and about the Jewish Lower East
Side than virtually any other place or time in America” (Boyarin 1992: 2). As
I noted in the Preface, apart from the musicians themselves, klezmer music sur-
vived only as part of the memory of individuals from particular regional back-
grounds within Jewish Eastern Europe. This point is stressed in the suggestive
title of Michael Weisser’s book, A Brotherhood of Memory: Jewish Landsmanshaftn
in the New World (1985).

word ‘revival.’ Only a straight-╉line interpretation of ethnic music history could support the use of such
a word, which implies that something has died and has been (perhaps artificially) resucitated … tra-
ditional notions of loss and revival, of authenticity and acculturation, will not do; they simply miss the
point. Flexibility and ingenuity are also ethnic traditions” (Slobin 1984: 38–╉40).
2
╇ My use of memory also differs from Yosef Yerushalmi’s influential Zakhor: Jewish History and
Jewish Memory (1982), which contrasts documentary history with the thoroughly ideologized “mem-
ory” of the Jewish religion. The search for the expressive culture of East European Jews involves a pro-
cess of memory that differs signficantly from either of these categories while sharing some elements
of both.
Another random document with
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water heaved up about four feet and burst. Gathering up my clothes, bare-
footed, I scampered off as fast as possible; fortunately without cutting myself
on the flinty scale-like laminæ, which on the edges are as hard and sharp as
knives. It was only a little disturbance which subsided in a few minutes, but
shallow streams of boiling water flowed down over the very part of the basin
where I had been standing. Afterwards returning with Professor Chadbourne,
we completed our toilet, giving a keen edge to our razors by dipping them into
the hot water of the great Geyser, at the same time making use of a little pool
at the side as a mirror. The matter-of-fact oddness of the situation recalled
sundry adventures of Don Quixote, when in quest of another basin—that of
the barber, which he mistook for the enchanted golden helmet of Mambrino.
The Geyser also did efficient duty as pot and tea-kettle for breakfast.
About ten o’clock A.M. we witnessed an eruption of Strokr. All of a sudden, we
heard as it were the whiz of a rocket, and saw a jet of water spouting up in a
single column, to the height of fifty or sixty feet, straight as the trunk of a
palm tree, but spreading out at the top, bending gracefully down all round, and
falling in clouds of spray. It lasted for about ten minutes, subsided, and began
again. Some of us, looking down, narrowly escaped being scalded by its
sudden vehement and unexpected spurts. The ascending water shewed
beautifully clear and transparent against the sky; and gleaming rainbows came
and went—now bright as the tint of flowers, now dim and evanescent—
lending opaline lustres to the falling showers of diamond spray.
After all was over, Zöga collected several heaps of turf at the side, and then at
once plumped them all in, to provoke an eruption. We expected the dose
would take effect in twenty minutes or half-an-hour; but a whole hour having
elapsed without any sign, we began to fear it would exhibit no resentment at
being made to eat dirt. Five minutes more, however, and up it came, rushing
with tremendous force, in several jets, and attaining a height of from a
hundred to a hundred and fifty feet. The water falling back, nearly in a
perpendicular line, was met by up-rushing steam, and thus formed a glassy
dome, from which jets of water sprang up. This disturbance lasted twenty-one
minutes; was followed by a lull; then it commenced again, subsided and ended
by one or two explosions and spurts, after which the water sunk down into the
pipe, rumbling, seething, boiling hard, and plop-plopping as before. The water
this time was black and dirty with the particles of sand and turf which had
been administered to it; so that, although higher, it lacked the fairy-like beauty
of the last eruption. I had thrown in a white cambric pocket handkerchief with
some turf tied in it; but, instead of its being washed and thrown up, suppose it
must have been cooked, and reduced to “shreds and patches” or pulp, as I saw
no more of it.
Several cows were wandering near the Geysers quite unconcerned. Many
sheep and lambs browse in the valley beneath, occasionally approaching the
springs. Accidents, however, seldom occur; although we were told of an
unlucky ox having once stumbled into Blesi, where it was boiled alive. Sea-
swallows were flying overhead; and at our feet, among the stony grit, grew
isolated patches of wild-thyme, sea-pinks, dandelions, butter-cups, sorrel and
parnassia—all of them old friends, and quite home-like. The thermometer
stood at 60° in the shade. At noon, being Sabbath, we sat down in the lee of
the tent, which was fluttering in the breeze, and Mr. Haycock read the service
for the day—Professor Chadbourne and I taking the lessons; gave an English
Testament, and some of the Religious Tract Society’s illustrated publications to
Zöga, who could both read and translate them to his brother guides.
After dinner walked down to the river. On either side of its course lies a strip
of meadow, where the herbage is rich, green, tender and luxuriant like a velvet
carpet; the valley around, though also green, is in many places wet and spongy;
covered with heather and moss-hags.
The overflow of the Geysers comes down, steaming, to the river, through the
brown shingle which is variegated here and there with little strips and patches
of verdure. After great eruptions there is some body of water; at other times it
merely trickles, spread over a wide bed.
Wandering about, I visited every one of the springs alone. In the south corner
of the Geyser ground, steaming pits occur every little bit: the crust there is
very thin, so that one requires to tread with caution. Some of them are merely
holes in this thin crust, showing steaming pools of hot water, flush with the
surface and extending under it; others are holes in rocks, deep, dark and
craggy, with the water far down boiling furiously and seething in white foam;
such is Strokr. Some are as if one looked down the kitchen chimney of a castle
in the olden time when good cheer was preparing: you hear boiling going on
but see nothing, for all is dark. Others throw up jets of steam. At many places
you hear internal cauldrons boiling violently, at others you can also see puffs of
steam escaping at intervals from small clay holes. The Little Geyser enlivens
the scene by throwing up many jets of steaming water, at different angles,
playing like a fountain several times in the course of an hour or so; nor does
the great Geyser allow itself to be long forgotten: loud noises, rising bells of
water, and other premonitory symptoms frequently calling us up to its side in
expectation of grand eruptions; for, more perfect in its formation and larger
than any of the other springs, it is justly regarded as the chief attraction of the
place.
Sir George Mackenzie attempted to explain the mechanism of the Geyser
eruptions, by supposing that the tube was fed from hot water confined in a
neighbouring subterranean cavern. This water was forced into and up the tube
by the pressure of steam, accumulated between the surface of the water and
the roof of the hypothetical cavern, when it had attained power sufficient to
overcome the resistance of the column of water contained in the tube.
For several reasons, this explanation is unsatisfactory; and the more likely
theory is the chemical one, propounded by Bunsen who spent eleven days
here. In few words it is as follows. The water in the lower part of the tube gets
heated far above the boiling point by the surrounding strata; water, thus super-
heated for a length of time, is known to undergo certain changes which
materially modify its composition; particles of air are expelled, the component
molecules consequently adhere more closely together, so that it requires a
much higher temperature to make it boil. When, however, under these
conditions, it does boil, the production of steam is so great and instantaneous
as sufficiently to account for all the phenomena of a Geyser eruption.
This theory is supported by various facts. The temperature, both in the Geyser
tube and in Strokr, gradually rises towards the bottom, and increases before
eruptions. It has actually been found as high as 261° Fahrenheit, which is 39°
above the boiling point. In ordinary circumstances it would be found equal
throughout, or, if a difference were appreciable, the hottest water, being the
lightest, would rise to the top. Stones have been suspended at the bottom and
remained undisturbed by eruptions, showing that the super-heating process
went on above them in the tube itself; and lastly, M. Donny, of Ghent, has
produced precisely the same effects in miniature; using for the experiment a
brass tube stopped with a cork, and heating it all round with charcoal fires;
one, if we remember rightly, at the bottom of the pipe, and another half-way
up.
This theory would also explain the terrific and destructive water eruptions of
Kötlugjá, provided the water actually does come from the crater, as is said, and
not rather from the great deposits of surface snow and ice melted by the
internal heat of the mountain. One of these eruptions in 1755—the year of the
earthquake at Lisbon—destroyed 50 farms in the low country, with many men
and cattle. Of the two Geyser-theories, Bunsen’s is the more likely to prove the
correct one.
After exploring the plain and gazing on the farm of Haukadal, which is
situated on a height about three quarters of a mile to the north of the Geyser
and celebrated as the birth-place of Ari Frodi the earliest historian of the north
and the first compiler of the Landnámabok, accompanied by Mr. Murray, I
ascended the hill behind so as to get a complete bird’s-eye view of the Geyser
ground, and the whole valley of Haukadal or Hawk-dale. The view of this
singular region from thence, is peculiar, and I shall try to convey an idea of it,
even at the risk of repetition.
Below, a green marshy plain runs nearly north and south; the river, winding
through it, shows here and there little serpentine reaches of water like bits of
mirror; the horizon, on the south and south-east, is bounded by a low sloping
range of purple hills, and several low detached heights shaped like the Nineveh
mounds. On the north and north-east rise several distant mountains. One of
them is a Jökul, with perpetual snow and ice on its summit, and ribbed with
white streaks down its sides. On the west is the hill-range on which we now
stand. It is considerably higher, rougher, and wilder in character than the
heights on the other side of the valley. Near the foot of the hills, at our feet,
are bluff banks covered with reddish irony mould, not unlike old red
sandstone; these deposits however we afterwards found to be fine clay,
containing iron oxidized by exposure to the air, and very slippery to walk
upon. From these red banks there stretches a gentle slope, mostly covered
with a brown and white silicious stuff like slag, such as is seen on many garden
walks. On this little slope are the Geysers; and all the springs occur within the
small space of about fifty acres.
The great Geyser is the most northern, and lies on our extreme left. From
where we stand, it resembles an artificial mill pond with an embankment rising
all round it and slanting—to compare great things with small—like the sides of
a limpet-shell from which the top or cone has been struck off. Clouds of white
vapour hovered over it, as it lay gleaming like a silver shield. Near it, is our
tent, and a heap of boxes, saddles, and other gear lying piled on the ground.
A little higher up and nearer us, on the right, lies the tranquil and beautiful
spring of Blesi. More to the right, but lower down, that dark hole like a well is
Strokr. Yet further, in the same direction, the little Geyser is in full play,
sending up numerous jets of water like a fountain; while volumes of steam are
rising from it, and rolling away to the south. To the right of the little Geyser,
and on the slope which runs down eastward below it, are numerous little
round pools, close together, which reflect the sky, and look as if they were blue
eyes gazing from earth to heaven. Little jets and puffs of white vapour rise
from among them. Several farms are in sight; cattle are grazing on the plain;
tern and snipe are flying athwart the sky; wind-clouds are gathering in the
north; but the hazy veil in the south-east, which conceals Hekla and other
mountains in that direction, has not been lifted. Instead of being sated with
the scene before us, wonder increases every time we survey it, or dwell on the
striking features of its marvellous phenomena.
It was now between ten and eleven o’clock P.M. We descended leisurely to the
brink of the Geyser, were joined by several of our party, and there sang several
fine old psalm-tunes, such as “York” and the “Old Hundred,” in full harmony.
These, associated as they ever are in our minds with the language of Scripture,
lost none of their impressive grandeur, thus heard by waters that are not
always still, in the land of destroying mountains, burnt mountains, earthquakes,
and storms. Where we have Geysers—gushers or pourers forth—as in the
valley of Siddim; indeed, there is a valley with the very same name, rendered in
Icelandic instead of Hebrew, viz. Geysadal, a little to the north-west of Krabla.
Places with parched ground, waste and desolate; a wilderness wherein there is
no man. A land where red-hot pumice or ashes, fire and brimstone, shot up
into the air by volcanoes, have oft-times been rained from heaven; and, on
every side the once molten lava flood—which is graphically described by Job
as overtaking and arresting mortals, carrying their substance away and
devouring their riches by fire—may be observed crossing the ancient track.
Where, excepting for a few months in the year, hoar-frost is scattered like
ashes, and the treasures of the snow or of the hail are not hid; and the face of
the deep itself is often frozen. Again, He causeth His wind to blow and the
waters flow.
Where spring comes with the small rain on the tender herb; valleys are watered
by springs; grass grows for the cattle, and the pastures are clothed with flocks.
Where we encounter nomades pitching their tents, and many old eastern
customs that remind us of the dwellers in Mesopotamia. Where we behold the
eagle mounting on high and spreading abroad her wings, and hear the young
ravens which cry. The swan too, and other migratory birds may be seen
stretching their wings towards the south. Around its shores leviathans play in
the deep; and there too go the ships.
Here in an especial manner we are reminded, at every step, of the wondrous
works of Him who looketh on the earth and it trembleth; He toucheth the hills
and they smoke: the mountains quake at Him and the hills melt, and the earth
is burnt at His presence. His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are
thrown down by Him. The earth shook and trembled, the foundations of the
hills moved and were shaken. Truly wonderful are His works, who maketh His
angels spirits, His ministers a flaming fire!
Such were some of our thoughts as we stood, at midnight, singing these grand
old psalm tunes, by the side of the Geyser; reminded, in a peculiar manner,
that the whole surface of the globe is after all but a thin crust, cooled down
and caked over the great molten central mass of liquid fire which constitutes
our planet; and how easily, were latent forces called forth, or even were those
powers which are already developed only roused into more energetic action,
the whole might explode[10] like a shell filled with molten iron—the myriad
scattered fragments then “spinning down the ringing grooves of change” as a
shower of asteroids—nor could the orphaned moon survive the dire
catastrophe!

THE GREAT GEYSER.

Although midnight is spoken of, it was quite light, and I sketched for nearly an
hour and a half, beginning at a quarter-past 12 o’clock. Before Professor
Chadbourne left for the night-quarters which Zöga had secured for him at the
neighbouring farm, we two stood together on the brink of the Great Geyser,
filled our glasses with its hot water—pure, and, as soon as it cooled down
below the scalding point, drank to absent friends on both sides of the Atlantic;
this toast having special reference to our own distant homes. Then four
separate Geyser-bumpers were devoted respectively to Longfellow, William
and Mary Howitt, Dr. Laurence Edmondston of Shetland, and Gísli
Brynjúlfsson the Icelandic poet.
Properly speaking there was no night at all; only a slight dim towards two
o’clock in the morning, which I took as a hint to get quietly under the canvas
of our tent. The wind rose, increasing to a gale; our tent-lining came down and
the sides flapped up, fluttering in the wind with a noise like platoon firing. For
me, sleep was impossible; but as I was very tired and things could not well be
much worse, I patiently lay still till five o’clock in the morning, when we all
rose, and Zöga struck the tent. The wind blowing from the north-coast, on
which many icebergs were at present stranded, was piercingly cold, and
reminded us of the Duke’s allusion, in the forest of Arden, to
“The icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind;
Which when it bites and blows upon my body
Even till I shrink with cold, I smite and say,
This is no flattery.”

As breakfast would not be ready for a couple of hours, I took some brandy
and hot water at the Geyser, literally to stop my teeth from chattering, and
descended into the gully behind to examine the banks of coloured clay. These
lie, just under the Geyser, on the north-west side. Steam may be observed
escaping from many little clay holes, and the sound of boiling may be heard
inside at places where there are no holes. This hot clay is deposited in
horizontal layers, red, purple, violet, white, light blue, and pale green. These
colours occur by themselves, and are also occasionally found mixed together,
mottled and variegated like a cake of fancy soap or a sheet of marble paper.
Judging by the taste, the clay seems impregnated with sulphuric acid; and, to
the touch, it is of a very fine consistency, having no grit whatever. I secured
specimens of the finest colours, cutting them like butter with a table knife, and
filled several empty preserved-meat cans to take home for analysis. The
colours are most beautiful, but, apparently caused by oxydized iron, would, I
fear, be useless as pigments. If this fine clay could be put to any use in the
potteries, thousands of tons might be obtained here and also at Krisuvik.
What leads me to suppose that the colouring matter of the alumina chiefly
consists of iron, is the fact that, excepting where the layers were evidently
freshly laid bare to view by water or by some other mechanical means, the
banks, however beautifully variegated beneath, invariably exhibited no colour
but red on the surface; or, in other words, the iron was uniformly oxydized by
exposure to the air.[11]
Further down the gully, we came upon large rough slabs of whitish stone,
beautifully variegated with tints of violet, red, and yellow, dashed with blue.
These were in compact laminae, and each colour about the fourth of an inch
in thickness. In several instances however the colours, as in the clays, were
mixed. I broke up several masses, and secured a number of the most
characteristic and beautiful specimens. We also obtained chalcedony and agate,
at times approaching to opal; these and cornelian being only varieties of silex,
colour making the chief difference.
Before filling some bottles with Geyser water, as the wind was fresh, I set one
of them afloat to be carried across the basin before it. When the half of its
venturous voyage was accomplished and it had reached the tube in the centre,
a little eruption came on, by which the bottle was thrown up, and floated over
the outer edge of the basin. I succeeded in getting hold of it uninjured,
arrested in a little pool amid the boiling water which was flowing down the
sides, and afterwards filled it, marking it specially for Dr. R. Angus Smith;
—“one whose name,” in a different sense however from that in which Keats
used the expression, “is writ in water,” and let me add, in air too; for, in
connection with sanatory matters and the supply or purification of these two
health-giving elements to towns, no man in Europe has analyzed more water;
nor was there any known index of local atmospheric insalubrity but the
mortality bills, till he made his great discovery—the Air-test. On all such
subjects there is no higher scientific authority.
Wandering, once more to bid farewell to the other springs, we could not but
remark that the whole slope is a thin crust, with innumerable caldrons below;
these each preserve their individuality, although the central heat be common to
all, for the various eruptions seem to be quite independent of each other. Blesi
was quite tranquil during the eruption of its neighbour the great Geyser; and
the other springs take as little notice of the Little Geyser’s activity as it does of
Strokr. Wonder ever increases, although the ground has been gone over so
often as to be already quite familiar to us.
Breakfast waits and is soon despatched with keen relish. Packing done, horses
ready, and a guide left to find three that have strayed, we start on our return
journey to Thingvalla and Reykjavik at a quarter to eight A.M. Truly, as
Shakspere hath it,
“Nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions!”

The wind was still from the north and bitterly chill. On rounding the shoulder
of the hill, we picked up the Professor, at the farm house. The room he slept
in had been all carefully washed out on purpose to receive him, the earthen
floor as well, so that it was very damp. He was assisted to undress by the
hostess, till he called a halt, and insisted on retaining some portion of his
under-clothing. Then, after he lay down, a basin of milk was brought and
placed at his bed-side. Had he looked under the pillow, he would probably
have discovered a bottle of brandy deposited there for his own especial use;
but, as the worthy Professor would have left it precisely as he found it, no
“sense of loss” dawned upon him when the probability was hinted at.
Rector Jonson subsequently explained to me the rationale of the hostess, or
her daughter, attending to guests. Among the Icelanders, wet feet and
thorough drenchings are incident to locomotion. It is the universally
acknowledged duty of the female department to render the way-worn traveller
such assistance as he may require, taking away his wet stockings and mud-
soaked garments at night, and returning them to him, dry and comfortable, in
the morning. This simple old custom, which is also to be met with in various
parts of Norway and Sweden, will give the key to many funny exaggerations
on the subject, where the art of putting things has been employed chiefly in
the direction of the ludicrous.
We see on the way many lovely wild flowers, which confirm our previous
observation that they are larger in the petals, but smaller in the leaves and
stems than the same kinds at home; the aroma is also less. This is caused by
their receiving more light and less heat, in the short Icelandic summer, than in
more southern climes.
Graceful white sea-swallows are darting about; curlews are very tame, flying
within a few yards of us or sitting unconcerned on stones till we ride past
them, noting their beautifully speckled breasts, long bent bills, and plaintive
tremulous whistle.
 SKAPTÁR JÖKUL.

The atmosphere was now much clearer, and many distant snow-covered
mountains were visible on our left. Zöga pointed out one of a peculiar shape,
which he informed us was Skaptár Jökul, the most destructive volcano in the
island. Of this, however, again.
A bird, with a red breast, perched on a block of lava near us; this, the
Professor told me, was the American robin. It seemed as large as our
blackbird.

MOUNT HEKLA.

Retracing our steps, we crossed the Bruará, ascended the heights, and at length
got into the green level plain, halting at the same spot where we had rested in
coming along. Here we obtained a magnificent view of Hekla, and made a
number of sketches. The prospect varies but little, as we ride along skirting the
hills and at length ascend them on the other side of the plain. From this point,
Hekla still appears dome-shaped; the three peaks being scarcely perceptible
from the distance—about thirty miles—at which we stand, and only indicated
by very slight dints in its rounded outline. The mountain, covered with snow
and mottled here and there with black patches, rises beyond a low range of
purple hills and towers high above them, in shape and colour not unlike Mont
Blanc as seen from the banks of the Arve below Geneva, if we could only
imagine the monarch of mountains deprived of his surrounding Aiguilles, and
left standing alone over the vale of Chamouni.
The bird’s-eye view of the great flat green plain, with rivers meandering
through it, which stretches from the low range of purple hills over which
Hekla rises to the foot of the heights on which we now ride, is both striking
and picturesque.
About twenty volcanoes have been in action in Iceland for the last 1000 years.
Of these the eruptions of Hekla have been the most frequent, although by no
means so destructive as many of the others. Only attaining a height of about
5000 feet, it owes its celebrity to the frequency of its eruptions; to its rising
from a plain, being visible from a frequented part of the island, and quite
accessible; and also to the fact of its being well seen, from the sea, by vessels
sailing to Greenland and North America. Four and twenty eruptions, of lava,
sand or pumice, are recorded; the last having occurred in 1846. The intervals
between these eruptions vary from six to seventy-six years, the average period
being thirty-five; but some of them have lasted as long as six years at a time.
We give an account of one of these eruptions, selecting that of 1766, which
was remarkable for its violence. “Four years before it took place, when Olafsen
and Povelsen were there, some of the people were flattering themselves with
the belief, that as there had been no outbreak from the principal crater for
upwards of seventy years, its energies were completely exhausted. Others on
the contrary, thought that there was on this account only more reason to
expect that it would soon again commence. The preceding winter was
remarkably mild, so that the lakes and rivers in the vicinity seldom froze, and
were much diminished, probably from the internal heat. On the 4th April
1766, there were some slight shocks of an earthquake; and early next morning
a pillar of sand, mingled with fire and red hot stones, burst with a loud
thundering noise from its summit. Masses of pumice, six feet in circumference,
were thrown to the distance of ten or fifteen miles, together with heavy
magnetic stones, one of which, eight pounds weight, fell fourteen miles off,
and sank into the ground though still hardened by the frost. The sand was
carried towards the north-west, covering the land, one hundred and fifty miles
round, four inches deep; impeding the fishing boats along the coast, and
darkening the air, so that at Thingore, 140 miles distant, it was impossible to
know whether a sheet of paper was white or black. At Holum, 155 miles to the
north, some persons thought they saw the stars shining through the sand-
cloud. About mid-day, the wind veering round to the south-east, conveyed the
dust into the central desert, and prevented it from totally destroying the
pastures. On the 9th April the lava first appeared, spreading about five miles
towards the south-west, and on the 23d May, a column of water was seen
shooting up in the midst of the sand. The last violent eruption was on the 5th
July, the mountains in the interval often ceasing to eject any matter; and the
large stones thrown into the air were compared to a swarm of bees clustering
round the mountain-top; the noise was heard like loud thunder forty miles
distant, and the accompanying earthquakes were more severe at Krisuvik,
eighty miles westward, than at half the distance on the opposite side. The
eruptions are said to be in general more violent during a north or west wind
than when it blows from the south or east, and on this occasion more matter
was thrown out in mild than in stormy weather. Where the ashes were not too
thick, it was observed that they increased the fertility of the grass fields, and
some of them were carried even to the Orkney islands, the inhabitants of
which were at first terrified by what they considered showers of “black
snow.”[12]
This mountain, with its pits of burning sulphur and mud, and openings from
whence issue smoke and flames, is associated with the old superstitions of the
Icelanders as the entrance to the dark abode of Hela, and those gloomy
regions of woe where the souls of the wicked are tormented with fire. Nor are
these ideas to be wondered at in connection with the terrible phenomena of
such an Inferno.
As Hekla lay gleaming peacefully in the sunshine, with a heavier mantle of
snow, we are told, than usual, I bade adieu to it by attempting yet another
sketch from the pony’s back, pulling the rein for five minutes, and then
galloping on after my companions.
Having rounded the shoulder of the hill, we now lost sight of Hekla and the
greater part of the plain. In a region where some brushwood and a few flowers
grew among dark coloured rocks, we came upon a fine example of ropy
looking lava, curiously wrinkled in cooling, and all corrugated in wavy lines.
Soon afterwards we saw a sloping mass of rock, some sixty feet square,
inclined at an angle of 25°, polished smooth by the ice-drift, and deeply
abraded in grooves, all running southwards. The marks were not to be
mistaken, and were more distinct than those we had observed in coming.
Here I gathered specimens of geraniums and other flowers, placing them
between the leaves of my pocket Wordsworth. Coming to a glade of dwarf
willows, we observed bees feeding on the flowers of the flossy species, and
were forthwith, even in this northern region, reminded of Mount Hybla,
recalling Virgil’s line,
“Hyblæis apibus florem depastâ salicti.”

LAKE OF THINGVALLA.

The Professor, Mr. Murray, and I, riding together, now reached and descended
the Hrafnagjá or Raven’s Chasm, which has already been described. It was
steeper than a stair, full of breaks and irregular turns. At some places, the
ponies drew up their hind legs and slid down. It seems more perilous to
descend than to climb such places, but the ponies are very sure-footed. On a
bosky slope, I pulled the bridle and made a sketch of the lake of Thingvalla,
the waters of which were intensely blue.
Crossing the plain of Thingvalla, we reached our rendezvous—the Pastor’s
house—about nine o’clock at night, after a splendid day’s ride; some of us,
much to our own surprise, being not only in excellent spirits, but fresh and in
good physical condition; rough-riding feats and prolonged fatigues
notwithstanding. We dined on trout, soup, &c.; and at 20 minutes to 11 P.M. I
wandered out, alone, to the Althing to sketch and gather flowers.
The three lost ponies, that strayed from the Geysers, have just come in. I see
them now scampering before the guide and passing the waterfall of the Oxerá,
which thunders over the black rock-wall, about half a mile from the descent
into the Almannagjá. The fall looks like a square sheet of burnished silver
from the sacred Lögberg or Hill of Laws, on which I now sit writing,
entrenched and moated round with deep volcanic chasms about two-thirds
filled with clear water.
Skialdbreid—or Broadshield—Jökul, to the north-west, is mottled towards its
base with black patches, but its summit and flanks are lit up with pure roseate
light. Armannsfell, one of a range nearer and more to the north, is of a dark
rich venetian red colour touched with bronze and exhibits a living glow, an
effect I have never elsewhere seen equalled or even approached. Whereever
the light falls, all is transfigured and glorious beyond description; yet there is
no approach to hardness, either of line or tint, but an atmosphere of subduing
softness, transparency, and purity, magically invests everything with an etherial
spiritual beauty: such effects are peculiar to Iceland.
Having made a sketch of the lake, I retired to rest, the last of our party. We
slept, without undressing, in our old quarters—on the floor of the pastor’s
parlour.

Tuesday morning.—Rose between five and six o’clock, and went out to gather
ferns—aspidium or crystoperis—on the Althing. The scene around was singularly
wild, and yet strikingly picturesque in its desolate strangeness; while the tender
green of the valley itself afforded a refreshing rest to the eye. On returning I
made a sketch of the priest’s house;[13] examined the site of the little church
which was being re-erected; strolled down by the river side, and performed my
ablutions in it—laying my clothes in the priest’s fishing coble, which was lying
hauled up on the bank.
I then paused at the simple churchyard close by, and tried to conjure up life
and heart histories for those who had entered this “Saula-hleith”—or soul-
gate, as the churchyard is beautifully named—while hymns were being chanted
over them, and who were now resting peacefully beneath the green sod.
Conversation with the pastor was again attempted to be carried on in Latin.
His morning salutation was “bonus dies,” or other remarks about the weather,
as with ourselves. After squaring accounts, on leaving, we gave him—as a
nimbus for the rix-dollars—a mediaeval “pax-vobiscum,” in exchange for his
many expressions of good-will towards us, and his rounded classical “vale!”
The glebe hay was being tedded, but the ground here as elsewhere is covered
with little hummocks. Were it only levelled and drained, the soil, one would
think, should raise turnips in quantity, and, certainly, larger hay crops would be
obtained. During the short summer there is not time for the grain to ripen; but
food suitable for cattle might readily be grown in the valleys; for it is chiefly by
the rearing of stock, that Iceland, when she can muster the requisite enterprise
and activity, will, in all probability, advance to commercial prosperity.
After sketching the gorge of the Almannagjá—see illustration, p. 81—we
ascended it, crossed the lava plateau, and rapidly retraced our steps to the
capital, only pausing now and again to take a sketch.

ICELANDIC FARM.

Over the last part of our journey, from the river which we forded just below
the farm house on the hill, to Reykjavik, we rode like the wind—men and
horses alike eager to get to the end of their journey. Our entry into the town
was a regular scrimmage. It was a quarter to three P.M. when we got in, having
done the distance from Thingvalla in six hours. By this time we had ceased to
wonder at any feats performed by the ponies. Seldom, if ever, disconcerted,
they go at anything in a most patient philosophical manner, and get over
difficulties which elsewhere one would think insurmountable, and sheer
madness to attempt. Thanks to mackintosh overboots—made specially for the
purpose—at the end of the journey, I was the only one of our party whose feet
were dry.
 REYKJAVIK.

Mr. Bushby invited us to dine with him at the hotel, and Dr. Mackinlay kindly
gave us his room to dress in.
How oddly things sometimes turn up! We saw lying on the floor a box of
“Brown and Polson’s Patent Corn Flour,” which at once suggested two very
different, although not incongruous, trains of ideas; one, the contrast between
the hurry and bustle of railway stations in Britain, where the corn flour is
everywhere so extensively advertised, and the primitive locomotion of Iceland,
in which not a single steam engine has been erected; and the other, associating
the beautiful locality where the flour is made—near Paisley, at the foot of “the
Braes of Gleniffer” celebrated in song by Tannahill, one of Scotland’s sweetest
minstrels—with some of the loveliest scenes we had lately witnessed. For here,
are we not in the land of Eddas and Sagas! and is not the Poet found singing
wherever there are human hearts!
A gentleman told me, that having obtained permission, he had, that afternoon,
caught seventy trout in the salmon river—three of them from his pony’s back;
he had only to throw the fish over his head on the grass behind him, as fast as
he could whip them up. He had seen a fisherman get 130 at one haul of the
net. I saw the manager of the fishery, an active intelligent Scotchman, whom,
from his appearance, one would take to be the mate of a vessel. He told me he
had been three years in Iceland, and had some of his family here with him.
Mr. Bushby procured us several specimens of double refracting Iceland spar,
obtained from the other side of the island. It polarizes light, and is valuable in
various ways, both to science and the arts.
Mr. Murray and Mr. Cleghorn set out after dinner to visit the sulphur mines of
Krisuvik; I, on the principle of letting well alone, preferred remaining at
Reykjavik to undergoing the fresh fatigue of such a ride immediately after the
Geyser journey. Three of us spent the evening, by invitation, at the Governor’s
—the Count Von Trampe. I had a long conversation with him in German,
during which he mentioned that all the old Saga and Edda MSS. had been
removed to Copenhagen; and, in answer to sundry enquiries, told me that the
“lang spiel” is the only Icelandic musical instrument now in use. It is
something like a guitar or banjo, has four strings, and is played with a little
bow. The airs now played are chiefly Danish dance music, and other foreign
melodies.
The Icelanders, like the natives of Madagascar, have adopted the music of our
“God save the Queen” as their national air. The words to which it is sung were
composed in the beginning of the present century, by the late Biarni
Thorarensen, Governor of the northern province of the island, when he was a
student at the university of Copenhagen. The song is called “Islands Minni,”
or the “Remembrance of Iceland;” and finely illustrates the intense love of
country displayed by Icelanders, who, wherever they may travel or sojourn,
always sooner or later return home though but to die; for to them, as their
own proverb has it, “Iceland is the best land on which the sun shines.” We
here give the words of this national song, which, calling up in foreign lands
memories of sweet home, is no less to the Icelander, than is the Ranz de Vaches
to the Swiss when far away from the one chalet he loves best in the world,
perched, it may be, on the lofty mountain side, or lying peacefully in some
green sunny valley.
 MUSIC IN AN ICELANDIC HOME.

ISLANDS MINNI.

I.

Eldgamla Isafold,
Astkæra fósturmold,
Fjallkonan fríd!
Mögum thín muntu kær,
Medan lönd girdir sær
Og gumar girnast mær;
Gljár sól á hlíd.

II.

Hafnar úr gufu hér

Heim allir girnumst vér
Thig thekka ad sjá;
Glepur oss glaumurinn,
Ginnir oss sollurinn,
Hlær ad oss heimskinginn
Hafnar slód á.

III.

Leidist oss fjall-laust frón,

Fær oss opt heilsutjón
Thokulopt léd;
Svipljótt land synist mér
Sífelt ad vera hér,
Sem neflaus ásynd er
Augnalaus med.

IV.

Ödruvís er ad sjá
A thjer hvítfaldinn há
Heid-himin vid;
Eda thær krystalls ár,
A hverjar sólin gljár,
Og heidar himin-blár,
Há-jökla rid.

V.

Eldgamla Isafold,
 Astkæra fósturmold,
Fjallkonan fríd!
Agætust audnan thér
Upp lypt, bidjum vér,
Medan ad uppi er
Oll heimsins tíd![14]

From the literal prose-rendering into English which follows, the reader will be
able to gather how beautiful such thoughts must be, when clothed in the
flowing rhythmic music of the original stanzas.
THE REMEMBRANCE OF ICELAND.

I.

Old land of ice,

Dearly beloved native land,
Fair maid of the mountains!
Dear thou shalt be to thy sons
As long as land is surrounded by sea;
As men love women;
Or sun-gleam falls on the hill-side.

II.

Here, from the midst of Copenhagen’s smoke,

We all yearning after home
Long, dear one, again to behold thee.
The noisy din irks us;
Revelry tempts us in vain;
And the fool jeers contemptuously at us
In the streets of Copenhagen.

III.

We are tired of a mountainless land;

We are constantly losing our health
In this smoky thick atmosphere;
I find this country everywhere
To be destitute of fine features,
A land like a face without nose,
And even without eyes.

IV.

How different it is to see