[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Sayings and Tales

[Lloyd Friedrick]

Hey, this isn't so old, I remember young Lutheran student ministers going
through our area [Lloydminster, Sask/Alta] in the early 1950's doing the same
thing that you describe.

lloyd friedrick
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: gpvjem
  To: ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org
  Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 10:31 AM
  Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Sayings and Tales


      Karl's reference to traveling preachers brought to mind a description of
a self taught preacher who was referred to as a Speckbruder.  A Speckbruder
would arrive at a Volhynian village on Monday and stay the week, all the while
dining on the best foods, the ladies could prepare.  After a service on Sunday
the Speckbruder would move on to the next village and the process started all
over again.
      Speck can be translated as fat (as in bacon fat) or pot bellied, either
way it was likely an apt title!

  John Marsch

  ---------------------------------

    In another apparently true story, my parents mentioned there were
traveling preachers who would go from town to town and basically accept
donations from people. The preacher would often say a prayer for the family
and then the father would give a donation to him. My parents said there was
one guy who came to a house where he thought the family was not German (either
Polish or Ukrainian).  The father allowed him to say a prayer so the preacher
proceeded to pray repetitively (in Yittish, this is the approximate German
phonetic spellings) "Czewne is ni wit von Bczewne, Bczewne is ni wit von
Czewne" which translated means "Czewne is not far from Bczewne, Bczewne is not
far from Czewne".  The father then replied, "Preacher, how are you praying?"
The preacher then answered, "Ach, are you then German?".  Basically, this
preacher was a hoax praying nonsense in Yittish not expecting that his
subjects were in fact German and could understand the nonsense he was saying.

    This provided a nice prayer for us kids to resort to when we wanted to
poke fun at something by acting as if we were praying.  The sound I was trying
to portray with "cz" would be like a "zsh" in English. So in English the
pronounciation would be like Zshevne and Bzshevne. On Shetlseeker I did find a
Szewne well south of Warsaw.

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