The Breitmann Ballads | Page 6

SLANG

TO A FRIEND STUDYING GERMAN
LOVE SONG
DER
FREISCHÜTZ
WEIN GEIST
SCHNITZERL'S
PHILOSOPEDE --
I. PROLOGUE
II. HANS BREITMANN AND HIS
PHILOSOPEDE
DIE SCHÖNE WITTWE --

I. VOT DE YANKEE CHAP SUNG
II. HOW DER
BREITMANN CUT HIM OUT
BREITMANN IN BATTLE

BREITMANN IN MARYLAND
BREITMANN AS A BUMMER
SECOND PART
BREITMANN'S GOING TO CHURCH

BREITMANN IN KANSAS
HANS BREITMANN'S
CHRISTMAS
BREITMANN ABOUT TOWN
BREITMANN
IN POLITICS --
I.
0. THE NOMINATION
0. THE COMMITTEE OF INSTRUCTIONS
0. MR. TWINE EXPLAINS BEING "SOUND UPON THE GOOSE"
II.
0. HOW BREITMANN AND SMITH WERE REPORTED TO BE
LOG-ROLLING
0. HOW THEY HELD THE MASS MEETING
0. BREITMANN'S GREAT SPEECH III.
0. PARDT DE VIRST: -- THE AUTHOR ASSERTS THE VAST
INTELLECTUAL
0. SUPERIORITY OF GERMANS TO AMERICANS PARDT DE
SECOND: -- SHOWING HOW MR. HIRAM TWINE
"PLAYED OFF"
0. ON SMITH BREITMANN AS AN UHLAN --
0. THE VISION II. BREITMANN IN A BALLOON III.
BREITMANN AND BOUILLI IV. BREITMANN TAKES
THE TOWN OF NANCY
0. BREITMANN IN BIVOUAC VI. BREITMANN'S LAST BARTY
EUROPE --
0. BREITMANN IN PARIS BREITMANN IN LA SORBONNE
BREITMANN IN FORTY-EIGHT BREITMANN IN
BELGIUM --

0. SPA OSTENDE GENT BREITMANN IN HOLLAND --
0. 'S GRAVENHAGE -- THE HAGUE LEYDEN
SCHEVENINGEN AMSTERDAM GERMANY --
0. BREITMANN AM RHEIN -- COLOGNE AM RHEIN -- NO. II
AM RHEIN -- NO. III MUNICH
FRANKFORT-ON-THE-MAIN ITALY --
0. BREITMANN IN ROME LA SCALA SANTA BREITMANN
INTERVIEWS THE POPE THE FIRST EDITION OF
BREITMANN --
0. SHOWING HOW AND WHY IT WAS THAT IT NEVER
APPEARED LAST BALLADS --
0. BREITMANN IN TURKEY COBUS HAGELSTEIN FRITZERL
SCHNALL THE GYPSY LOVER DORNENLIEDER
BREITMANN'S SLEIGH-RIDE THE MAGIC SHOES
GLOSSARY
INTRODUCTION
BY THE PUBLISHER
---
"HANS BREITMANN GIFE A BARTY" - the first of the poems here
submitted to the English public - appeared originally in 1857, in
Graham's Magazine, in Philadelphia, and soon became widely
known. Few American poems, indeed, have been held in better or more
constant remembrance than the ballad of "Hans Breitmann's Barty;" for
the words just quoted have actually passed into a proverbial expression.
The other ballads of the present
collection, likewise published in
several newspapers, were first collected in 1869 by Mr. Leland, the
translator of Heine's
"Pictures of Travel" and "Book of Songs," and
author of Meister Karl's Sketch -Book," Philadelphia, 1856 and
"Sunshine in
Thought," New York, 1863. They are much of the same
character as "The Barty" - most of them celebrating the martial career
of "Hans Breitmann," whose prototype was a German, serving during

the war in the 15th Pennsylvanian cavalry, and who - we have it on
good authority - was a man of desperate courage whenever a cent could
be made, and one who never fought unless
something
could be made. The "rebs" "gobbled" him one day; but
he re-appeared in three weeks overloaded with money and valuables.
One of the American critics remarks: -
"Throughout all the ballads it
is the same figure presented - an honest 'Deutscher,' drunk with the
New World as with new wine, and rioting in the expression of purely
Deutsch nature and
half-Deutsch ideas through a strange speech."
The poems are written in the dull broken English (not to be confounded
with the Pennsylvanian German) spoken by millions of - mostly
uneducated - Germans in America, immigrants to a great extent from
southern Germany. Their English has not yet become a distinct dialect;
and it would even be difficult to fix at
present the varieties in which it
occurs. One of its prominent peculiarities, however, is easily perceived:
it consists in the constant confounding of the soft and hard consonants;
and the reader must well bear it in mind when translating the language
that meets his eye into one to become intelligible to his ear. Thus to the
German of our poet, kiss becomes giss; company - gompany; care -
gare; count - gount; corner - gorner; till - dill; terrible - derrible; time -
dime; mountain - moundain; thing - ding; through - droo; the - de;
themselves - demselves; other - oder; party - barty; place - blace; pig -
big; priest - breest; piano - biano; plaster - blaster; fine - vine; fighting -
vighting; fellow - veller; or, vice versâ, he sounds got -

cot; green - creen; great - crate; gold dollars - cold tollars; dam - tam;
dreadful - treadful; drunk - troonk; brown - prown; blood - ploot;
bridge - pridge; barrel - parrel; boot - poot; begging - peggin';
blackguard - plackguart; rebel - repel; never - nefer; river - rifer; very -
fery; give - gife; victory - fictory; evening - efening; revive - refife;
jump - shoomp; join - choin; joy - choy; just - shoost; joke - choke;
jingling - shingling;, &c.; or, through a kindred change, both - bofe;
youth - youf; but mouth - mout'; earth - eart'; south - sout'; waiting -
vaiten;' was - vas; widow -