…WHAT HAD BEEN DISMEMBERED BECAME THE SAD OBSESSION FOR THE REMNANTS OF GOTTSCHEE.

There is a song-poem, part of the Middle-High German Folk-Epic Gudrun which is preserved today only in the Gottscheer language and handed down from mother to daughter and father to son…. NEVER between father and daughter or mother to son and it goes:

THE WOMAN BY THE SEA

1/ How early is up the woman by the sea, The beautiful, the young woman by the sea.

2/ She rises very early in the morn, She goes to wash the white linens,

3/ To the wide sea, to the deep water. She starts, she washes well.

4/ On the sea there swims a small ship, In it there sit two young gentlemen.

5/ “Good Morning, you beautiful woman by the sea, You beautiful, you young woman by the sea!”

6/ “Many thanks, may thanks, young gentlemen, Good mornings I have few!”

7/ From his finger he takes a ring: “Take it, you beautiful woman by the sea!”

8/ “I am not the beautiful woman by the sea I am just the diaper washerwoman.”

9/ Then they put her in the small ship And ride across the wide sea.

10/ “You are indeed the beautiful woman by the sea, The beautiful, the young woman by the sea.” 

11/ She takes a handkerchief into her hand And rides across the sea.

12/ And when she then arrived there, They greet her and embrace her.

13/ And kiss her, the woman by the sea, The beautiful, the young woman by the sea.

Photo from Wendell’s Spiral Bound courtesy of Gottscheer Relief Association.