Can Anyone Help with a Yiddish Song
July 21st, 2016

Rita wrote asking for help with a Yiddish children’s song. Here’s her note…

Does anyone know of an old Yiddish song sung while lightly pinching the top of a child’s hand.  Both the singer’s and the child’s hands move up and down together?

These were some of the words I remember:

Cru, cru, fal arup,
Oifen shtate a shank ele,
Until shtate a benkele,
Coochi-coo chi-coo hi.   (Tickles up the arm)

If anyone can help with the original words to this song and/or an English translation, please comment below.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Mama Lisa

This article was posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2016 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Children's Songs, Countries & Cultures, Israel, Languages, Questions, USA, Yiddish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

One Response to “Can Anyone Help with a Yiddish Song”

  1. Lisa Says:
    April 7th, 2022 at 8:20 pm

    Here’s a question about a Yiddish nursery rhyme that Zach sent in:

    Came across your blog and am hoping it can help. I’m trying to remember a song, might have been a nursery rhyme, my grandmother taught me. It was either Yiddish, or Yiddish-Polish. I vaguely remember the phonetic, so I’ll attempt to write the very rough phonetic translation from what I can remember. Unfortunately, I can only remember parts. The **something** are the parts I don’t remember, and the rest are the only phonetic parts I can remember.

    Begins with
    “Shlemiel **something something something**
    Shane d’gal vtseeney vaney gleam/glen
    **something something ** pameransen
    Feezelah **something** witztansen”

    I know it contained the word “feezelah (feet-za-lah)”. I think at the feezelah part she would tickle my feet, or at least mover her finger up and down the bottom of the foot. Hope some of this helps.

    Thanks

    Zach

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