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Pennsylvania Dutch Version of Dies Ist der Daumen – This Is the Thumb

Touring Amish Country

24 Hours on a Dairy Farm

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Pennsylvania Dutch Version of Dies Ist der Daumen – This Is the Thumb

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

I’ve been asked several times for the Pennsylvania Dutch Version of the German rhyme Dies Ist der Daumen – This Is the Thumb. Today I received the version below thanks to Luke and Mary Martin. Here’s what Luke wrote…

My wife and I are also familiar with many of the German songs. This morning while looking for them, I found the finger rhyme, and your question about the Pennsylvania German variation. This is the song my father used to sing to us – seven children. Pennsylvania German has many varieties of spelling, and perhaps you can sharpen up the spelling. (My wife, Mary, and I worked at the pronunciation and spelling of the Pennsylvania German Finger Song. Mary grew up speaking Pennsylvania German.) Here it goes…

Des ist die Daume

Des ist die Daume
Der schittelt die Plaume
Der laest sie ouf
Der traught sie Haem
Und des glae Bopplemaul
Bopplet alles mit’n ahnna da Haem.

This is the thumb.
This [one] shakes the plums,
This [one] picks them up,
This [one] brings them home,
And this little tattletale tells everyone at home.

It was always spoken, not sung.

Thanks for your work in collecting old songs.

Luke Martin
(Pennsylvania)

If anyone would like to give other variations of the spelling, feel free to in the comments below. Many thanks to Luke Martin for sending this version of the rhyme to us!

Enjoy!

Mama Lisa

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Posted in Countries & Cultures, Des ist die Daume, Dies Ist der Daumen, Finger Plays, German, German Nursery Rhymes, Germany, Languages, Mama Lisa, Nursery Rhymes, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch Nursery Rhymes, Questions, USA, USA | 1 Comment »

Touring Amish Country

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

Last month we brought our children to the Amish country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

The Amish are a group of Christians originally from Germany, Switzerland and the Alsace region of France. They immigrated to the US in the 18th century. They believe in being separate from the society around them.

Amish people don’t use electricity, automobiles or other modern conveniences. Amish kids don’t use bicycles (though they do use Amish style scooters).

When you visit a region where the Amish live, you can see them driving around in horse drawn buggies. If you’d like, you can even get a tour of the area in a buggy. That’s what we did. Our driver was very nice and he gave our kids an extra thrill by letting them take turns driving it.

Driving around Amish country, you can see the dresses and clothes the Amish wear hanging out to dry. The Amish prefer dark colors: black, maroon, deep blues and purples. The women wear dresses that hang below the knee with bonnets covering their heads. The men wear pants, shirts, jackets and hats. Married men don’t shave off their beards.

Our buggy driver had been Amish as a child and he welcomed questions about the culture. Of course we had a bunch!

Do the Amish have plumbing? Yes, they have indoor plumbing. Do they use anything for heat? Yes, they use coal stoves and generators. The important thing is that they don’t have to rely on the outside world for their energy (like an electric company). Do they pay taxes? Yes, they do – but not Social Security (a tax that you pay in the US to help old people afford to live after they retire). They don’t pay Social Security because they sign a waiver that they won’t receive it when they grow old. Do Amish people go to doctors? Yes, they do. They don’t generally use telephones unless it’s for something like a medical emergency.

We noticed that some of the Amish houses we passed on our buggy ride had aluminum siding. We were curious if it was all right for the Amish to buy supplies from the outside world. (It was hard to imagine them manufacturing aluminum siding.) Our driver said the Amish will, in fact, sometimes buy equipment from outside their community.

My son asked if the Amish observe any holidays. Our driver said they celebrate Easter and Christmas.

Then we asked a general question about schooling. He said many Amish go to school in one room school houses run by the Amish instead of going to public schools. They only attend school until the 8th grade.

Finally, our driver told us about how the Amish organize themselves (at least in the Lancaster area where he grew up). He said that several households will make up a church district. The members meet every other Sunday for a service that is held in a member’s house (as opposed to a church). The following Sunday will be devoted to spending the day together as a community.

Much of Amish lifestyle is geared towards spending time together as a family or community. You can see this when you tour, when you often see whole families farming together.

Finally, we reached our destination, an Amish house and store. There we bought root beer floats made by two Amish boys. They said their mother had made the root beer herself.

It was interesting to see such a totally different way of life. I’m glad my children were able to see that people can live so differently, even in their own country.

There are indeed other ways to live, outside of our information packed, high-speed, electronic world – interesting and lively though it is!

(By the way – It’s important to remember, the Amish aren’t putting on a show for our benefit. They’re real people, going about their real lives. So if you do visit their area, treat them with respect and courtesy. One thing in particular to keep in mind is that Amish don’t like being photographed, so don’t take any snapshots of them without explicit permission.)

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Posted in Amish, Amish Country, Mama Lisa, Pennsylvania, Traveling, USA, USA | No Comments »

24 Hours on a Dairy Farm

Friday, September 7th, 2007

This past summer we took a trip to Pennsylvania with our kids. Our first stop was at a dairy farm in a town called Paradise. The farm had about 40 cows and grew corn to feed them.

We each got to milk a cow – which was a weird experience. It’s something I’ve never done before. My son was particularly good at it – so I told him that maybe he should leave his video games behind and go and live on a farm! Just kidding of course!

The farmers normally use machines for milking. That way they get 4-5 gallons of milk out of each cow per day, as opposed to 1+ gallon per day if they milked the cows by hand into a bucket.

Most of the milk on the farm we visited is sent to Land O’ Lakes to make butter and to Hershey’s to make chocolate. That was interesting to find out, as later in our trip we were going to Hershey’s.

The farmer gave us a tour of the whole farm and talked about his crops. It was interesting to hear about how his whole life revolves around the weather – much more than for people living in the suburbs or a city. Yet he does use modern conveniences in that he uses high speed internet access to find out what the weather reports are. (He also uses artificial insemination to propagate his herd – rather than have a bull on site – which can be dangerous.)

On the tour, we all got to pick an ear of corn and to later feed it to the cows. The cows eat the whole thing: the corn, the corncob, the leaves and the silk. We learnt that cows have four stomachs for digesting – that’s why they can eat such tough food (that we can’t digest) like grass and corncobs.

Our kids got to feed two week old calves with very large bottles of milk. The calves are already pretty large at that age. So they need a lot of milk.

We slept in guest rooms in a special section of the farmer’s house. The next morning, all of the guests had breakfast together. We had raw, un-pasteurized milk – straight from the cows. I’ve never had milk that tasted so fresh and creamy! (It was recommended by the farmer that pregnant women and infants didn’t drink it.) They also served homemade yogurt, fresh sausage, scrambled eggs (the eggs came from the poultry farmer next door) and peach cobbler.

I think this was a great experience for the kids, while interesting and enjoyable for us adults. I’d recommend a trip like this for anyone. It gave the kids another perspective on the world, while being hands-on fun. It’s nice when vacations can be restful, yet open the mind to other possibilities in life!

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Posted in Countries & Cultures, Mama Lisa, Pennsylvania, Photos, Traveling, USA, Visiting a Farm | 8 Comments »

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