But still the bird holds fast.
How plain I saw his scarlet wings
When he his feathers dressed!
I’ll bet you on that very tree
His deary has a nest.
The most witty prose articles that I have met are some in Wollenweber’s Gemälde aus dem Pennsylvanischen Volkleben. (Pictures of Pennsylvania Life.)
Mr. E. H. Rauch (Pit Schwefflebrenner) accommodates himself to the great number of our “Dutch” people who do not read German by writing the dialect phonetically, in this manner: “Der klea meant mer awer, sei net recht g’sund for er kreisht ols so greisel-heftict orrick (arg) in der nacht. De olt Lawbucksy behawpt es is was mer aw gewocksa heast, un meant mer set braucha derfore. Se sawya es waer an olty fraw drivva im Lodwaerrickshteddle de kennt’s aw wocksa ferdreiv mit warta, im aw so a g’schmeer hut was se mocht mit gensfet.” (The little one seems to me not to be quite well, for he cries so dreadfully in the night. Old Mrs. Lawbucks maintains that he is what we call grown (enlargement of the liver), and thinks that I should powwow for it. She says that there was an old woman in Apple-butter town who knew how to drive away the growth with words, and who has too an ointment that she makes with goose-fat.)
I have already stated that our Pennsylvania dialect has been thought to be formed from different European sources; but Mr. H. L. Fisher, of York, has lately shown me a collection of Nadler’s poems in the Palatinate dialect, which, he says, more nearly resemble our idiom than anything else which he has seen. Also at Allentown, Mr. Dubbs, of the Reformed Church, has mentioned a collection which he thinks resembles much our Pennsylvania German. It is the poems of Ludwig Schandein, in the Westrich dialect. These are both dialects of the Rhenish Palatinate, the former of the district on the Rhine, the latter of the western or more mountainous part. And as the Germans coming into Pennsylvania were at one time called Palatines, it is not remarkable that these Palatinate dialects resemble ours. Here is a specimen of the eastern or lowland dialect:
“Yetz erscht waasz i’s, yetz erscht glaaw i’s,
Was mar in de Lieder singt;