When I was growing up, I learned on my mother's knee a song she had learned from her mother. It was sung to the same tune as Hatikvah, but with these words:
When I was single I had nothing to do.I'd sit by the window, lacing up my shoe.Now that I am married I have too much to do.I can't sit by the window, lacing up my shoe.One cries "Mama! Put me into bed!"Another cries "Mama! Give me a piece of bread!"I washed them, I fed them, I put them into bed.Then I said to my husband, "I wish I were dead."
My mother's sister Mimi told me that her family learned the song in the late 1920s or early 1930s when it was played on WEVD, a Yiddish radio station in New York City that Grandma listened to every Saturday night.
My aunt, mother, and I thought the song was very funny. I'm always surprised that people are shocked and appalled when I tell them these lyrics. Perhaps one needs to have a New York sense of humor (from the last century). I give the lyrics here so they don't die when I do (though perhaps some would prefer that they did).
Does anyone else know these lyrics?